AUCKLAND: Salil Shetty is the 8th Secretary-General of the human rights watchdog, Amnesty International. From 1998-2003, Shetty was chief executive at ActionAid, for which he has been heavily commended for transforming into a leading international organization. From 2003-2010, Shetty headed the UN Millennium Campaign after which he joined Amnesty. He played a pivotal role in building the global advocacy campaign for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. With all his previous success, the fruits of his future work with Amnesty International are eagerly awaited. On tour to celebrate Amnesty's 50th birthday, Bikyamasr.com caught up with Shetty in New Zealand. You haven't been here for long; however what do you sense is New Zealand's single biggest hurdle in terms of improving its commitment to human rights? What I have been saying consistently is in the first instance, we want to acknowledge the important historical leadership roles that countries take on human rights in the Pacific region and there are many positive things that New Zealand government and the people of New Zealand have done consistently even most recently in relation to Libya and Syria and Burma many of these cases I think they have been very vocal and we really appreciate that and on the international level they have been consistently supporting the people of Egypt, Tunisia and even now Syria they have been quite vocal and so that we always acknowledge. In terms of the domestic issues, the challenges and issues we are raising during my trip I would say number one, even the elections that are coming up now, we are pushing that economic social cultural rights become a part of the Bill of Rights here. There needs to be legal remedy provided within the Bill of Rights act. Internationally the issues, you might have seen today's New Zealand Herald the issue about detainees handed over to the NATO forces and the NATO forces handing over to the Afghan forces. As you know the UN leaked report now has raised some questions which we have been raising for a long time at Amnesty International, about the torture, mistreatment of detainees who are handed over and so we are calling the governments here to help conduct the investigation and make the report public on any of the detainees that the New Zealand Government has handed over. And so that is one big issue the other issue is of course the Pacific. We have an important report which is released on sexual and gender based violence released not so long ago. We had a petition of more than 20,000 signatures on it to the President of Kiribati during the forum, we really want the New Zealand government to follow up and make sure the Pacific governments really stand up for women's rights because many of them are signatories of CEDAW and many international conventions but they are not following it in practice with domestic legislation, so that's the other big issue. The new government of New Zealand, the relatively new government is very keen on economic development but as you know in Egypt and Tunisia what we've seen is that this economic development without civil political rights will not help. So we need to have a better balance in countries like Fiji, that's the other key issue that we are pushing. And with Australia as well, do you find that there are similar problems or is it a completely different picture? There the 2 big issues in Australia; the dealing of refugees and asylum seekers. The idea of out sourcing the problems to Malaysia, these off shore detention centers and all of those we have really pushed back on because they are signatories to the international refugee convention and they are not following the due process and many of these people are coming because they have been fleeing form persecution so the Australian government cannot behave the way it's behaving now. The second issue is about the way in which the aboriginal people, how peoples rights are not being upheld so particularly the process by which people are being pushed out of their homelands in the Northern territory. I'm going to be travelling there myself in the next few days to look at the communities there. Both New Zealand and Australia have shown a lesser commitment to asylum seekers, with the New Zealand's Prime Minister, only earlier this year saying that the 80 Sri Lankan asylum seekers that were trying to make their way to New Zealand were not welcome. What do you think are the underlying causes for both countries lack of commitment to asylum seekers? We shouldn't put the 2 countries in the same basket really because New Zealand has had a much more progressive approach and they've been very welcoming to asylum seekers in the last decade as well, whereas Australia has been a whole different cup of tea there's been lots of challenges there so what we're saying is Australia should learn from New Zealand rather than the other way round. Middle East Last night you mentioned that in Egypt the dictator has gone but the dictatorship still exists. Do you personally think it's a case of democracy won or revolution lost? No no, I'm definitely optimistic, I don't believe either Egypt or Tunisia can go back to what they were before and we have to celebrate that. Now there's lots of challenges. As you know on women's rights issues there's been a lot of back sliding…so there's lots of issues like that, we have to be very watchful. The good thing about the situation in Egypt is that every time the transitional authorities, the military rulers start slipping back to old habits people are very watchful so the thing about the revolution is that it is not a one day, one month revolution it's a permanent revolution, that's what they say, internal vigilance is required and the people are not going to accept what happened before. What do you think is the next cause of action needed to be taken by Egyptians? I think there are still many struggles; the emergency law being lifted, that's something we've been pushing hard for. We've been calling for ending of military trials which are simply unacceptable and for all the pre-conditions, one of the pre-conditions we believe for having an election where people have full right to participate is an end to emergency law so you know for the people of Egypt, this will be their first honest election that they are likely to enjoy and so all the preconditions have to be met for every Egyptian having the right to participate so that's a big big challenge. We published something called the ‘Agenda for Change in Egypt' which lays out the major institutional changes required in terms of legal and human rights interests of Egyptians, which need to be developed from scratch in the country. There's a whole lot of issues on accountability, loss of lives, compensation, justice and compensation there's a lot of work to be done. We've had some very high profile cases, Mubarak and some of his ministers, there's a whole bunch of people involved in this and all of them have to be brought to justice. Last night you categorized the Arab states into three. The gulf countries were in the ‘denial' category. What is being done by Amnesty to communicate with the Gulf? Well they don't particularly like us. Certainly Saudi Arabia when we published information about their new so called anti terror law, they blocked our website but I mean we keep on pushing heads on Bahrain for example we've had many missions, and our team members going there and documented many of the violations in Bahrain. We are going to keep pressing on Saudi; I mentioned the work we are doing on Saudi Arabia. Of course we have limited resources so we can't cover every single country but we certainly keep an eye on the key ones. India The anti corruption movement seems to be heading strong and a growing tech savvy young population, inspired by Egypt perhaps. What are your views on the movement are you hopeful about India's near future. Is a revolution in the making? No we have a long way to go in India. I mean the anti corruption stuff has been good but it's really a very narrow section of society who are involved…I don't think we are even scratching the surface yet. The Future How can the international community boost human rights activism/reporting, especially in underreported places like Oceania? The only way to bring about lasting change is for citizens themselves to hold their own governments to account and people inside Oceania to raise their voice. In the case of Burma for example I do believe that the pressure that say the Indonesian government could put on Burma made a very big difference so we are much more mindful when it's a country from the Oceana region putting pressure, otherwise they always know that the usual suspects of the west always raising issues. Once we get pressure from countries within this region, it makes a big difference. I think the way in which the monitoring the tracking the pressures are going to happen are going to be more and more from people within the region putting pressure. Last night you mentioned your contribution has been little so far since only joining a year ago. What are your personal 3 goals for Amnesty this year? On one hand of course its to strengthen the long term work that we're doing recording of violations, researching it and reporting it and bearing witness to many of these crimes which happen across the world but in terms of one of the big focuses is to really grow the movement, the amnesty movement in the global south starting with India and such like and Africa. On a lighter note Are you a Rugby fan? (Laughing) No no I'm definitely not but I know this whole country is completely busy with it right now.
