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Agnès Callamard: "I was shocked that Saudi Arabian authorities threatened me at the UN"

2021-04-08T03:52:05.627Z


Amnesty International's new secretary general recounts how a senior Saudi official threatened her over the report on the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi of which she was the author


Agnès Callamard, new Secretary General of Amnesty International, in her office in Paris last Tuesday.JOEL SAGET / AFP

Agnès Callamard was threatened up to two times.

She was not present, but her colleagues at the United Nations were, so the message got through.

It was in January 2020, at a meeting held in Geneva between Saudi and UN officials.

There, in that Swiss city, are the offices of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Callamard, born in Grenoble (France) 56 years ago, had prepared as a special rapporteur for this body a report on the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018 in Istanbul.

Taking advantage of the meeting, a senior Saudi official asked his counterpart twice to take care of her if they did not want others to do it.

"I do what I have to do," says Callamard from Paris in a video call with EL PAÍS, "but the fact that Saudi Arabian authorities threatened me in a UN space, which must be protected, was a shock."

Callamard, with a long history as a human rights expert, has just assumed the general secretariat of Amnesty International (AI).

That happened in early 2020, but she did not report it until March 23, in an interview with the British newspaper

The Guardian

.

Why did it take you so long to talk about it?

"I was working on a number of important issues related to Saudi Arabia and I did not want to draw attention and distract because of the threats."

When he decided to tell it, the senior official was not identified, but two days after the publication, the president of the Saudi Arabian Human Rights Commission, Awwad Alawwad, gave himself up.

"I reject this suggestion [the threats] in the strongest terms," ​​Alawwad, a former Saudi Information Minister, said on Twitter.

"While I cannot recall the exact conversations, I would never have wanted or threatened to harm a person designated by the UN, or anyone in that regard," he continued.

Rupert Colville, a UN spokesman, confirmed Callamard's version.

What had certainly not been liked in Riyadh is the content of the report on Khashoggi's death at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

The 100-page report, signed by her, said this on page 4: “The Special Rapporteur has determined that there is credible evidence that warrants further investigation of the individual responsibility of high-level Saudi officials, including that of the crown prince [Mohamed Bin Salmán] ”.

"Of course one acts because it takes these threats seriously", admits Callamard, "but you have to evaluate them objectively, see what measures to take, if the risk is high ..." He spoke with the UN and took extreme precautions around his person.

“I was in a situation where I could be protected,” she continues during the conversation, “because there were security personnel around me.

You have to be constantly aware;

I took extra steps with my technology and informed a few people to keep an eye out. "

And that's it.

When asked about how it affected her personally, if she feared for her life, tried to minimize the severity, she did not feel “especially uneasy”, she says;

she is used to it.

Although he wanted all this to come to light - "because the world needs to know that the UN is a place where people can be threatened for their work," Callamard insists, he takes the issue away: "The people with whom work receives them [death threats].

Compared to the situation of many of my contacts, who even have to move house, this is nothing. "

  • Saudi Arabia Sentences Five Men To Death For Khashoggi's Killing At His Consulate In Istanbul

  • Reporters Without Borders denounces Prince Bin Salmán in Germany for the murder of Khashoggi

She suspects, yes, two things, as she admits in the talk: that Saudi Arabia has not only threatened her within the United Nations and that this country is not the only one to do so.

Her work with the Saudis has not been easy, and being a woman has to do with it, she acknowledges.

"There is a lot of misogyny in the way that Saudi Arabia interacted with me, it underestimated my work," says AI's brand new secretary general.

But not only from Riyadh.

Callamard has also received warnings from Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who threatened to “slap her in the face” for her criticism of the drug war after a visit to the country in May 2017. “That is not the kind of word that would be used with a man ”, admits the French expert.

Duterte's anger reached the Web and Callamard's page on the English version of Wikipedia was manipulated to link it to an opposition Philippine party.

Educated in Political Science between France and the United States, Callamard, also director of the Global Initiative for Freedom of Expression at Columbia University, took over just six days ago as head of Amnesty - an organization in which she briefly worked two years ago. decades - from the hands of the Swiss Julie Verhaar.

Behind it is investigations such as the one that concluded, in July of last year, that the US attack in Iraq that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani was "illegal."

Priorities in your new position?

"First listen and learn, otherwise it would be very arrogant," he responds.

The pandemic as an excuse to violate human rights

The French Agnès Callamard has taken her position as the new Secretary General of Amnesty International with the publication of the annual report with which the organization reviews the state of health of human rights.

This year, precisely, the pandemic has been one of the key themes in the report.

According to the work of Amnesty, which monitors 149 countries, the crisis unleashed by the appearance of covid-19 has served as an excuse for many governments to reinforce their power, undermine the rights of citizens and hinder international cooperation.



"What we saw in 2020", says Callamard during a video call, "was a lot of negligence in the protection of human rights, in the fight against discrimination and inequality, making us more vulnerable to the pandemic."

As an example, Amnesty states in its report that the authorities "harassed or intimidated", up to the arrest or dismissal, health personnel in 42 of the countries analyzed.



Also in 42 countries, Amnesty detected returns of immigrants or refugees who, at times, "were trapped in camps or detention centers in squalid conditions or were blocked by border closures."

The report also denounces the "overcrowding and unsanitary conditions" in detention centers, and forced evictions, all these violations of rights that have left citizens tremendously exposed to the virus.

The organization also highlights the use of the pandemic to curtail freedom of expression in Gulf countries (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Oman), but also in Europe, as is the case in Viktor Orbán's Hungary, as well as the excessive use of force to suppress protests in the Middle East, North Africa and Asia, especially the Philippines.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2021-04-08

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