I Call Amnesty International To Defend Mark Steyn

I have a few days off work before summer school starts.  What am I doing with that time?  Oh, not much, just painting a banister on the staircase, taking a broken old lawnmower to the dump, and launching a global campaign to save free speech!

I’ve praised Mark Steyn on this blog before; he is, bar none, the wittiest living columnist in the world.  As you might be aware, he is also at the center of one of the most ridiculous PC boondoggles ever–an essay of his, critical of Islamic immigration’s effect on Western Civilization, has spurred a complaint by the Canadian grievance industry, and now he’s about to be convicted by the “British Columbian Human Rights Tribunal,” an Orwellian kangaroo court that could fine him and his publisher, and force them to stop publishing anything they might find offensive. 

The essay in question is still online here.  Read it before it’s banned. 

More details about the case are summarized here. 

Now, where’s Amnesty International in all this?  A man is being persecuted, and probably muzzled, simply for exercising his right to free speech.  Isn’t this kind of thing right up their alley?  People might disagree with Steyn, but he’s not inciting violence, no matter what his critics might say.  Voltaire is spinning around in his grave. 

Amnesty International is a group of human rights do-gooders who organize letter-writing campaigns to free political prisoners and such.  I joined in 1993–thank you, liner notes in U2 albums.  I haven’t been active in it for years though, mostly due to their overly-zealous opposition to the death penalty and their bizarre definition of torture (I was truly disgusted three years ago when Amnesty officially labelled Guantanamo Bay “the gulag of our time.”  This prompted me to read Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s classic account of an actual Soviet gulag, One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich; it bore very little resemblance to cushy Club Gitmo.) 

But I thought they might be able to help here.  My wife still has a long distance phone card that, since the advent of the ubiquitous cell phone era, has just been sitting in a drawer for years.  It has over 700 minutes left on it.

So this morning I looked up the number for Amnesty International’s headquarters in London and called.  An automated voice told me that I had 120 minutes on the card for this particular call.  A receptionist quickly informed me that if I wanted to initiate a new campaign, I had to call the office in the country in which the offense was occurring.

So I called Amnesty’s office in Canada.  The phone card’s mechanical voice told me that I could use up to 280 minutes for this call.  A receptionist routed me to a “manager,” who answered (natch) in French.  I said hello and he switched to flawless English.

I asked if they at Amnesty were aware of the Mark Steyn case and he said that he hadn’t heard of it (I guess this isn’t as big of a news item as I had thought).  I briefed him on it, emphasizing that this “trial” seemed to be a clear violation of section 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (which carries the weight of scripture for Amnesty), and he asked if I would send a summary of the case to his email address; he would then have his researchers look into it and get back to me with their position.  This sounded fair, and I made a note of his address. 

He closed by explaining that if Mr. Steyn was being represented by a lawyer, Amnesty would probably not get involved (which works against me–Steyn is so defended), but that if he was being denied due process, Amnesty might be able to do something (this is more encouraging, as every defendant ever brought before the BCHRT has been convicted.  Every.  Single.  One.  That doesn’t look good for keeping up the appearance of fair trials). 

I thanked him again and we said our goodbyes.  It’s not a terribly exciting start, but it’s something.  I’ll be sure to let you know how this develops. 

Mark, if you’re reading this, keep your chin up, chap.  Folks are rallying around you. 

If anyone else would like to advocate with Amnesty on Steyn’s behalf and help them get on board with us, try writing to info@amnesty.ca.  Better yet, write to Senator Raynell Andreychuk, chair of the Human Rights Committee in the Canadian Parliament: andrer@sen.parl.gc.ca, and to Stephen Harper, Canada’s Prime Minister: pm@pm.gc.ca, and ask them to intervene for Steyn, preferably by dismantling the shameful BCHRT altogether. 

If I don’t receive a reply to my email to Amnesty by the end of the week, I’ll call back.  I’m sure I still have plenty of minutes left on my phone card.

 

UPDATE: Apparently, somebody on Steyn’s team noticed this little activist tribute of mine; a link to this post has been added to the page covering the trial on his web site.  How flattering!  No word back from AI yet…