Amnesty International

Letter From the Executive Director

At our annual general meeting last month in New Orleans, Amnesty International USA honored the late historian and human rights activist [HOWARD ZINN] by demonstrating the power and the joy of engaging together for the cause of human rights. We chose to hold the meeting in New Orleans to amplify the central message of the Demand Dignity campaign - that poverty and the struggle for human rights are inextricably connected - as well as to stand with AIUSA activists who have been working in the Gu...

Upcoming Events

JUNE 18 I Aung San Suu Kyi rally and panel in New York City ? Rally for human rights in Myanmar on the 65th birthday of Al prisoner of conscience Aung San Suu Kyi. JUNE 25-27 I G8/G20 Summit Actions I Maternal health is an official priority for this meeting. Help ensure human rights are at the heart of efforts to fight maternal mortality: www.amnestyusa.org/ demanddignity

Inspiration and Training for Aiusa Activists at Annual Meeting

"Rights violations in these three areas not only are mutually reinforcing," the report concludes, "but also combine to have a disproportionate impact on and severely affect low-income communities and communities of color while creating the circumstances which prevent their return. As a result, the demographics of the region are being permanently altered, in breach of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement." Toward that end, the AGM provided educational and networking o...

Aiusa Advocacy Highlights

On February 4, after months of dedicated coalition work, AIUSA celebrated the bipartisan reintroduction of the International Violence Against Women Act (l-VAWA) in both the House and the Senate. AIUSA delivered a 30,000-signature petition to the White House in support of l-VAWA and submitted written testimony in support of the bill during October congressional hearings. AIUSA was instrumental in lobbying and pressing for reintroduction of the legislation, which creates a comprehensive and int...

Ai Reports On Sexual Violence in Post-Earthquake Haiti

Thousands of displaced people are sleeping in public spaces, each occupying a tiny area barely large enough to lie down. In these conditions, women and girls are obliged to bathe in public, and children often sleep alone at night because their mothers are working outside the camps or they are separated from their families. Inadequate policing puts women and girls at great risk of exposure to abuse. Most victims of sexual violence interviewed by Al were minors, including an 8-year-old girl who...

Father Nguyen Van Ly Released for Medical Treatment

Amnesty International, which has helped generate worldwide attention to Father [NGUYEN VAN LY]'s case, immediately called on the Viet Nam government to make the release unconditional and permanent. "We welcome Father Ly's release, but the government must declare his release to be unconditional," said Michael O'Reilly, Amnesty International's senior campaign director for Individuals at Risk. "Freedom of expression is under assault in Viet Nam. Father Ly was released, but dozens of people remai...

Innovations in Casework

What energizes me is the sense of mission for justice among the members of Group 19. It reminds me of the 1960s, when I was active in the civil rights organizations CORE and the NAACP. Father [NGUYEN VAN LY]'s case is an important example of how all human rights - civil, political, economic, social and cultural - are intertwined. Father Ly was first sentenced to prison in the 1980s after speaking out about devastating floods in the districts in central Viet Nam around the Mekong and Perfume r...

Deadly Delivery

ELEVEN DAYS AFTER GIVING BIRTH, [Linda Coale] got out of bed at night to feed her baby. She noticed that one of her legs was unusually swollen and painful - the same leg that had been cramping earlier in the evening. Linda, then 35, put in a call to her doctor, sat in a recliner to elevate the leg and waited. Ninety minutes later, the doctor rang back, and as Coale walked across the room to answer the phone, she collapsed. Although she was rushed to the hospital, it was too late: Coale died e...

Mobilizing for Human Rights Emergencies

AIUSA Executive Director Larry Cox spoke at the U.N. gathering, which was covered by several news organizations, about Iran's post-election crackdown and called on the international community to use the United Nations' Universal Periodic Review to condemn the country's human rights record. Activists at his side wore black clothes and gags and held signs condemning arbitrary detention, torture and executions of nonviolent protestors in Iran. Fighting between Pakistan's government forces and Ta...

Massive Show of Support for Justice and Accountability

AMID A RAPID SUCCESSION OF POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS, AlUSA's Counter Terror With Justice (CTWJ) campaign directed a surge of public pressure in the first quarter of 2010 at Congress and the Obama administration to call for justice and accountability. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has been advocating legislation that would codify indefinite detention in U.S. law, and he has been a vocal opponent of fair trials in U.S. federal court for the 9/11 suspects. AIUSA has addressed Graham's proposals and o...

Ai Report Marks Decline in Worldwide Executions

AIUSA activists have been hard at work with strategic lobbying and grassroots action to support abolition work in U.S. death penalty states. In March, activists in Missouri traveled to Jefferson City to press lawmakers to study of the problems with the state's death penalty and place a moratorium on executions. In New Hampshire, activists attended monthly hearings of a commission set up to study the state's death penalty, hosted educational events and collected petition signatures in preparat...

World Press Freedom

In February 2007, Egyptian authorities sentenced blogger Karim Amer to four years' imprisonment for the "crime" of publishing material on the Internet that was critical of Islam and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The former Al-Azhar University student was sentenced on February 22, 2007, and a court of appeal confirmed the sentence on March 12 of the same year. He was 23 years old at the time and remains in prison. Radio Dialogue is a nonprofit community radio station that has been denied a...

Q&A

A: We welcome you to be as active as possible. At our website, see the "Take Action" section to connect to our Online Action Center. Here, you can take immediate action with current cases and enter your e-mail address to receive actions and updates. You will be asked to create your own personal username and password. Under "Our Priorities" and "Individuals at Risk," you can join the Freedom Writers Network to send letters for individual cases.