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Amnesty are having a nightmare of a week and it's only Wednesday.

On 8th July, Amnesty International UK published a report naming the “anti-rights organisations” it had identified operating in Britain. The list included a rape crisis centre, two gay rights charities, a child safeguarding group and a network of NHS doctors. On the 10th, Amnesty took it down.

Then the letters started. Twenty-two of them at the last count, collected in one place by Sex Matters. Not one of them raises its voice, which is what makes them such a pleasure to read.

Sex Matters open in a spirit of reassurance:

“You may be relieved to learn that since you have taken the Growing threat report down we are not planning to sue Amnesty or the author for defamation.”

They go on to suggest Amnesty sit down with women’s and gay rights groups to discuss their common interest in human rights, and then add this: “We offered such a meeting to Sacha Deshmukh in 2022, but he said he was too busy.”

The Gay Men’s Network open with the assessment that the report is “an unserious smear designed to delegitimise political opponents”, and note that Amnesty is now “creating lists of dissident gays and lesbians in a fashion reminiscent of the more oppressive regimes Amnesty might once have railed against.” On the accusation of homophobia: “We frequently work with lesbian groups and the implication we are homophobic is, frankly, just bizarre.” And on the report’s removal: “We note Amnesty International wisely removed this report from its websites on 10th July.” Note the “wisely”.

Their Welsh colleagues at LGB Alliance Cymru skipped the subtlety. The report, they write, is “a deeply silly and malicious piece of low politics designed to ‘evidence launder’ a list of undesirable gay and lesbian political actors.”

Thoughtful Therapists, accused of supporting conversion practices in a report that never defines them, reached for Lewis Carroll: “As in the case of the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, ‘Sentence first - verdict afterwards.’”

Kate Coleman’s letter opens with a detail Amnesty’s researchers somehow missed: “Notwithstanding that the organisation I set up, Keep Prisons Single Sex, shut down in 2024, I am minded to write to you”. The growing threat Amnesty identified includes a group that hasn’t existed for two years.

Third Sector SEEN had to respond to the report’s claim that the anti-rights movement enjoys “substantial financial resources and funding networks”. Their reply: “Third Sector SEEN has no funding” and is run entirely by volunteers.

Then there’s LGB Alliance. Amnesty, remember, intervened on the losing side of the Supreme Court case that For Women Scotland won last year:

“Having lost the argument at the UK Supreme Court, Amnesty has now taken the extraordinary step of branding LGB Alliance (along with For Women Scotland and numerous other organisations) part of an ‘anti-rights’ movement. It somehow neglected to add the Supreme Court.”

They sign off with “Otherwise we will consider next steps”, a sentence every institution in Britain knows how to translate.

Underneath the politeness, the letters keep circling the same, sad thought. For Women Scotland, fresh from a court win protecting women in Scottish prisons: “The old Amnesty would have taken that case rather than attack the women who brought it.” Thoughtful Therapists: “A former version of Amnesty would have been strongly committed to following evidence and the rule of law.” The Gay Men’s Network: “Having once protected dissenters in politics, we take the view Amnesty is now in the business of harassing and defaming gay men and lesbians who express political views it does not like.” These are people who used to be members. Some of them probably still have the candle badge in a drawer.

Amnesty’s response is written in the purest passive voice. It “regrets that this briefing was uploaded to our website without going through the established internal review processes”. Nobody wrote it, you understand. It was uploaded.

And then, the closer. Beira’s Place, the women-only sexual violence support service JK Rowling founded and funds in Edinburgh, skipped the letters page and went straight to lawyers. The report, they write, “erroneously and maliciously categorises our client as an ‘anti-rights organisation’”. Access to a single-sex service is “a basic right” for women who’ve experienced sexual violence. And then:

“It is therefore beyond comprehension that a supposed human rights organisation would genuinely consider that the work done by Beira’s Place could be classed as ‘anti-rights’.”

The demands are not gentle: permanent withdrawal, an apology on Amnesty’s homepage, an external review into how the “egregious falsehood” got published, and an instruction to preserve all relevant documents. Lawyers only tell you to keep your emails for one reason.

Rowling posted the letter herself: “Another letter to add to Amnesty UK’s overflowing mail box, this one from women-only rape support service, Beira’s Place.” She’s also offered to pay the legal costs of any women’s organisation that fancies taking Amnesty to court.

For years, Amnesty championed the idea that letter-writing gets results. Sadly, for them, the lesson was learned too well.

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Sources: the full set of letters, collected by Sex Matters. Beira’s Place letter coverage via LBC and HotAir.