There are a number of bodies who I once admired but whose veracity can no longer be relied upon. I take anything from Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, the World Wildlife Fund and now Amnesty with a very large shovel of salt. Their exaggerations, alarmism and plain lies means that I have come to discount virtually everything they publicise to a large degree. They have made it all too plain that they believe their ends are so good that it justifies some lying and fraud and deception along the way.
Over the last few days Amnesty International and the World Press have made much of a story where two sisters were “sentenced” by village elders (panchayat) to be gang-raped as punishment because their brother had “eloped” with a woman of higher caste. There was much indignation and gnashing of teeth.
But now it would seem that the whole story was probably just made up by Amnesty. In the best interpretation Amnesty has been gullible to the point of stupidity. In the worst interpretation Amnesty exploited these sisters for their own agenda by making up the whole story and implementing a deliberate PR campaign. Mind you, the world’s press have then been pretty gullible as well and their fact-checking has been virtually absent.
Daily Mirror: The village council accused of ordering the rape of two Indian sisters because their brother ran off with a higher caste woman has denied it ever ordered the sickening punishment.
The news that the women were to be assaulted because of their brother’s actions led to an international outcry and hundreds of thousands of people have demanded their safety.
Now, members of the village council in the Baghpat region of northern India have told Reuters they passed no such order.
Family members of the two sisters also said they are unsure if the ruling was made – while local police deny any such directive was given.
When the accusations first emerged last month, they spread like wildfire. An online petition by Amnesty International seeking justice and protection for the low-caste sisters gathered over 260,000 signatures, mostly in Britain.
But family members said it may have just been gossip.
“It is all hearsay, we don’t know if this actually happened,” said Dharam Pal Singh, 55, the women’s father and a retired soldier. “We heard it from other villagers.” He identified one of the villagers, a man who also said he had heard it from others.
The k2p blog 