Principles
A vital part of AI's mandate is the so-called "violence clause". It sets prisoners of conscience apart from the other categories of prisoners on whose behalf the movement works. If a prisoner is serving a sentence imposed, after a fair trial, for activities involving violence, AI will not ask the government to release the prisoner.
AI does not judge whether recourse to violence is justified or not. However, AI does not oppose the political use of violence in itself since The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in its preamble, foresees situations in which people could "be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression".
AI neither supports nor condemns the resort to violence by political opposition groups in itself, just as AI neither supports nor condemns a government policy of using military force in fighting against armed opposition movements. However, AI supports minimum humane standards that should be respected by governments and armed opposition groups alike. When an opposition group tortures or kills its captives, takes hostages, or commits deliberate and arbitrary killings, AI condemns these abuses.
Read more about this topic: Amnesty International
Famous quotes containing the word principles:
“Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“It is always easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.”
—Alfred Adler (1870–1937)
“...at this stage in the advancement of women the best policy for them is not to talk much about the abstract principles of women’s rights but to do good work in any job they get, better work if possible than their male colleagues.”
—Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve (1877–1965)