J.K. Rowling Plays Harry Potter to Amnesty International’s Voldemort

The left-wing nongovernmental organization (NGO) Amnesty International UK just met its match in J.K. Rowling after it published a report naming a women’s shelter co-founded by the Harry Potter creator an “anti-rights” organization.

The well-heeled Rowling’s threat to sue Amnesty forced the NGO not only to withdraw its report, but to report itself to the U.K.’s charity regulator.

Anti-Right’s “Anti-Rights” List

On July 8, Amnesty published a report titled “A growing threat: the anti-rights movement in the UK.” The report explained:

Anti-rights groups seek to weaken existing human rights protections and prevent further progress. They do this through litigation, campaigning, advocacy and political influence. Many promote social and legal frameworks based on traditional and restrictive ideas about gender, sexuality and family life.

In other words, anyone who isn’t fully on board the LGBT train or opposes abortion is a “threat” to “progress” and must be stopped.

LifeSiteNews reported:

The list of “anti-rights” groups Amnesty International pinpoints is hilariously diverse. For example, they cite pregnancy care centers seeking to help women in crisis pregnancies as well as Labour Women’s Declaration, a left-wing feminist group that opposes the transgender agenda. They highlight pro-life groups … as well as groups such as Gender Critical Greens and, bizarrely, even Children of Transitioners, a group of people with trans-identifying parents who speak about their experiences.

In all, they list 49 “gender-critical” groups; 25 pro-life groups (including 13 crisis pregnancy centers); 11 groups under the label “conversion practices,” which includes groups like Genspect and Therapy First; 12 “Christian right policy/advocacy” groups; and then an all-encompassing “Other” category.

Amnesty appears to be most exercised about anyone who might talk a person out of following its preferred practices. It devotes much space to crisis pregnancy centers, which “seek to discourage women and pregnant people from accessing abortion care” (emphasis added), and “conversion practices,” which it wants banned with absolutely no “loopholes” allowing such practices to be “legitimized through claims of consent or personal choice.”

In fact, the whole point of the report was to urge the U.K. government to enact such a ban and to investigate “anti-rights” nonprofits with the aim of stripping them of their charitable status.

Riling Rowling

The report might have flown under the radar as usual but for one thing: Among its “anti-rights groups,” Amnesty listed Beira’s Place, an Edinburgh rape crisis center Rowling and other women’s rights advocates established in 2022.

Domestic-violence survivor Rowling, no doubt, was already on Amnesty’s bad side for her opposition to the transgender agenda. But the reason her shelter made their report is probably that it was created explicitly as a women-only alternative to an existing shelter. LifeSiteNews wrote:

Beira’s Place was founded after the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre was handed over to a trans-identifying man, who stated in an interview that rape survivors who were triggered by male genitalia needed to “reframe their trauma” and “rethink (their) relationship with prejudice.”

Rowling refused to let Beira’s Place be characterized as a “threat” to anyone. She, however, proved to be a huge threat to Amnesty. On July 13, she posted on X: “Should any of the women’s organizations targeted by @AmnestyUK’s recent ‘anti-rights’ blacklist wish to take legal action, applications can be made to the JK Rowling Women’s Fund.”

The biggest name on the list having taken the lead, numerous others swiftly followed. Feminist organization For Women Scotland, which got the U.K.’s Supreme Court to rule last year that the word “woman” in U.K. law actually meant what it said, wrote a three-page letter demanding an apology from Amnesty and “reserv[ing] our options to take further measures if necessary.” Transgender Trend, the LGB [note the missing letter] Alliance, Labour Women’s Declaration, and Beira’s Place itself all mailed missives — some threatening legal action — to Amnesty. Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi even introduced a cross-party motion calling on the NGO “to withdraw the report, issue a formal public correction and apology acknowledging the reputational harm, and pledge that Amnesty staff who hold gender critical beliefs can express such beliefs without fear of bullying or harassment.”

Amnesty in Search of Amnesty

Seeing which way the winds were blowing — not to mention fearing multiple lawsuits — Amnesty took down the report and issued a statement claiming the whole thing had been a mistake:

We regret that this briefing was uploaded to our website without going through the established internal review processes that are in place to ensure consistency, accuracy and alignment with Amnesty International UK’s positions. Its use of language does not reflect the position of Amnesty International UK which is why it was promptly removed.

Then Amnesty filed a “serious incident report” with the government’s Charity Commission, which is now considering whether to take action against the NGO.

This only happened, of course, because Amnesty made the mistake of picking on the wrong person. Observed LifeSiteNews:

If Amnesty had merely done what they usually do — that is, just attacked Christian groups, pro-life groups, and other “right-coded” groups[ — ]they would have gotten away with it. But they have missed the fact that the Overton window on gender ideology has shifted and decided to lump all of these groups together. JK Rowling is one of the richest and most famous women in the world, and she has now put Amnesty International on her own enemies list. With her resources backing lawsuits, the “human rights” group is facing something unprecedented: a foe powerful enough to do real damage.