:00:07. > :00:12.There has been widespread condemnation of three bomb attacks
:00:12. > :00:17.in India's main commercial city, Mumbai. At least 21 people were
:00:17. > :00:21.killed and many more injured. One exploded in the heart of the city
:00:21. > :00:24.and two others in the south, all during rush hours. Indian officials
:00:24. > :00:29.say it appeared to be a co- ordinated terrorist attack.
:00:29. > :00:37.News Corporation has withdrawn its controversial bid for a full
:00:37. > :00:40.takeover of BSkyB Youth stop-off -- BSkyB. The company said it was too
:00:40. > :00:44.difficult to progress with the bid in the current climate.
:00:44. > :00:49.The Egyptian government says more than 600 senior police officers
:00:49. > :00:56.have been removed from their jobs. Their dismissal has been a key
:00:56. > :01:03.demand of protesters, who criticised officers of the killing
:01:03. > :01:10.-- for the killing of hundreds of protesters during their Hutu
:01:10. > :01:14.uprising against Holzinger Barak. - - during February's uprising
:01:14. > :01:21.against Hosni Mubarak. This year, Amnesty International
:01:22. > :01:26.passes a milestone. 50 years of campaigning against prisoners of
:01:26. > :01:34.conscious. This 50th birthday is marked less by collective
:01:34. > :01:44.satisfaction than soul-searching. The group's strategy has come under
:01:44. > :02:15.
:02:16. > :02:20.Welcome to HARDtalk. 50 years - congratulations on that. Would you
:02:20. > :02:26.except Amnesty International is now a campaigning juggernaut that has
:02:26. > :02:31.moved an awful long way from the founding ideas of 1961?
:02:31. > :02:34.Not in its values and its basic premise because that has not
:02:34. > :02:38.changed. Currently, Amnesty International is about ordinary
:02:38. > :02:44.people coming together to do extraordinary things and when we
:02:44. > :02:48.started, it was about political prisoners. Then we realised many of
:02:48. > :02:56.the theme -- many of them were being tortured. Dictators are
:02:56. > :03:02.getting much smarter so they started making people disappear.
:03:02. > :03:08.Then you have to deal with the dictators themselves, international
:03:08. > :03:13.justice. I would say Amnesty has evolved over 50 years, but always
:03:13. > :03:16.adapting to changing circumstances. As you described it, always working
:03:16. > :03:21.towards the idea of political freedom and baffling political
:03:21. > :03:29.oppression, it will look at what Amnesty International is involved
:03:29. > :03:32.in today it is a sort of capsule against fighting and -- fighting
:03:32. > :03:36.against a grab-bag of different abuses.
:03:36. > :03:42.I recently came back from North Africa. When you look at what is
:03:42. > :03:47.happening on the streets of many cities, especially in North Africa,
:03:47. > :03:51.you can see the classic problem of political freedom, and people's
:03:51. > :03:58.writes for food and water, that is something we can talk about sitting
:03:58. > :04:01.in the studio. There was a Tunisian who set himself on fire, which
:04:01. > :04:11.triggered the Tunisian Revolution, which triggered the rest of the
:04:11. > :04:15.Arab world's revolution. No-one campaigning organisation can
:04:15. > :04:20.represent all of those different issues. Wars and the beauty of
:04:20. > :04:25.Amnesty in early days was that the focus was clear, thein all about
:04:25. > :04:28.representing those people who were locked up because of their thoughts
:04:28. > :04:34.and speech. We a fighting for the rights of
:04:34. > :04:37.people whose rights are violated. - we are fighting. You cannot
:04:37. > :04:42.separate economic rights from political rights. It is not for us
:04:42. > :04:46.to say, "We are only doing this thing." Where is the clarity of
:04:46. > :04:51.Amnesty getting involved in the abortion debate?
:04:51. > :04:57.Saying it will champion the rights of women who have been raped or
:04:57. > :05:01.forcibly coerced into sex and then have become pregnant. I do not see
:05:01. > :05:08.how that fits with the original ideas.
:05:08. > :05:17.Half of the populations in the countries we working are women. The
:05:17. > :05:20.women we are working with, when we started looking beyond prison,
:05:20. > :05:24.there was a bit strong proportion of the population saying that
:05:24. > :05:30.women's rights were very Central. We do not take a generic position
:05:30. > :05:32.on the right to life all right to health. It is a human rights
:05:32. > :05:38.framework. My knee devoutly religious people,
:05:38. > :05:43.not least Catholics, like your founder, took the view that life
:05:43. > :05:49.began at conception. By outlining and championing the rights of women
:05:49. > :05:54.to have an abortion if they have been forcibly, basically, made to
:05:54. > :06:00.have sex, are you not pursuing the logic that right to life does not
:06:00. > :06:04.start at conception. We all know amnesty is fully committed to
:06:04. > :06:09.respect for life and against the death penalty.
:06:09. > :06:13.Him Indonesia, Amnesty has been working for many years against
:06:13. > :06:18.oppression and political dictatorship. Today, if you take
:06:18. > :06:24.the number of women dying because of bad health practices, it is
:06:24. > :06:27.20,000 women who died. Indonesia traditionally has one million
:06:27. > :06:32.abortions taking place. Most of them are in the shadow because no-
:06:32. > :06:36.one wants to legalise abortion. You can say that it does not matter
:06:36. > :06:38.that 20,000 women are dying because that is not your concern. What
:06:38. > :06:42.we're doing in the case of Indonesia is explaining to the
:06:42. > :06:51.people of Indonesia and talking to the Governor of Indonesia about how
:06:51. > :06:56.there is a direct relationship between rising abortion and the
:06:56. > :07:00.whole maternal mortality rate. It is very central. I think it is
:07:00. > :07:05.difficult to separate these things. We made British bishop, Michael
:07:05. > :07:11.Evans, after you adopted the stance, quit your organisation, saying,
:07:11. > :07:18."Amnesty seems to have forgotten the paramount human right, the
:07:18. > :07:22.right to life," You do not focus on that?
:07:22. > :07:28.We are focused on making sure women do not have unsafe pregnancies. We
:07:28. > :07:31.need to make sure women have access to information, that they feel
:07:31. > :07:36.empowered to use contraception, whether they are rich or poor,
:07:36. > :07:41.single or married. That is our focused. We're not focused on what
:07:41. > :07:45.people do when they get married and get pregnant.
:07:45. > :07:51.Let's bring it back to politics and repression and the fight for
:07:51. > :07:56.freedom. You recently back from Cairo, in the midst of the Arab
:07:56. > :07:59.spring. Isn't the message of the Arabs bring in some ways that there
:07:59. > :08:03.is now less need for outside analysis and the intervention from
:08:03. > :08:09.groups such as yours because, in a very real sense, people are doing
:08:09. > :08:14.it for themselves. We are not outside. We may be
:08:14. > :08:21.sitting in a studio in the UK, but we have an organisation of 3
:08:21. > :08:29.million members across the globe. I was in so where's a few days ago
:08:29. > :08:33.and local people came to me and talk about their local Amnesty
:08:33. > :08:38.Group. We are spread across 100 countries with 3 million local
:08:38. > :08:44.members. What is a snake that you're dishing in Egypt? In the
:08:44. > :08:50.midst of all this crisis, the tarry a Square killings, Amnesty has been
:08:50. > :08:56.documented -- documenting all the human rights violations. I was
:08:56. > :09:00.mentioning to the Minister of the interior that we have records of
:09:00. > :09:07.all the violations that had been committed under Holzinger Barak
:09:07. > :09:11.over the last 30 years. -- under Hosni Mubarak.
:09:11. > :09:14.People now have mobile phones, they are on social networks, they're
:09:14. > :09:18.sending each other pictures and video of what is happening in real
:09:18. > :09:22.time. You then many months later sending researchers and right along
:09:22. > :09:32.reports about this and that. You were in danger of being overtaken
:09:32. > :09:32.
:09:32. > :09:40.by events -- you are. I got a message from Aung San Suji.
:09:40. > :09:46.She said she wanted to express her gratitude to Amnesty. Her message
:09:46. > :09:50.was interesting, saying that she hoped that in the next 50 years we
:09:50. > :09:56.would not need and Mr International. I would share that hope. Let me
:09:56. > :10:05.assure you that at this point back in time, with the Sudans, the
:10:05. > :10:11.Chinas, everywhere I travel, people respect what we say.
:10:11. > :10:16.You said a few weeks ago that the Arabs bring marks a watershed where
:10:16. > :10:22.activists used new technology to speak truth to power. Are you over
:10:22. > :10:26.estimating what has changed in the last 12 months?
:10:26. > :10:30.No. What we have been saying in relation to the Middle East and not
:10:31. > :10:34.Africa in general, the Middle East is a good example, is that the
:10:34. > :10:39.dictator has gone but the systems of dictatorship have not gone. That
:10:39. > :10:43.will take a long time to change, meaning we need truth, justice and
:10:43. > :10:52.reparations. I was meeting with mothers of the first two martyrs
:10:52. > :10:56.who gave their lives and there are security officials who conducted
:10:56. > :11:01.killings and violations. Unless there is truth, justice and
:11:01. > :11:07.compensation, we need -- we have a long way to go.
:11:07. > :11:12.The people have lost loved ones, were winded themselves or
:11:12. > :11:17.imprisoned. Where is the justice for any of these people? -- were
:11:18. > :11:22.wounded. That is exactly what our same to
:11:23. > :11:26.the general of the armed forces. By wonder whether you said you were
:11:26. > :11:30.worried about the fact that they were rushing headlong into
:11:30. > :11:37.parliamentary elections in September, when the basic
:11:37. > :11:42.groundwork for democracy and civil society were not in place.
:11:42. > :11:52.The first thing I talked about were the mid- Barak laws. They are still
:11:52. > :11:52.
:11:52. > :11:58.in place, the emergency laws. -- been. The media is much more free.
:11:58. > :12:08.They have started trials against the Interior Minister and Holzinger
:12:08. > :12:10.
:12:10. > :12:15.Barak himself -- Hosni Mubarak. Up one of the facets we see more in
:12:15. > :12:18.Syria is that the government also make Ten News the new technology.
:12:18. > :12:22.They can use mobile and satellite technology to track protesters,
:12:22. > :12:26.undertake surveillance in New Inn sophisticated ways. Are you worried
:12:26. > :12:29.about that? We are very worried. We're talking
:12:29. > :12:33.to the companies, technology companies, about this question.
:12:33. > :12:39.We're developing our own strategies for the future on how we, on the
:12:39. > :12:43.one hand, digital can be a massive enabling technology to organise
:12:43. > :12:48.anonymously, but it is true companies Kent misuse it and there
:12:48. > :12:52.are smart governments already doing that. -- can misuse it. In a sense,
:12:52. > :12:55.this is a new area for Amnesty International and the human rights
:12:55. > :12:59.community. A I talked about the warp speed at
:12:59. > :13:03.which information can now flow, not least information about allegations
:13:03. > :13:10.of human rights abuse. That is sometimes very dangerous. Let's
:13:10. > :13:19.turn to Libya. Not long ago we had stories coming of mass rapes,
:13:19. > :13:23.systematic rapes by Gaddafi's forces, coming through the new
:13:23. > :13:31.media. I wonder if Amnesty International, after looking at
:13:31. > :13:36.those reports, now believe most of them not to be true?
:13:36. > :13:40.Research and interviewing people is some of the most important work
:13:41. > :13:47.that Amnesty conducts. We have not had any direct evidence of rape
:13:47. > :13:52.being used as a weapon of war. Rape been used as a weapon of war is a
:13:52. > :13:56.serious human rights violation. If the UN and ICC have evidence, we
:13:56. > :13:59.need to see that. We're not saying it didn't happen. We're just saying
:13:59. > :14:03.we do not have direct evidence of that.
:14:03. > :14:09.We now get to a very sensitive line that Amnesty has had to tread for
:14:09. > :14:14.many years now. The war in Iraq, Afghanistan and maybe in Libya as
:14:14. > :14:22.well. You have people on both sides of the conflict who want to
:14:22. > :14:28.marshall facts. In Libya, one of the Western... The arguments used
:14:28. > :14:32.by Western intervention powers was that had they not intervened there
:14:32. > :14:35.would have been "A massacre" of tens of thousands of innocent
:14:35. > :14:40.civilians in Benghazi. Does Amnesty International believe that to be
:14:41. > :14:43.true? It is a kind of counterfactual
:14:43. > :14:47.question. I can ask you if you believe it to
:14:47. > :14:52.be credible. A Amnesty International is not an
:14:53. > :14:57.organisation that pronounces its views with force. We work within
:14:57. > :15:01.the human-rights framework. The important issue now is that all
:15:01. > :15:05.parties have to observe the rules of war and the rules of conflict
:15:05. > :15:09.and international humanitarian law and that is not happening. All
:15:09. > :15:12.parties are violating that as we speak. That is why we have an
:15:12. > :15:17.International Criminal Court. That is one of the pins Amnesty
:15:17. > :15:20.International campaigned for four years. We're happy that arrest
:15:20. > :15:24.warrants have come out now and we need to allow for a full
:15:24. > :15:27.investigation to take place. Just sticking with the notion of
:15:27. > :15:32.Amnesty's integrity and the enormous pressures it faces, I
:15:32. > :15:36.talked about the enormity -- enormous conflicts we have been
:15:37. > :15:40.through. Let's now talk about the war on terror, as it was
:15:40. > :15:45.characterised by George W. Bush. Do you think it fits with Amnesty's
:15:45. > :15:54.values to associate with, for example, former Guantanamo
:15:54. > :15:58.prisoners, in your campaign on the issue of detainees in Wantirna Road.
:15:59. > :16:03.-- in Guantanamo. In our view, in many cases, the
:16:03. > :16:08.West has it wrong. We think, in Guantanamo Bay itself, 2.5 years
:16:08. > :16:13.after President Obama said he would close Guantanamo Bay, we still have
:16:13. > :16:16.200 detainees in there. We know this is not in line with most
:16:16. > :16:22.international human rights standards and they are committed to
:16:22. > :16:32.taking several of them to civil trial and they have now reversed
:16:32. > :16:35.In that campaign you have run, you have worked closely with other
:16:35. > :16:39.organisations. You used to work with the Guantanamo Bay prisoners.
:16:39. > :16:47.Do you regret that association? There was a whole debate about that.
:16:47. > :16:53.Did you get it right or wrong? was before my time. It was
:16:53. > :16:58.independently done by two well respected people. They said there
:16:58. > :17:06.could have been some minor changes we could have made. There was no
:17:06. > :17:09.disagreement. We made the right choices. Was it the right choice to
:17:09. > :17:12.work with a self acknowledged jihadi fighter in Bosnia who had
:17:12. > :17:17.been to training camps in Afghanistan, who continues to talk
:17:17. > :17:27.about political campaign and conflict in America. Was it right
:17:27. > :17:32.
:17:32. > :17:39.to have him as an associate? work with a wide range of partners.
:17:39. > :17:42.It was just not on that issue alone. His group was described as a
:17:42. > :17:48.leading human rights group which says more of them just working with
:17:48. > :17:51.you on this specific issue. issue was about whether the
:17:51. > :18:01.comments he had made, which were kind of derogatory towards women's
:18:01. > :18:04.
:18:04. > :18:09.rights. Amnesty International, for us, women's rights is paramount.
:18:09. > :18:13.What were you doing associating with him? When you have people in
:18:13. > :18:21.prisons, we do not interview them for their views. This was after he
:18:21. > :18:24.left prison. The reason this is important is because people inside
:18:24. > :18:27.the organisation and outside it are worried about the degree to which
:18:27. > :18:37.Amnesty is prepared to work with people who do not share the
:18:37. > :18:39.
:18:39. > :18:41.universal values that Amnesty claims it represents. People are
:18:41. > :18:51.worried that Amnesty International has tended to align themselves with
:18:51. > :19:01.extremists. The nice thing is that we get criticised from all sides.
:19:01. > :19:09.
:19:09. > :19:13.It is a reminder that we have to remain objective. In the Middle
:19:13. > :19:16.East, North Africa, many people came up to say how we are so anti-
:19:16. > :19:20.Islamist. I think Amnesty, without question, maintains its objectivity
:19:20. > :19:27.through all the processes that we carry out. That is why we are so
:19:27. > :19:31.valued. Before you toore you too another official said that Amnesty
:19:31. > :19:37.has become rather famous - thinking about the role of jihad in self-
:19:37. > :19:47.defence. Aren't such views not right? He said no. Do you believe
:19:47. > :19:53.
:19:53. > :19:55.notions of jihad are antithetical to human rights? We were the first
:19:56. > :19:58.to criticise the Taliban for killing innocent civilians at the
:19:58. > :20:01.Intercontinental Hotel. Any kind of killing of civilians, using any
:20:01. > :20:08.kind of jihad or whatever is unacceptable. But he believes jihad
:20:08. > :20:12.is not antithetical to human rights? I am not going to go there.
:20:12. > :20:17.I am saying if there is any evidence that civilians have been
:20:17. > :20:27.killed, it is not acceptable. you cut your ties to caged
:20:27. > :20:36.
:20:36. > :20:40.prisoners? He was associated with an alleged Al-Qaeda mastermind.
:20:40. > :20:45.Have you cut or your ties with them? We have a specific campaign
:20:45. > :20:55.with them on Guantanamo Bay. I worked with Caged Prisoners. What
:20:55. > :21:05.
:21:05. > :21:08.about Israel? In the last few years, Amnesty spent too much time on
:21:09. > :21:15.Israel and Palestine and not at what was actually going on in the
:21:15. > :21:25.Arab world? If you look at Tunisia, Egypt, these were major investments
:21:25. > :21:34.
:21:34. > :21:37.On Israel, Palestine, if you are talking about how we make sure of
:21:37. > :21:40.objectivity and balance, we work with that criticism. After the 2008
:21:40. > :21:50.and 2009 conflicts, we said their research conducted into human
:21:50. > :22:00.rights was inadequate. The head of Amnesty International's Finland
:22:00. > :22:06.branch described Israel as a scum state. Have you removed him?
:22:06. > :22:12.stand for freedom of expression. Someone might say something that is
:22:12. > :22:22.not representative. So he still speaks as the chief Amnesty person
:22:22. > :22:24.
:22:24. > :22:29.in Finland? We have been cleared that is not Amnesty International's
:22:29. > :22:36.view. We have dealt with that. I do not know the specifics of the
:22:36. > :22:40.circumstances but that is not Amnesty International's view.
:22:40. > :22:44.wrote it in a blog and it caused a great deal of upset in Israel. Some
:22:44. > :22:48.believe there is an in-built bias. It is not about what one staff in
:22:48. > :22:54.Amnesty said. The important thing is that the blockade is not
:22:54. > :23:02.acceptable. People are suffering. We have done some very detailed
:23:02. > :23:08.studies on water sanitation so that has been lifted. We have one of the
:23:08. > :23:13.settlements there that has been destroyed 20 times. They are all
:23:13. > :23:23.the things that we need to stop. just want to talk about the future.
:23:23. > :23:34.
:23:34. > :23:37.You are the boss. Does it worry you that the most powerful emerging
:23:37. > :23:40.nations in the world, and I am thinking of China, maybe the BRIC
:23:40. > :23:44.countries, Russia, India, Brazil as well. These countries do not all
:23:44. > :23:50.sign on to your views of what human rights really are. You cannot lump
:23:50. > :23:55.all these countries together. It is a very big mix. They need to do a
:23:55. > :23:58.lot more. I was in Brazil not so long ago and there was some big
:23:58. > :24:02.challenges there. We were very worried that they are still
:24:03. > :24:06.evicting a lot of people. And then you think about China. What did the
:24:06. > :24:09.Chinese premier say in London the other day? He said stop lecturing
:24:10. > :24:12.us. Stop lecturing us about human rights. Treat us as equals, don't
:24:12. > :24:19.engage in finger-pointing and respect others on the basis of
:24:19. > :24:25.equality. That may be a message that he is also delivering to you
:24:25. > :24:35.as well. China had the Nobel Peace Prize going to a Chinese citizen
:24:35. > :24:47.
:24:47. > :24:50.not so long ago. 10 years ago they would not worry about it but now
:24:50. > :24:53.they are worrying about their international image. They are
:24:53. > :24:57.concerned about their image more and more. They have to be held to
:24:57. > :25:01.international standards. As we see Beijing rise and Delhi as well, the
:25:01. > :25:10.power countries in the world, what you are doing may be even more
:25:10. > :25:14.difficult to deliver. Brazilians and the Indians and the
:25:14. > :25:20.Africans need to become part of the movement and raise their voices as
:25:20. > :25:23.well. They need to have pressure coming from their own countries. I
:25:23. > :25:33.think the idea that human rights is a Western concept has been exploded
:25:33. > :25:56.
:25:56. > :26:01.recently. We have to leave it there. The weekend is approaching and the
:26:01. > :26:05.weather looks like turning pretty nasty by Friday with wind and rain
:26:05. > :26:11.expected. Before that happens, a reasonable weather today with
:26:11. > :26:15.sunshine prevailing. Many places will be dry and the one exception
:26:15. > :26:23.is the east of England with an active weather system bringing a
:26:23. > :26:28.wet start to the day. Further west, a cool start but a lovely day with
:26:28. > :26:34.sunshine. Things will warm up quite nicely. I've been to the mid-teens
:26:34. > :26:40.by mid-morning. A touch of frost in the northern Highlands and things
:26:40. > :26:45.warming up after that. No real problems weather-wise in the
:26:45. > :26:55.Midlands. It is the east of England that will have the cloud and wet
:26:55. > :27:03.weather. Fringing in two parts of Kent, and further west a lot of
:27:03. > :27:10.sunshine. As we go through the day not much changing - wet weather in
:27:10. > :27:20.the east of England, blustery wind. Further west - dry, bright and of
:27:20. > :27:27.
:27:27. > :27:32.lighter wind. Temperatures in the low 20s but chilly. The Open, a lot
:27:32. > :27:37.of cloud and blustery wind back. Challenging conditions and coverage
:27:37. > :27:46.will be all over the BBC. Toward the evening, the wind will move
:27:46. > :27:52.east. Things will dry out. A largely dry start to Friday. Much
:27:52. > :28:02.warmer for parts of East Anglia, the south-east. Weather fronts are
:28:02. > :28:04.