Amnesty International
Amnesty International (commonly known as Amnesty and AI) is a "non-governmental organisation" stated to be focused on human rights, with millions of members and supporters around the world. It focuses in particular on "prisoners of conscience", who are persons imprisoned or prevented from expressing their opinions in violation of freedom of expression.
Despite this, Amnesty does not support the right of freedom of expression of those accused of "Holocaust denial" or "hate speech", in effect only supporting politically correct freedom of expression.
Amnesty International was founded in London in 1961 by the lawyer Peter Benenson, who was a Jew who had converted to Catholicism. The Jewish Louis Blom-Cooper was also involved in the foundation.
The organization has a liberal/leftist outlook and supports ending the death penalty, decriminalizing abortion, minorities' and indigenous rights, protecting LGBT rights, social and cultural rights for marginalised communities, and the rights of refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers.
Its coverage of different countries has been criticized as biased compared to actual human rights abuses.
In 2019, an independent report found what it called a "toxic culture" of workplace bullying, as well as numerous evidences of bullying, harassment, sexism and racism. The report found that: "39 per cent of Amnesty International staff reported that they developed mental or physical health issues as the direct result of working at Amnesty".
Another criticism is excessive pay for management. In 2019, a budgetary crisis caused an announcement that the organization's headquarters would cut almost 100 jobs as a part of urgent restructuring. Unite the Union, the UK's biggest trade union, said the redundancies were a direct result of "overspending by the organisation’s senior leadership team" and had occurred "despite an increase in income".
