Criticism
The Australian TV network ABC and the indigenous rights group Friends of Peoples Close to Nature released a documentary called Blood on the Cross that alleges the involvement of the Red Cross with the British military in conducting a massacre in the Southern Highlands of West Papua in connection with the World Wildlife Fund hostage crisis of May 1996. Following the broadcast of the documentary, the Red Cross announced publicly that it would appoint an individual outside the organization to investigate the allegations made in the film and any responsibility on its part. The report categorically states that the Red Cross personnel accused of involvement were proven not to have been present; that a white helicopter was probably used in a military operation, but the helicopter was not a Red Cross helicopter, and must have been painted by one of several military organizations operating in the region at the time, possibly including the British military, although no hard evidence was found for this; and that the Red Cross should have responded more quickly and thoroughly to investigate the allegations than it did.
Allegations of poor governance and concern over accountability and transparency within certain national societies have led to high profile resignations.
Read more about this topic: International Red Cross And Red Crescent Movement
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.”
—Leslie Fiedler (b. 1917)
“It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“It is ... pathetic to observe the complete lack of imagination on the part of certain employers and men and women of the upper-income levels, equally devoid of experience, equally glib with their criticism ... directed against workers, labor leaders, and other villains and personal devils who are the objects of their dart-throwing. Who doesn’t know the wealthy woman who fulminates against the “idle” workers who just won’t get out and hunt jobs?”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)