In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Keepers of the Flame: Understanding Amnesty International
  • Morton Winston (bio)
Keepers of the Flame: Understanding Amnesty International, by Stephen Hopgood (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2006) 249 pp.

On 27 April 2006, Ramin Jahanbegloo, an academic who holds both Iranian and Canadian citizenship, was arrested at Tehran's Mehrabad airport. Jahanbegloo is the Head of the Department of Contemporary Studies at the Cultural Research Bureau in Tehran and is the author of over twenty books on philosophy and current affairs in Iran, which are published in Persian, English, and French. Jahanbegloo was placed in solitary confinement in section 209 of the notorious Evin prison. Reports from former prisoners there indicate that he is probably subject to long periods of interrogation and is kept in a small room with only a toilet, sink and a lamp that is never turned off.

Within days of his arrest Amnesty International (AI) issued an Urgent Action appeal on his behalf stating that "He may be a prisoner of conscience, detained solely on account of the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of expression," and asking Amnesty members to write respectfully-worded letters to the Iranian authorities expressing concern for his safety, seeking assurances that he will not be tortured or ill-treated, and demanding that they promptly charge him with a recognizable crime or immediately and unconditionally release him.

Cases like Jahanbegloo's are precisely what Amnesty built its reputation on. Most people still think of AI primarily as an organization that works for the release of "prisoners of conscience," although in the past fifteen years the organization has undergone major changes in its mission, strategy, and practices. The internal struggle within the organization over these changes is the subject of Stephen Hopgood's fine new book about the organization. There have been previous books about Amnesty such as Egon Larsen's A Flame in Barbed Wire, published in 1979, which is notable for its account of the early history of the organization, including the scandal which led to the falling out with AI's founder, Peter Benenson (1921–2005) in 1967. There is also Persecution East and West: Human Rights, Political Prisoners, and Amnesty (1983), which is a bitter critique of the organization written by a South African former Franciscan priest named Cosmas Desmond who also served as head of the British section of Amnesty. More recently there is the passionate account by long-time Brazil country-specialist Linda Rabben, Fierce Legion of Friends (2002). Yet no other book on AI that I know of does as good a job of understanding the organization's ethos and internal culture, of getting under its skin, as Keepers of the Flame.

Hopgood, who is a Lecturer in International Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, based his book on ethnographic fieldwork carried out mainly inside the International Secretariat (IS) of Amnesty in London. He spent thousands of hours between 2002 and 2004 interviewing Amnesty staffers and members, attending meetings and poring over internal documents in the organization's archives. He chose a good time in which to conduct his research since it came shortly after an historic decision was made by the representative members at the International Council Meeting (ICM) in Dakar, Senegal in August 2001 where it was decided to abandon the old "mandate" in favor of a strategic planning process that would focus AI's work on long-term thematic campaigning issues rather than country-specific, prisoner-oriented research. This new process would give equal attention to violations of economic, social, and [End Page 1079] cultural rights in addition to the civil, political, and judicial rights violations on which Amnesty had previously worked. This decision came at the end of a decade long self-study and internal debate within the international membership of the organization. Following the ICM, the International Executive Committee gave the newly appointed Secretary General, Irene Khan, the first woman and the first Muslim to hold that post, and her deputy, Australian Kate Gilmore, the task of convincing the staff at the IS that this new approach was a viable one for Amnesty.

The central thread of Hopgood's narrative is a...

pdf

Share