Bake sale

Pub quiz

Abseil

Pool competition

Wine tasting

Bag packing

Carol singing

Selling hot drinks/toast after cheesy – barbecue?

Car boot sale

Film nights

Public letter writing/ christmas card event

‘Duck race’ – orange ducks? Guantanaducks? Child soldier ducks?

‘Friends of Amnesty’

Sponsored silence

Sorry for the lateness guys, but discuss!

Hey guys,

Firstly, it was great to see so many of you at our first meeting yesterday. All your ideas were amazing and im very very excited for the upcoming year! My plan is to put together a raise off team in order to get everyone who wants to be as involved as possible. This will hopefully be happening within the next few weeks so watch this space!!

Next, as im sure you’re all aware (it has been plugged enough!) our first event this year will be the big fun run on the 4th of October. It’s fantastic that so many of you want to come along and be involved, either by running or by cheering! It looks to be a really fun and most importantly really awarenenss raising day!

For those of you who are lovely enough to be giving up your Saturday to come cheer us on, we will need to be at the event for half ten and so i propose we all meet outside the QMU at 9.45 (eek) so we can head over to bellahousten park together. Anyone who knows where it is and wants to make there own way there thats great too! I just ask that anyone who is meeting at the QMU to let me know so we dont leave without you!

For those of you who have so wonderfully offered to run, im afraid there is an entry fee of £7.50. I realise we are all students and this is quite a lot to ask so please dont feel pressure (louder cheers will be ace!) However, if you would still like to run the following link will allow you to register:

Sponsor forms are available to download on the amnesty uk website or to make life easier i have a bundle of them that i will bring to next weeks meeting.

Thank you so much

Details after the jump.
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Maybe I missed out on this article first time around (I put it down to being 14 at the time). However it’s now gone long enough to not look unobservant, and instead be producing a ‘modern classic’ for you to read.

As it’s about free speech and censorship it’s particulary relevant to what we’re doing right now, as long as you ignore that bit in their about David Blunkett.

http://www.newstatesman.com/200411080014

Send a mothers day card, care of Amnesty to the Tiananmen Mothers for mothers day on the 11th May:

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/china/mothers.asp

If you haven’t already see this!

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.

For more information visit- www.idahoscotland.org.uk

Behind the jump as ever.
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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?

So, does anyone remember last year when the US Supreme Court were reviewing claims that the lethal injection, which is supposed to induce a painless death by using sodium thiopental as an anaesthetic, was actually causing a lot of painful deaths? The argument, put forward by Amnesty, (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7027305.stm) is that the sodium thiopental does not always work, and as the injection also includes a chemical which causes muscle paralysis, the victims cannot express their pain. This is apparently an “unconstitutionally cruel” punishment.

So, the Supreme Court considered this (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7013333.stm), and executions were put on hold.

Well, they’re back. Three weeks ago the Supreme Court ended the halt in lethal injections, and according to this article in the International Herald Tribune (http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/03/america/execute.php) the US is, and I quote, “moving to clear the backlog of executions”.

Does this horrify anyone else? The Supreme Court had a chance to change the American stance on the death penalty, to bring the US out of its barbaric customs and into the present with the rest of the so-called developed world, and it just … didn’t.

“The Supreme Court essentially blessed their way of doing things,” said Douglas Berman, a professor of law and a sentencing expert at Ohio State University. “So in some sense, they’re back from vacation and ready to go to work.”

Quite.

Some welcome the end of the moratorium.

“We’ll start playing a little bit of catch-up,” said William Hubbarth, a spokesman for Justice for All, a Houston-based victims rights group.

“It’s not like we have a cheering section for the death penalty.” Hubbarth, an Austin lawyer, said. But he added: “The capital murderers set to be executed should be executed post-haste. It’s not about killing the inmate. It’s about imposing the penalty that 12 of his peers have assessed.”

Yes. You don’t sound morbidly enthusiastic at all.

This at a time when “a recent wave of exonerations after DNA tests proved wrongful conviction.”. They didn’t do it! We have no idea how many people have been wrongfully executed and are set to be wrongfully executed, and this in the US of A, home of the brave, land of the free, supposedly one of the civilised countries.

Go and read that article in the IHT. And then, scroll down this page a bit and look at rachie’s post on China’s human rights situations. Read about the problems there. Sound familiar at all?

We need to realise that in many ways, the USA is no better than China. To all of those in the US who are expressing outrage over the offences in China – look to your own country. Look to Texas where there are 360 men and 9 women on death row – more of a ‘death compound’ as the IHT article jokes. You know what? I don’t think it’s funny. This has to stop, and not in twenty, thirty, fifty years, but now.

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…