ABC News Fri, 17 Mar 2000 17:34 AEDT Ruddock asked not to wear Amnesty's badge of honour Amnesty International has publicly asked Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock to remove his membership badge during ministerial duties. The human rights organisation has accused Mr Ruddock of bringing Amnesty's reputation into question. Amnesty International wrote to Mr Ruddock last year protesting against the introduction of temporary visas for refugees and asked that he no longer wear his membership badge while announcing policies. Now Amnesty has made the request publicly, saying those policies bring no honour to the organisation and there is a serious conflict of interest between Mr Ruddock's ministerial role and his Amnesty membership. Today's request follows a Labor MP's interjection in Question Time yesterday when Mr Ruddock was defending the government's tougher stance on illegal workers. "You've become a a disgrace to your badge," the interjector said. Mr Ruddock is overseas and unavailable for comment. Amnesty's national president Kathy Kingston says the organisation's board has a right to assess who brings honour on Amnesty and clearly Mr Ruddock does not. "Options open to us are suspension of membership or expulsion from Amnesty International," she said. "They are options under the policy we have in place. The board will consider all the options that we have open to us when we next meet in April." © 1999 Australian Broadcasting Corporation -- ********************************* Make the Hunger Site your homepage! http://www.thehungersite.com/index.html ********************************* ------------------------------------------------------- RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/ To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], and in the body of the message, include the words: unsubscribe announce or click here mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20announce This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." RecOzNet2 is archived for members @ http://www.mail-archive.com/recoznet2%40paradigm4.com.au/
