Where Was Amnesty International When Gillian Gibbons Needed Them?

Gillian Gibbons, the mild-mannered British teacher who was imprisoned and threatened with tortuous punishment for naming a teddy bear Mohammed, is finally leaving Sudan after being granted a full presidential pardon. Sudanese president Omar al Bashir cleared the teacher after meeting two British Muslim representatives.

Not surprisingly, the case had drawn two types of reaction around the world. On one hand were the appeals from many world leaders (including President Bush) for Sudan officials to back off this insanely unjust prosecution. On the other were the crazed crowds of Muslim fanatics who demanded that Allah's wrath would not be propitiated with anything less than Gibbons' execution.

One very interesting note -- Amnesty International, the supposed human rights organization who has made such waves this last year in adding the promotion of abortion to its priorities, had absolutely nothing to say about the Gillian Gibbons travesty. Absolutely nothing.

Editor's Note: Amnesty International responded (12/4) to this post with the following statement,

Your blog on Amnesty International and the teacher jailed in Sudan is completely incorrect. Before publishing this material, we wish you had contacted AIUSA for comment. You would have been told the following: AI viewed this conviction as a mockery of justice. The organization demanded her immediate and unconditional release from prison. AI considered the teacher a prisoner of conscience.

Denny responds:

Suzanne Trimel, the Media Relations Director of Amnesty International USA, writes to inform me that the organization did, in fact, view the arrest of Gillian Gibbons as "a mockery of justice and demanded her immediate and unconditional release from prison." Furthermore, the organization "considered the teacher a prisoner of conscience." This note, of course, was in response to my post yesterday.

That's good. I'm glad to hear that somewhere, somehow AI was in Gillian Gibbons corner.

Unfortunately, a search of several news stories about the Gibbons imprisonment did not show AI's protest nor was Gillian Gibbons found on a search of AI's own website. I therefore concluded that AI was completely silent on the matter. According to Ms. Trimel, and I'm sure she's right, I was incorrect and I'm pleased to post this and say so.

I just wish AI would have defended Gillian Gibbons a little more boldly, a little more loudly...more like the noise they've been making over their opposition to policemen using tasers or the new push to make legal abortion among their human rights demands.