In our meeting on 6th May we had a guest speaker from LGBT Youth Scotland who informed us of an upcoming event on High street in Edinburgh called IDAHO. This event hope to campaign for LGBT human rights to be acknowldeged worldwide. This seems like a very exciting event, and if you can make it please go along and show your support for this cause. Amnesty International works to ensure the protection of all human rights, and we should gather together to help those who have experienced persecution for their sexual orientation. This event also links in with Amnesty’s policies on refugees, which was one of our biggest campaigns over the last couple of months. Many people have experienced problems attaining asylum in the U.K. and face being deported back to their own countries where they will surely be persecuted for their sexual oreintation. This event hopes to highlight these such issues on a Global scale, allowing everyone worldwide to stand together against persecution and stand for LGBT human rights.
This event will be host to lots of interesting speakers who work in the area of protecting and upholding the rights of the LGBT community, and will consist of activist workshops to help us devise interesting and innovative campaign methods to support this cause.
I would like to pose some questions; How much do you know? How much do you need to know? How much should we show you? These questions have risen from recent pictures we have been sent depicting the terrible outbursts of violence occurring in Tibet at this time. However from an activist point of view this issue is bigger than these pictures, it concerns every type of campaign we could embark on! The question is should we go all out and show the blood, guts and gore being shed across the world in the various acts of human rights abuses; or should we hand you a petition with a small amount of information for you to read? Should we give you pictures of various forms of torture being carried out worldwide, or should we merely allude to it in our publications and such? Can we embark on protests that actively depict acts of violence or should we merely suggest to you what type of suffering is occurring.
The issue is to what extent we can be explicit with what is happening to innocent people across the world. It has also been highlighted in the recent videos uploaded by Amnesty themselves. These videos though they are cleverly filmed still depict very explicit scenes of violence. Is this the form our activism should take? Some would argue that it is our duty to show the truth about the violence occurring world wide, and to ensure people across the globe understand the intensity of this violence. In this respect we then should be obliged to show the pictures we have received to our whole student body. By doing this we can highlight the full and truthful extent of the violent and murderous tactics being used by members of the Chinese Government and army against these innocent protesters.
However there is a counter argument that people do not need, and do not want to see such scenes of violence taking place. After all everyone has the human right not to witness violent and disturbing scenes, therefore we do not have the right to show such images to people who do not want to see them. The counter argument to that of course is that seeing such images is very different from witnessing them first hand. Allowing people to See such images can help individuals who are not confronted daily with such horror, to understand and acknowledge the damage occurring in their lifetime.
How explicit should we be in our campaigns? How much information and detail should we incorporate into our activism? If we show these horrific scenes of violence are we being Gruesome or Truth-some?
Alright maybe it’s not exactly the same, but had anyone else seen this before?
MTVs campaign called EXIT (End eXploitation and Trafficking). Whilst they don’t seem to be doing much at the moment, Radiohead have released this video with them:
I haven’t listened to it yet, library with no sound, but just thought I’d share as we need to be using the blog more apparently…
Amnesty is calling for four main issue’s to be addressed by the Chinese Governement, these are: executions, fair trials, respect the rights of human rights defenders and freedom of censorship. These will be the main areas that we will focus on when we begin our campaign regarding China.
Executions:
Amnesty are calling for the Chinese Government to reduce; with the intention to later abolish, the death penalty. Currently there are 68 crimes that can be punishable by death. On January 1st 2007 an important reform took place; which saw the restoration of the Supreme People’s Court, a court which reviews all death sentences passed in china. This is a positive reform but is only a beginning to ending the death penalty. Further to this reform Amnesty would like the Chinese Government to ensure that families and lawyers of those condemned to death are given access to them and to the information surrounding their case.
Fair Trails:
Currently a major element of the Chinese punitive system is ‘Re-education through Labour,’ a system that involves the detention of people without charge for extended periods of time, possibly up to three years. This is directly violating international fair trial standards, and Amnesty is calling for China to assess this situation. These so called criminals can range from ‘unlawful advertising, unlicensed taxis, unlicensed businesses, vagrancy and begging,’ hardly crimes worthy of detention for periods up to three years.
Respect for the Rights of Human Rights Defenders:
China gave assurances that the human rights issues within their country would improve during the run up to the Olympic games. However the authorities are still intimidating and harassing human rights defenders. Human rights defenders should have the freedom to highlight issues of concern without fear of penalty and repercussion.
Freedom from Censorship
The promise made by China for media freedom is not being kept. Thousands of internet police monitor cyberspace to censor any information the Chinese Government deem sensitive; phrases such as ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy’ come under such material. Many Chinese people have been imprisoned for acts such as signing petitions online, it is said that china have the most effective form of internet censorship, sometimes referred to as, ‘The Great Firewall of China.’ Currently there has been more leeway given to foreign journalists and media, however domestic media is still very effectively censored.
These four issues combine to create the major aspects to the Amnesty campaign, if we can campaign around these issues we have the chance to help the people of China, and allow human rights abuses to be confronted and realized fully in terms of international law.
Amnesty has released two new videos. The first is intended to raise awareness of waterboarding torture; the second is to draw attention to China’s terrible human rights record.
What are your thoughts on these videos? Do they get the message across well, or are they too in-your-face – or esoteric? Did the waterboarding video go too far?
Fear for safety/Fear of torture or other ill-treatment
ALGERIA
Rabah Kadri (m), Algerian national
(This was a recent action that took place, so I thought I would post it on the Blog for everyone to see that these actions are a very important source of activism. Keep up the good work guys!)
Rabah Kadri was released without charge on 27 April, at about 1pm.
He had been held incommunicado for 12 days. He was able to go to
his parents, who live in Algiers, and is staying with them. He is
no longer at risk of torture or other ill-treatment.
He was detained by plainclothes security officers on 16 April,
when he arrived in Algiers after being deported from France.. He
did not know where he was held; he is believed to have been in the
custody of the intelligence agency Department for Information and
Security (Departement du renseignement et de la securite, DRS) in
one of the unofficial detention centres they operate in Algiers.
Rabah Kadri told Amnesty International that he was treated
humanely. He was interrogated about the activities which had led
to his conviction and prison sentence in France. He also said that
he was asked to sign a statement saying that he had been treated
well before he was released. People who have just been released by
the DRS are very cautious when speaking about how they have been
treated, in case any criticism of the authorities leads to
repercussions.
Fantastic news that he is free, and that Amnesty can investigate his treatment whilst being detained.
A new report has said that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is at its worst since Israel seized the territory in 1967.
The study released on Thursday was conducted by a coalition of eight British-based human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Save the Children.
Kate Allen, the UK director of Amnesty international said:
“Israel has the right and obligation to protect its citizens, but as the occupying power in Gaza it also has a legal duty to ensure that Gazans have access to food, clean water, electricity and medical care.
“Punishing the entire Gazan population by denying them these basic human rights is utterly indefensible. The current situation is man-made and must be reversed.”
DUBAI, March 3 (Reuters) – Outspoken Arab broadcasters said they would not cave in to a charter designed to force them to self-censor their programmes or risk going off air.
The satellite broadcasting charter, endorsed at a meeting of Arab information ministers in Cairo last month, will entrench state control over broadcasts and curtail political expression on the airwaves in a region of some 300 million.
Analysts said the obvious targets of the document, led by U.S. allies Egypt and Saudi Arabia, were the Qatar-based Al Jazeera channel and Lebanon’s al-Manar TV owned by the Shi’ite Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrilla group.
Al Jazeera are of course the channel renowned for broadcasting al Qaeda videos.
Personally I think I’d like to see what it says before making a judgement. It could be a good thing, especially where Al Jazeera are concerned. It might be a restriction of freedom of speech, which of course is to be avoided.
I also find this quote from HRW interesting:
The document, intended as guidelines that carry no legal obligations, recommends that the regulatory bodies of Arab League members states confiscate equipment, impose fines, and suspend, refuse to renew or withdraw licenses from satellite channels that authorities deem to have violated those “principles.”
So they’re just guidelines, not obligations, but there are to be sanctions imposed. I wonder how far this will go?