The issue between Amnesty International and Gita Sahgal is not a personnel dispute. It is about the type of organisation that Amnesty has become. Its critics charge that it has diluted its defence of universal human rights by allying with a group that rejects that principle. By its treatment of Ms Sahgal, and its grudging and euphemistic explanation for its behaviour, Amnesty has confirmed that the critics are right.
Amnesty was founded in 1961 to support individual prisoners of conscience. It built a formidable reputation for identifying nonviolent dissenters, writing to them, and collectively nagging the regimes that had locked them up. It did this vital work, of solidarity and lobbying, regardless of politics. Yet Amnesty has ended up collaborating with people who have fundamentally