The City of Geneva and the Martin Ennals Foundation announce the 2013 edition of Martin Ennals Award, which will take place on Tuesday 8 October 2013 at 18h00 at the Uni-Dufour, Geneva. The Laureate will be announced Read the rest of this entry »
Archive for the 'AI' Category
SAVE THE DATE: MEA 2013 CEREMONY ON 8 OCTOBER IN GENEVA
June 29, 2013Bradley Manning not a Prisoner of Conscience for Amnesty International ?
June 4, 2013
(Bradley Manning – (c) US Army)
With the trial of Bradley Manning coming up, there is a wide-ranging and not always educating discussion raging on LinkedIn and other fora about why he is not a ‘prisoner of conscience’ for AI. Two of the few more substantive but not very flattering statements – in the absence of a formal reply by AI of course – are reported here, but I should point out that the authors are even more scathing about HRW or other large NGOs: Read the rest of this entry »
Surveillance of indigenous human rights defender Cindy Blackstock in Canada
June 1, 2013AI Canada informs that a report released on May 28 2013 in Canada by the federal Privacy Commissioner highlights a troubling pattern of invasive and unwarranted government surveillance of Canadian human rights defender Cindy 
Blackstock. Dr. Blackstock is the Executive Director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, a prominent non-governmental organization promoting equitable access to education, health care and other services for First Nations children. Government documents obtained by Dr. Blackstock show that two federal departments monitored her personal Facebook page, tracked people who posted to her page, and sent staff to take notes on her public presentations, all in an attempt to find information that might help the government fight a discrimination complaint that Dr. Blackstock’s organization is pursuing before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. The Privacy Commissioner concluded that the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and the Department of Justice went too far in their online monitoring of Dr. Blackstock. Read the rest of this entry »
Egyptian NGO bill with big shortcomings in crucial last phase
May 31, 2013
(Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi)
In the context of restrictive legislation to hinder the work of human rights defenders, the Egyptian case deserves urgent attention now. The law on NGOs is being rewritten in this important country and others in the region may follow the example. Despite recent amendments Read the rest of this entry »
AI 2013 report comes with short video
May 29, 2013
Amnesty International’s 2013 report comes with an introductory video which shows governments are using the excuse of ‘internal affairs’ in shameful attempts to block concerted international action to resolve human rights emergencies.
Related articles
- Amnesty International publishes State of the World 2013, which covers 2012 (thoolen.wordpress.com)
Amnesty International says new Greek legislation fuels asylum-seeker abuse
May 24, 2013
(Undocumented immigrants in the courtyard of a detention centre near the Evros River in northern Greece – (c) Reuters)
I would be amiss in not reporting the criticism by Amnesty International of my adopted home country: Read the rest of this entry »
Amnesty International publishes State of the World 2013, which covers 2012
May 23, 2013
Yesterday, 22 May, Amnesty International published its annual Report 2013 which documents the state of human rights during 2012. In five regional overviews and a country-by-country survey of 155 individual countries and territories, the report shows how the demand for human rights continued to resound in every corner of the globe… Resistance to injustice and repression took many forms, often inspiring acts of courage and determination from the communities and individuals facing seemingly insuperable obstacles. In the face of indifference, threats and attacks, human rights defenders pursued legal challenges at the national and international level to long-standing impunity and endemic discrimination.
Yoga and Human Rights: stretching for human rights defenders
May 2, 2013Sometimes my eyes fall on more esoteric contributions to the protection of human rights defenders. Let me share with you Mark Laham’s blog post for the Huffington Times of the 1st of May 2013 which calls for a “borderless” one-hour live online yoga class in honour of Nasrin Sotoudeh, the Iranian lawyer in jail, recipient of the Sakharov Award and Nominee of the MEA 2012. Mark got inspired – through AI – by what he read about Nasrin’s struggle and other brave human rights defenders around the world. “How does Nasrin’s story make you feel?” he asks, ” Me, I…I feel the need to do something that will create positive change for this woman and countless others like her.
Read the rest of this entry »
Campaigning helps: Cambodian HRD Mam Sonando speaks out after his liberation
April 19, 2013
(Cambodian human rights defender and journalist Mam Sonando a prisoner of conscience © TANG CHHIN SOTHY/AFP/Getty Images)
On 12 April 2013 Rupert Abbott, Amnesty International’s Researcher on Cambodia, Laos and Viet Nam posted on Amnesty‘s Livewire an interesting account of his meeting with the just liberated Cambodian Human Rights Defender Mam Sonando. It is a impressive testimony to the resilience of human rights defenders and how campaigning can help them and therefore I reproduce it below:
It was hot – very hot – as I arrived last week at Mam Sonando’s home and radio station on a dusty street in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh. He welcomed me at the front door. “Thank you,” he said. With a broad smile, he flashed his signature ‘V for victory’ sign with his right hand. After over eight months in prison, he was free and no longer facing 20 years behind bars.
Mam Sonando, 72, is a well-known and popular journalist. He owns Beehive Radio, one of Cambodia’s few independent radio stations. And he heads the Association of Democrats, which promotes human rights and democracy and helps poor communities. On 11 September 2012, his trial began at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court. He had been arrested two months earlier after Cambodia’s Prime Minister accused him publicly of being behind a plot for a village in eastern Cambodia to secede – to break away from the country. In fact, the villagers there had been involved in a long-running land conflict with a powerful company, and the so-called secession plot was used as a pretext to forcibly evict them. Read the rest of this entry »
How to turn a mobile phone into an alert system for human rights defenders: AI’s Panic Button
April 17, 2013
Last week I reported on the Natalia bracelet and yesterday my eye fell on a lengthy piece posted on Amnesty International‘s Livewire by Technology and Human Rights Project Officer Tanya O’Carroll. It describes how emerging digital tools will help activists and human rights defenders. http://livewire.amnesty.org/2013/04/15/how-to-turn-a-mobile-phone-into-an-alert-system-for-activists/.
As a student activist speaking out against the government, Hassan is at constant threat of being arrested. The Sudanese government tracks and harasses members of the student movement he belongs to. Reports of his friends and contacts being detained, tortured and even killed by the authorities are frighteningly regular. But Hassan’s network is also well organized. His phone is always on him and he uses it to help organize demonstrations, to record and disseminate video of violent crackdowns against the students and to keep his network updated every minute – a network that stretches from Khartoum to the rest of the globe in the time it takes to send a tweet. If he is able to get word out that he’s been arrested, Hassan knows that his network’s response will be swift and structured. The problem is that he knows the first thing the authorities will seize is his mobile phone. And here’s the double danger of not getting word out: the authorities will use the phone book, call log, messages and any open apps – such as G-Mail or Facebook – to identify and track others. Without knowledge of the arrest, the whole network will be easily compromised. Read the rest of this entry »
