Brutality in an Age of Human Rights by Brian Drohan

Author:Brian Drohan [Drohan, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, Wars & Conflicts (Other), Political Science, Security (National & International), Europe, Great Britain, General
ISBN: 9781501714665
Google: OtQ6DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2018-01-15T22:26:28+00:00

Amnesty International’s Intervention

As British officials in Aden tried to avoid torture controversies, Amnesty International launched a parallel process designed to pressure the government into investigating the allegations. In March 1966, as Turnbull dismissed the detainee abuse allegations and Rochat agreed to delay his visit to Fort Morbut, an Amnesty International delegation visited the new colonial secretary, Lord Longford, to demand greater government transparency over prisoner treatment in Aden. AI representatives asked that he either publish Red Cross reports on the treatment of prisoners or permit an independent investigation. However, Longford delayed. When confronted with the British government’s obfuscation, AI leaders launched an investigation of their own and threatened to make the findings public if Britain did not take action to formally investigate the Aden torture allegations.

It is unclear whether Longford’s delay was due to his own reticence to discuss the matter or was the result of bureaucratic tangles. Administrative responsibility over Aden was in the process of transferring from the Colonial Office to the Foreign Office, which could have contributed to officials’ slow to response to AI’s subsequent queries. Regardless, Eric Baker, the chairman of AI’s British section, criticized the government’s “dilatoriness” and later complained that “it took seven weeks to get an answer to a simple question despite repeated letters and telephone calls.”56

The AI delegation had reason to expect a faster response because of the organization’s close ties with the British government. The relationship had begun in 1962 under the Macmillan government when Amnesty leaders met with Peter Thomas, Conservative MP and undersecretary of state in the Foreign Office, to discuss the right of individual appeal under the European Convention on Human Rights. AI made the anticommunist argument that supporting individual petition and the European Court would “deprive our enemies [by which he meant the Soviet Bloc] of a possible propaganda point.” This perspective left Thomas convinced that Amnesty International shared many of the government’s interests. In 1963 the Foreign Office notified its overseas posts that Amnesty International was to receive the government’s “discreet support.”57 Many of Amnesty’s senior leaders had close ties with Harold Wilson’s Labour government. Benenson was a long-standing member of the party, as were several other founding members including Peter Archer, an MP, and Elwyn Jones, MP and attorney general for the Wilson government. Lord Gardiner, named the lord chancellor in the new government, was a Labour peer, vigorous campaigner for legal reforms, and a vocal Amnesty supporter. Robert Swann, Amnesty’s general secretary, was a former diplomat who understood the Foreign Office’s inner workings.58 The Labour Party’s 1964 electoral victory offered an opportunity for Amnesty to broaden its relationship with the government even further.

AI used its relationship with the government to advocate on behalf of detainee rights in Aden. Throughout June and July 1966, Robert Swann exchanged a series of letters with Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Walter Padley. Swann explained that AI’s mission included the protection of political prisoners detained for expressing political beliefs contrary to colonial policies, even if those prisoners participated in violence.

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