Islamabad/ London — A new wave of criticism has hit Amnesty International after the group’s 9 September report alleging mass phone-tapping and an upgraded national web-firewall in Pakistan. Officials and analysts in Islamabad argue the organisation has grown partisan, “naming and shaming” developing states while soft-pedalling Western abuses. Amnesty says it is a neutral, member-funded movement of more than 10 million people and rejects claims of bias.

What Sparked the Row

Amnesty’s surveillance brief said Pakistani agencies can monitor at least four million mobile phones via a Lawful Intercept Management System and block up to two million internet sessions in real time, conclusions Amnesty linked to regulatory disclosures and a 2024 court filing. Pakistani critics counter that the group relies on adversarial sources and publishes before state verification. 

Amnesty’s Pakistan output has also expanded beyond surveillance to labour rights and discrimination (for example, on sanitation workers), fuelling accusations in Islamabad that the NGO emphasizes local shortcomings without equal attention to Western failings.

A First-Person Account, with Money on the Table

Pakistani officials and analysts rejected the findings, arguing Amnesty had bypassed state verification, leaned on adversarial sources, and sensationalised claims. “Amnesty is a watchdog, not a tabloid,” one policy advisor in Islamabad told HTN. “It now seems more interested in headline-grabbing than fact-checking.”

Talking to People on the Ground

In the northern districts, an HTN Correspondent spoke with “Nadir” (name changed), a community organiser. Nadir claimed that after a protest against local governance, he was approached by two intermediaries “linked to international rights outfits.”

“At first, they offered me US$1,000 if I signed a paper alleging abuse,” Nadir said. “Later, the offer rose to US$5,000 if I recorded a video statement and brought two more people with similar stories.”

HTN was unable to independently verify Nadir’s claims or the intermediaries’ affiliations. Amnesty International’s public research materials do not state that it pays for witness testimony; instead, its investigators say they combine interviews with digital evidence, such as satellite imagery, OSINT, geolocation through its Citizen Evidence Lab. 

What Critics Say

Officials and analysts who spoke to HTN on condition of anonymity, argue that Amnesty has drifted from impartial rights monitoring into ideological commentary, publishing sweeping narratives that “skip state verification,” lean on anonymous tips, and then echo into sanctions debates and diplomatic pressure on countries like Pakistan. 

They point to a pattern of selective amplification. Intense focus on South-to-South conflicts and fragile institutions, but less sustained, data-heavy work on Western military actions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, or Gaza, a charge Amnesty rejects. (For context, Amnesty maintains it documents abuses globally via annual reports and country files.)

Critics also allege a pipeline that valorises dissidents, including those facing criminal cases at home, by connecting them with relocation pathways abroad, which, they say, can destabilise domestic environments. Human-rights networks in Europe openly support temporary relocation for at-risk defenders; Amnesty advocates for such protection frameworks but denies supporting extremism. 

Amnesty’s Public Stance, and the Record

Amnesty says it is independent of governments and largely crowd-funded. In 2023, over 1.7 million donors gave an average of €13.30/month, with 91% of income “unrestricted,” allowing the organisation to set its own priorities. It reported €370 million in global income in 2023. Those figures, Amnesty argues, insulate its research from state agendas.

On methodology, Amnesty highlights that it blends testimonies with digital forensics, satellite analysis, geolocation, and crowdsourced verification, precisely to avoid relying on single, uncorroborated accounts. That approach is set out by its Citizen Evidence Lab, which emphasises “care, integrity, inclusivity and transparency.”

Amnesty also insists its coverage is global. In its Annual Report 2022/23, the organisation said it found credible allegations of unlawful force against protesters in 85 out of 156 countries, and publicly documented crimes against humanity/war crimes in at least 20 countries, a dataset that spans both the Global North and South.

A Credibility Shock in 2019

Yet Amnesty’s own house has faced turmoil. After the 2018 suicides of veteran researcher Gaëtan Mootoo and intern Rosalind McGregor, an external KonTerra review commissioned by Amnesty found that many staff described the workplace as “toxic”; 39% reported developing mental or physical health issues “as the direct result of working at Amnesty.” The episode led to intense internal dissent and the senior leadership offering to resign. Amnesty said the review would drive reforms in staff care and management culture. 

For critics, the 2019 saga punctured Amnesty’s moral authority: “If your internal culture can’t pass a basic duty-of-care test,” one Islamabad-based analyst told HTN, “how do we accept your most serious allegations about our institutions without verifiable evidence?” 

The Verification Question, and the Money Trail

HTN put Nadir’s account to research-ethics experts, who noted that paying for testimony can distort narratives and is generally discouraged in rights investigations. While debate exists in academic literature on compensating research participants, leading investigative manuals emphasise corroboration through multiple sources, documentary proof, digital evidence, over paid interviews. Publicly available Amnesty materials emphasise mixed-method corroboration and do not outline any policy of paying witnesses for accounts.

For Pakistan’s institutions, the ask is straightforward. If an international report alleges grave violations, it should (a) show verifiable chains of evidence, (b) document right-of-reply from the state, and (c) disclose methodology limits, including whether any financial inducements were offered to sources. Absent that, officials argue, rights narratives can become policy weapons rather than fact-finding.

What Remains Unclear

Amnesty International remains one of the world’s most influential human-rights brands, with a vast grassroots funding base and a growing reliance on digital verification. But the combination of a 2019 culture crisis, persistent claims of selective focus, and local allegations like Nadir’s, unverified but serious, keeps the organisation under the microscope in Pakistan.

Despite its defence, the perception gap is growing. In Pakistan and other developing states, Amnesty is increasingly seen not as a neutral fact-finder but as an actor in a broader political contest.

The story of “Nadir” underscores why doubts persist. Whether or not Amnesty was directly involved, such claims feed the narrative that powerful international NGOs sometimes incentivise testimonies to fit pre-set agendas.

HTN will continue to report on methodology, verification standards, and the ethics of witness sourcing, because in an age where narratives travel faster than facts, the how matters as much as the what.