Archive | Uncategorized RSS feed for this section

Join us at our July meeting

7 Jul

Our next meeting before our usual break in August is on Tuesday 9 July at 7.30pm in the Quaker Meeting House, Bath Place, Taunton. If you would like to join remotely via Teams, please email amnestytaunton@gmail.com

We hope to see you there! In the meantime, below are minutes from our June meeting:

AIUK’s AGM was on the 22 June, and a major part of our June meeting was devoted to a discussion of how our Group should vote on the resolutions put forward. We supported some by the Amnesty Futures Group and their spokesman Chris Ramsay. Among other things, these  laid emphasis on encouragement for local Groups, supporting the work of Country Co-ordinators and of the Individuals at Risk campaigns.

The General Election featured in the May Groups Newsletter; AIUK is calling for all parties to put human rights at the centre of the agenda – ‘to understand, value and defend human rights’.

The reports of Group activities were dominated by actions in support of Palestinians in Gaza. We signed the petition sent by the Reading Group asking the UK Prime Minister to urge the authorities in Hong Kong to release political prisoners.

Within our own Group, Alun updated us on Indian politics and the BK16 case file; eight are still in prison. Alun had prepared cards of support which we signed, and also gave us the link to an online action ‘respect freedom of expression in Jammu and Kashmir’ .

Ben updated us on the death penalty – there’s an online petition appealing for Iranian rapper, Toomaj Salehi, sentenced to death for ‘singing for freedom and posting for justice’.  Latest update on this: a re-trial has been ordered.

Book of the Month: one of our group recommended Rory Stewart’s Politics on the Edge – a Memoir from within  – ‘uncompromising, candid and darkly humorous’.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

May meeting report and activities

24 May

Simon Cosgrove of the charity Rights in Russia came to our May meeting and talked at length about their aims and experience and rights in Russia today. A quotation from their website sketches the background:

‘Rights in Russia is a community of people committed to supporting the protection of human rights in the Russian Federation. The mission of Rights in Russia is to provide information about human rights in Russia and to support the work of human rights organizations based in the Russian Federation. We believe the voices of Russia’s human rights defenders should be more widely heard internationally, both by civil society and by governments. We wish to address a continuing shortage of accurate information in English about human rights in Russia.’

They’ve recently launched a new project, very familiar to Amnesty members, of writing letters of support to political prisoners and prisoners of conscience. These need to be in Russian, so they’ve established a group of translators to facilitate this. Contact http://www.rightsinrussia.org for further information.

In the rest of our meeting we signed cards prepared by Alun to BK16 prisoners in India and a letter Sue had written to the Public Prosecutor in Cairo about the detention without trial of 26 year old student Oqba Hashad.

On Saturday 11 May the group ran an Amnesty stall at the Taunton Eat Festival in the town centre.  Very busy (and good weather!). We had petitions for visitors to sign for Russian Alexei Gorinov, imprisoned for protesting about the war in Ukraine, and Alaa Abdel Fattah, former hunger striker, former hunger striker, well known to us as the dual English/Egyptian national imprisoned for his human rights activism.

Our next meeting is at 7.30pm on Tuesday 11 June in the Quaker Meeting house, Bath Place, Taunton.  We’d love to see you there!

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Report from our February meeting

1 Mar

The February meeting began with our AGM, all officers being re-elected unopposed. 

The Chair gave an overview of the year’s activities, speakers and campaigns. North Africa and India have been prominent, with a new initiative on Zimbabwe and ongoing support of the Middle East & North Africa, Football Welcomes and the Death Penalty. We had speakers on Kashmir and Zimbabwe, and a talk on a fund-raising climb of  Kilimanjaro for AI by a student whom we sponsored.   We held three Write for Rights events in December.

The Secretary reported the perennial problem of access to the local press: the County Gazette has discontinued reports from local societies, and AIUK no longer presents Actions in a readily publicisable form. Suggestions for using other outlets, and our own experience of the Letters page may point a way forward.

Suggestions were made for broadening our appeal, perhaps using email to circulate those on AIUK’s local lists, and promoting hybrid meetings using Teams if this can be done without jeopardising our successful monthly meetings.

Our regular monthly meeting followed.  The Groups’ Newsletter urged us to sign a number of AI petitions: for human rights defender Rita Karasartova of Kyrgyzstan;  for freedom of expression in Jammu Kashmir; for justice and reparation in Peru after brutal repression of protests; for freedom of expression in Bangladesh before recent elections, and for charges against our adopted Zimbabwean prodemocracy activist Makomborero Haruzivishe to be dropped.

We were reminded of priority campaigns for AIUK:  Ending Israeli Apartheid, and Protect the Protest – a call on the Home Secretary to scrap anti-protest laws.

We discussed a letter from Chris Ramsey, ex-SW regional rep,  about Amnesty Futures, a group anxious to get back to campaigning on worldwide Individuals at Risk rather than disproportionately increasing the scale of work and deployment of resources on thematic UK-focused human rights issues. He will be addressing our March meeting to further clarify concerns about and hopes for AIUK.

Our Middle East lead had written to President al-Sisi about the detention and torture of Anas al-Beltagy, the son of an Opposition politician.  Our India lead will be writing to the Indian High Commissioner about two members of the BK16 who are bailed but still in goal.  Meantime another member is hoping to organise a speaker on Russia.

There is an Eat Festival in Taunton on 11 May – we are hoping to have a publicity stall at this.

Our recommended Media of the Month is Jon Ronson’s BBC podcast series ‘Things Fell Apart’ – human stories from the history of the culture wars.

Our next meeting is at 7.30pm on Tuesday 12 March at the Quaker Meeting House, Bath Place, Taunton. Newcomers are always welcome!

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Report from our January meeting

21 Jan

Write for Rights being the stand-out event in December we took stock of how we had got on, with the feeling that we needed to reach outside our core audience to draw more people in. Hence the promotional visit to the Taunton campus of Bridgwater Tech, although slow going, seemed a good place to proselytise in the future. More school events for 2024 would be good.

Future December visits to Taunton Minster – St Mary’s –  need to attach to some other event for maximum impact.  We took part in the Christmas Tree Festival in Buckland St Mary – not an obvious place but hopefully we reached out to a few unfamiliar people there.

Meantime we plan for a stall at the Taunton Eat festival in May.

We heard reports of members’ work on campaigns.  Sue had written on behalf of prominent Write for Rights activist Chaima Issa of Tunisia, urging the quashing of her spurious military court conviction, and also on behalf of Tunisian MP Abir Moussi. According to her defence lawyer, she faces charges including “attempting to change the form of government”, “inciting citizens to arm themselves against each other” and “provoking disorder on Tunisian territory”.

Ben gave us quick overview of the death penalty in the USA. It seems to be in a state of some disarray, with more legal challenges and mistakes in attempts to carry it out.  The practicalities of it are becoming less and less tenable – witness the case of the botched execution attempt of Kevin Smith, on death row since 1988, his execution now scheduled for later this January.

Alun updated us on India & Kashmir with special reference to the BK16: 8 of them in prison (2 granted bail) and 5 out on bail; he will write a letter for them to the Indian authorities on the Group’s behalf. The Indian government must end the repression of rights in Jammu and Kashmir.

Our must-be-seen media this month is the ITV drama Mr Bates v the Post Office detailing the outrageous behaviour of the Post Office over the Horizon scandal.

The meeting next month includes our AGM; it’s on Tuesday 13 February at the Quaker Meeting House, Bath Place, Taunton.  Do feel free to join us – all are welcome.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Report from our October meeting

20 Oct

There’s a focus this month in the AI Groups’ Newsletter on ‘protecting the Protest in South Asia’ where the right to protest is increasingly under threat – in India, in Bangladesh, in Afghanistan. One particular case is highlighted: #FreeKhadij – Khadijatul Kubra (Khadija) (pictured) has been in detention under the Digital Security Act, for a year. Khadija is a 19 year-old university student charged for hosting a webinar where a guest made remarks that were critical of the Bangladesh government.’ Sign a petition here.

Letters of all sorts:
Our lead on the Middle East and North Africa has written to the Tunisian authorities about the detention of former Justice Minister Noureddine Bhiri and about Jaouhalben Mbaruk, who is on hunger strike with five other detainees.

Our Death Penalty lead pointed us to an online petition for Rocky Myers of Alabama, held on death row for 27 years. He’s a black man against whom all the odds are stacked, down to a biased judge and incompetent legal representation.

Our lead on Zimbabwe and Afghanistan has been working at getting back-up from AIUK; there is information and access to petitions and actions.  One source is Cherry Bird’s South Asia newsletter, with its shocking account of the deterioration in life today of women and girls in Afghanistan, drawn from Amnesty reports, and their urging of how international pressure can be exerted.

Various choices for Media of the Month: Burmese Days, a novel by George Orwell on the darker side of the British Raj; ‘Ultra-Processed People’ by Chris van Tulleken about the food industry, and ‘Painkiller’ on Netflix about how the Sacklers cynically created the US Opioid epidemic.

Our next meeting will be at 7.30pm on 14 November at the Quaker Meeting House, Bath Place – hope to see you there! We hope Cherry Bird will join us to talk about Kashmir.

STOP PRESS Our letter about the Government’s demonising of refugees made it as the lead  on the County Gazette’s letters page, 19 October.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Update from our June meeting

20 Jun

An unusual meeting: we were expecting an online talk by Carla Torres, the Country Coordinator for Zimbabwe, as we have adopted the case of Zimbabwean Makomborero Haruzivishe, an Amnesty Individual at Risk.  At the last minute we learnt that Makomborero himself was also joining online. Fearful for his safety, he has recently left Zimbabwe and is living as a refugee in the UK.

He talked at length about his own experiences as a front line Human Rights activist and the state of affairs in Zimbabwe. Despite the 2017 coup ousting Mugabe, a military dictatorship is now in power, and corruption, killings and arrests are rife. Makamborero was elected to represent the National Union of Students; he was arrested and expelled from the University two weeks before graduating. 

Speaking out against corruption, he organised country-wide protests but was abducted and imprisoned.  He finally left the country during 2022.

What can we do?  It looks a difficult task, but Carla recommended keeping up a series of smaller actions: writing to the local press, trying to involve MPs and Parliamentary Groups.

The next big event for the Taunton Group is the Pride March in Taunton on Saturday 22 July.  Members of the group will take part and run a stall in Vivary Park.

We discussed a number of issues covered by the May Local Groups Newsletter, particularly Refugee Week, from 19-25 June. Its theme is Compassion, and the Museum of Somerset is running events to celebrate it on Saturday 24 June.  A diary clash here, since the Minehead Group is celebrating its 21st birthday that day with a concert in St Andrew’s Church, Minehead at 3pm.

We signed a letter to the Moroccan authorities on behalf of Mohamed Ziane, imprisoned human rights lawyer and an ex-Minister.  We signed cards of encouragement to more members of the BK16 group in India.  We were encouraged to write Father’s Day cards to Alaa Abdel Fattah, still in prison in Egypt.

Our next meeting is on Tuesday 11 July at 7.30pm in the Friends Meeting House, Bath Place, Taunton.  Do join us to hear more about our work, and for lively discussions!

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Update from our May meeting

30 May
Makomborero Haruzivishe of Zimbabwe is a case the group has taken on

Prompted by the Local Groups Newsletter from AIUK, we discussed our recent ‘Football Welcomes Refugees’ action at the Taunton Town match on 25 April.  It was felt to be a valuable consciousness raising action in unfamiliar territory, and one replicated nationally by over 100 AI Groups. Taunton got a mention and a picture in the Local Groups Update, which is a welcome pat on the back for everyone’s efforts.

The Update highlighted AI’s Israeli Apartheid campaign, which was well referenced in a recent well- attended House of Commons debate.

The Immigration Bill is another grave matter of concern, characterised by Amnesty as ‘inhumane, racist and divisive’.  We were encouraged to write to our MPs and sign an online petition.

The Urgent Actions campaign is 50 years old this year; it has proved to be a very effective tool, with 500,000 volunteers working on it over the years.

Our India specialist had written a letter, for all to sign, to the Indian High Commissioner about the BK 16 group, and had prepared cards for all to send to some of those imprisoned. AI is planning a campaign on Kashmir, still only in the planning stage.

Encouraged by a recently joined member we have taken up the case of Makomborero Haruzivishe of Zimbabwe, a member of the opposition CCC Party, at odds with the governing Zanu-PF.  A law student, and student leader, he has been jailed for ‘inciting violence’ aka peaceful protest.

The documentary film ‘Navalny’, about the poisoning of Alexei Navalny with novichok,  was chosen as our media of the month.

Our next meeting is at 7.30pm on Tuesday 13 June at the Quaker Meeting House, Bath Place, Taunton.  We’d love to see you there.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Request to our supporters

12 Apr

We are working for two prisoners of conscience this month, both journalists, one from Morocco, one from Egypt, both imprisoned after grossly unfair trials for criticising their respective governments.

Please send a postcard to the prison in Tiflet where Omar Radi is being held (postage £2.20) and, more urgently, before the 17th April during Ramadan, to the President of Egypt, care of the Egyptian Embassy in London to appeal for the release of Alla Abdelfattah. All details in the photo above.

Many thanks!

April monthly meeting

9 Apr

Our next monthly meeting is on Tuesday 11th April at 7:30pm in the Quaker Meeting House, Taunton. All welcome! If you’d prefer to join us online, email: amnestytaunton@gmail.com and we’ll send you a link to a Teams meeting.

Action for Omar Radi

23 Mar

Omar, a journalist from Morocco, was arrested and charged on July 29th 2020 with ‘harming national security’ and ‘rape’ because he had been investigating corruption by the authorities. He was sentenced after a grossly unfair trial to 6 years in prison.

He was awarded the 30th annual Reporters without Borders Press Freedom Prize for Independence in Dec 2021. His mother collected the award in Paris. A question about his case was put down in the House of Commons with the OFCD replying that they are monitoring his case.

In our Amnesty Group each member agreed to send 2 cards to the Minister of Justice in March and 2 to Omar’s prison in April.

Please can you help us by sending a card (£1.85 stamp) to:

Minister of Justice Ben Abdel Kader
Ministry of Justice
Mamounieh Square
P.O. Box 1015
Rabat 
Morocco

Suggested message: We urge you to drop the espionage charges against Omar Radi and grant him a fair re-trial in line with international standards, for the ‘rape’ charge.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →