Dr Anjhula Mya Singh, the high-powered chair of the international board of Amnesty International since 2021, was in Aotearoa in June for a visit with the local office of the renowned human rights organisation. This trip held a special significance, as her vice chair, Peter Fa’afiu, hails from New Zealand Samoan origins.
The frequent traveller to various outposts worldwide was impressed by her observations during the visit. “I think Amnesty New Zealand combines the best of both worlds, it’s strategic but also has that indigenous wisdom and beauty – really seeing the whole person,” she says.
Amnesty International established its Aotearoa outpost, or Section, in 1965, just a few years after the organisation's inception in the United Kingdom. Over time, it has expanded its presence to over 150 countries, emerging as one of the most widely recognised international non-governmental organisations devoted to human rights, and claims a 10 million strong membership globally.
In her role, Dr Bais has a central position in ensuring that Amnesty International remains true to its foundational principles. Focused on keeping the human rights agenda in the spotlight, the organisation is committed to the worldwide abolition of the death penalty, championing the rights of refugees and migrants, and advocating on behalf of those unjustly detained without a fair trial.
The prisoner of conscience campaign has been a driving force for Amnesty since its inception. The INGO designates those who have been imprisoned or confined in other ways by governments for their political or faith-based beliefs and opinions, their gender, race or ethnicity or social status, and works to generate widespread coverage of their cause in order to put pressure on those restricting their freedoms.
Dr Bais' work with Amnesty International began as a hands-on volunteer in Malaysia, where she has lived with her Sri Lankan-born husband for the past 12 years. It’s an apt place for the chair of Amnesty International to live – after the recent years of political turmoil in the country, a former Amnesty prisoner of conscience is now the Malaysian prime minister.
As a trauma psychologist, Dr Bais has an in-depth analytical understanding of the ongoing emotional and physiological impact of the shock, fear and stress experienced by those who Amnesty International campaigns on behalf of. She also has her own firsthand experience with trauma, which informed her decision to pursue that specialism.
In 2010, on the last day of her wedding in Rajasthan, a multi-day event in India, she and her new husband were taken hostage enroute to join guests for more celebrations. “We were held at gunpoint by the tent vendors,” she says. They were kept for 16 hours, while the assailants demanded that she and her new husband sign a blank cheque. “That's when I learned that I think I know a little bit about negotiation… I will always say that a crisis doesn't create you, it reveals who you are… I was so outraged by the injustice, like, what are you doing?”
Dr Bais pressed her captors, asking them to imagine their own daughters were being treated the way they were her. When they were eventually released, the couple filed a police report but it disappeared; the police, she says, claimed they never received it, and Dr Bais points to corruption in the country. “But the lessons learned from that is that if you hold onto the sadness or bitterness it's only going to corrode you on the inside,” she says.
Just as important to Dr Bais as finding a way to let go of what happened to her, was a need to consider what led to the assailants doing what they did. “That made me have compassion, because I'm very well aware of my privilege. There's a caste system in India, there's poverty, there's no social security network… and they were desperate. And that helped me really forgive [and] go, how do we change things?”
International psychology, rather than clinical psychology, has been the framework through which Dr Bais approaches her work, and she sees it as essential to answering the question of how we change things for the better.
“The difference is, clinical psychology has its antecedents sort of in Freudian, Jungian, Viennese global north. The whole idea is that, you know, one size fits all. The issue, the onus, is within the individual, but that's such a Western way of thinking yet,” she says, adding that an East/West demarcation is a little sloppy, but works for simplicity's sake in this case. “In international psychology, every nation state has its own indigenous wisdom.”
She gives the Christchurch attack as a case in point – for many Muslim victims of that atrocity, addressing their trauma requires a culturally nuanced and community-based approach. “To apply a clinical psychology lens, a Western talk-to-me [practice], it doesn't work. But I've studied Islamic psychology, which is just quite brilliant and has its own way of looking at things like resiliency. And that's much more effective.”
With a life story that stretches continents, taking a global view is deep-rooted in how Dr Bais approaches everything she does. Born in the United States to Indian parents who were both from royal families, she grew up in India before studying in the US and the UK, while also working as a model. “I was the geek backstage with the neuropsychology book, during fashion week”, says Dr Bais.
After that, she settled in Malaysia, though she’s constantly on the go in her role with Amnesty. “I think passports are a very outdated way of measuring where you're from. I came upon the idea after a glass of wine, this is how you measure it – when you're watching the Olympics, and they're marching each country with their flag, who do you automatically cheer for? I'm Indian, married to a Sri Lankan, lived and schooled everywhere, and I'm watching these countries that I relate to go by, and then when Malaysia went by with its flag I was like, Malaysia! So this is home.”
The importance of academic performance was ingrained in Dr Bais from a young age. “My father – I say he's my first feminist influence. He was born the year that the royal families were disestablished by law in India and it became a democratic country. He had the foresight to sit there and go, well, it's not just our royal titles, I need to educate myself, and he always said, I will educate my daughters as well, if not better than my son, which is quite forward thinking, especially for Indian culture. So he got off the literal and proverbial throne and went to the West, Canada and the US and got his PhD. He was chairing a scientific conference – my mom had accompanied him in the US – when I was born.”
While Amnesty International works on behalf of those in high profile political positions, much of their work is with grassroots activists. Dr Bais’ niche, though, “is high social, economic strata, people that are usually in leadership positions. From royals, to Olympic athletes, to politicians, everyone feels pain, but the pressures are different.”
She believes that we are only just beginning to really consider the stress effects experienced by those in leadership positions. It’s something that she discussed with former prime minister Jacinda Ardern while in Aotearoa in June.
“Jacinda and I were speaking about how every cabinet or head of state should have an advisor that is a psychologist,” she says. It helps leaders communicate important messages to the public in a way that considers the method of how best to land that message without creating adverse effects like widespread additional stress and panic.
International psychology intertwines in fundamental ways with salient human rights issues. For instance, during climate negotiations at events like COP, leaders from historically emissions-guilty wealthy nations often struggle to comprehend the reasons behind stalled or slow climate negotiations. This is particularly relevant as smaller, less powerful nations, which bear the brunt of climate change while contributing minimally to it, understandably resist limitations on their GDP growth.
Developing a nuanced psychological insight into the motives and responses of individuals from different nations is essential to advancing and cultivating collaborative alliances.
Other issues critical to Amnesty’s cause, like ending solitary confinement, are clearly psychological. Dr Bais highlights the pivotal role of mental health in such cases, emphasising that it is often the first element to deteriorate. This is also a factor for human rights workers, humanitarian professionals, and journalists, who face vicarious trauma due to their involvement in reporting on these distressing events. Understanding the ways in which trauma can be experienced by those working in this area is a fairly recent phenomenon, and is starting to be properly addressed.
While global human rights have improved dramatically in the six decades since Amnesty began, there is still much work to be done, with major new challenges such as AI and the spreading of disinformation on a massive scale.
In countries including the US, women’s reproductive rights are under threat, as are those of many LGBTQ people, and the very right to peacefully protest in places including the UK is being restricted. While the death penalty has been brought to a stop in many nations, it’s still happening in some – Singapore has executed five people by hanging this year already.
There are many pressing issues for the organisation. When asked what could be considered the urgent overarching concern though, Dr Bais is clear. “Climate is the umbrella, because you're working for all these issues on planet Earth. But if planet Earth doesn't survive, what's the point?”
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