It's always been a campaigning organisation. Supporting human rights has always been an immensely controversial position in many countries. Even the campaign to free Nelson Mandela wasn't universally popular at the time.
And in fact at one point Amnesty International withdrew support for Mandela, because he wouldn't renounce violence. Which is also of course controversial -- at this point it looks not to their credit to most people? There is no "non-political" choice, no "non-political" way to oppose violation of human rights by states.
