On April 28, Amnesty International published posts against systemic brutality used by Colombian police to bring down nationwide protests in 2021. Though the protests were well-documented, Amnesty International decided to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated images for the post.
The dubious organisation that shut down its Amnesty India office after a series of FCRA violations and investigations against them claimed they used AI images to “protect the identity of the protesters”. The images were used by Amnesty International on its Instagram account as well. However, they received a lot of flak for using AI images and eventually had to delete the posts from all platforms.
The images that Amnesty International’s Norway chapter generated using AI were scenes from the protests that erupted in Colombia in 2021. In one of the images, a woman was seen being dragged away by the police. The images were clearly heavily edited or computer-generated, which resulted in a series of criticism on social media platforms. The smoothed-off and warped faces of the police and protesters were some of the issues mentioned by the critics.
Furthermore, the protester’s tricolour shown in the images had the correct colours that are red, yellow and blue, but they were arranged incorrectly. The police uniform shown in the images was also obsolete.
Amnesty was one of many observers that documented the unrest wave of 2021. Notably, media scholars and photojournalists have raised their voices against using AI-generated images as it undermines the matter’s sensitivity.
The Guardian quoted photojournalist Juancho Torres from Bogota, saying, “We are living in a highly polarised era full of fake news, which makes people question the media’s credibility. And as we know, artificial intelligence lies. What sort of credibility do you have when you start publishing images created by artificial intelligence?”
Speaking to Gizmodo, Amnesty claimed they decided to use AI-generated images to protect the demonstrators from possible retaliation from the government. Erika Guevara Rosas, director for Americas at Amnesty, said, “We have removed the images from social media posts, as we don’t want the criticism for the use of AI-generated images to distract from the core message in support of the victims and their calls for justice in Colombia.” She added that AI-generated images were disrespectful to the photojournalists who covered the protests.
In reply to an email query by the Guardian, Amnesty said, “Many people who participated in the National Strike covered their faces because they were afraid of being subjected to repression and stigmatisation by state security forces. Those who did show their faces are still at risk and some are being criminalised by the Colombian authorities.”
Colombia Protests of 2021
In 2021, the people of Columbia came out to protest against the divisive tax reforms. The protesters faced brutal police response. Around 38 civilians were killed during the protests. Reports suggest that women protesters were kidnapped and carried to abandoned buildings where gangs of policemen allegedly raped them.
Crimes of Amnesty
On several occasions, Amnesty International and its Indian chapter have been found to be involved in anti-India activities. In a report published in OpIndia in 2019, the connections between Amnesty International India, the British government, and radical Islamists were exposed. The organisation has a history of meddling with the internal affairs of India. It has constantly been trying to falsely project India as a violator of human rights and the ‘oppressor’ of Muslims.
Amnesty India and its former head Aakar Patel kept peddling blatant lies and fake news to portray India negatively. It also campaigned for the arrested Urban Naxals in the Bhima Koregaon violence case. Therefore, its actions are clearly tantamount to foreign interference in the domestic issues of India, and it is only appropriate that strict action is taken against it.
There is an ongoing investigation against Amnesty in India. In October 2022, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) attached assets worth Rs 1.54 crore of Amnesty International India under the anti-money laundering law for alleged violation of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act making the total attached assets worth over 21 crores. “A provisional order for attachment has been issued under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). With this attachment, the total attachment now stands at Rs 21.08 crores”, the ED said.
According to the reports, the order has been issued against the so-called NGO trust named Indians for Amnesty International Trust (IAIT), in connection with a case involving an alleged breach of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA). The ED issued a statement that the organization carried out NGO activities in the guise of services export and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to escape the FCRA laws.
