Our next monthly meeting will be on Tuesday 9th May at 7:30pm in The Quaker Meeting House, Bath Place, Taunton – all welcome. If you’d like to join remotely via Teams then please email amnestytaunton@gmail.com and we’ll send you a link.
Hope to see you there!
Cherry Bird, AIUK’s Country Co-ordinator for South East Asia, gave a talk on Sri Lanka, a once peaceful and prosperous country now mired in conflict. For decades there have been tensions between the majority Sinhalese, Buddhist population and the Tamil minority who are mainly Hindu. The Tamils are poorer and have felt excluded – remember the Tamil Tigers?
The Civil War lasted for 25 years, with a draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act enacted in 1979. Amnesty is concerned at the very high number of disappearances – estimated at 60,000. More recently the country has been ruled, in turn, by the Rajapaska brothers, described as muscular populists. Their time has now passed (one has fled the country) and a new president elected – Ramil Wickremesinghe. He has a lot to sort out.
Cherry reminded us that there’s a Regional Conference in Exeter next March – details to follow.
Members updated the meeting on appeals for a number of political prisoners, most prominently Alaa Abdul Fattah, imprisoned in Egypt and on prolonged hunger strike which has come to a head during the COP 27 conference. His fate is still uncertain.
As usual our own country co-ordinator for the Middle East and North Africa had been busy: she has written for Moroccan Rida Benotmane, charged with putting up critical Facebook posts. Another Moroccan, Fatimah Kassim is in solitary confinement and has now gone on hunger strike. Mohammed Ben Lima of Algeria has been sentenced to death in absentia, but is now being extradited by Spain.
Cherry made the point that writing to Embassies is an effective way of communicating. Amnesty’s programme on Kashmir is about to be re-launched. What pressure can be brought to bear on India for their human rights violations in the area? The UK has trade agreements with them.
November/December bring us round to Amnesty’s annual letter writing campaign, Write for Rights. We will have a stall in St Mary Magdalene Church in the town centre from 10am-2pm on Saturday 10 December, which, most appropriately, is Human Rights Day. We will break from 12.30 to 1.30 when the church has a lunchtime concert, Opera Muses.
There’ll be no other December meeting – it would be good to see you on Saturday 10 December, when we’ll have information about this year’s Write for Rights cases. Come along and write a card to a prisoner of conscience.
Next meeting at the Quaker Meeting House will be Tuesday 10 Jan at 7.30pm.
Garry Ettle, AIUK’s Country Coordinator for Israel and the Occupied Territories, gave us an online talk – ‘End Israeli Apartheid’. Amnesty has recently published a detailed report on this topic, Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians, and is promoting this as one of its current campaigns.
‘Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, successive governments have created and maintained a system of laws, policies, and practices designed to oppress and dominate Palestinians. This system plays out in different ways across the different areas where Israel exercises control over Palestinians’ rights. However, the intent is always the same: to privilege Jewish Israelis at the expense of Palestinians.’
There are four ways the Israeli authorities enact this system: by fragmentation, dispossession, segregation and deprivation. Garry gave many examples of how this plays out and ran some troubling illustrative video clips of Palestinian repression.
The aim of AI’s campaign is to increase general awareness, stimulate recognition and foster action. There needs to be far greater public awareness to put pressure on not only Israel but our own government. There is an online petition you can sign here.
Some of our members are still away and couldn’t report, but we heard reports on the Death Penalty and an update on the human rights situation in India. The crackdown on Amnesty in India continues. The case of the BK15 has been our particular concern; we continued to send cards, prepared by one of our members, to some of the BK group.
An update on dual national British/Egyptian Alaa Abdelfattah, long a prisoner of conscience, gave a worrying picture. Prominent since the events of the Arab Spring in 2011, he has been on hunger strike for months; he has told his mother he expects to die in prison. Amnesty is currently encouraging members to write to their MPs on his behalf.
Media of the month – the 2017 The Viceroy’s House, available on Netflix, was recommended; it tells the story of the last days of the British Raj, the Mountbattens and partition.
Our next meeting is on Tuesday 11 October at 7.30pm in the Friends Meeting House, Bath Place, Taunton. All are welcome!
A landmark meeting – after 18 months we dared to meet in person, and it did give a much better feeling than Zoom or Teams!
Aser Mohamed, then a child of 14, was first arrested, tortured and imprisoned in 2016 in Egypt. He has since been sentenced to 10 years for membership of the banned Muslim Brotherhood. We asked for his immediate release and an investigation into his treatment. We signed letters and created doves of peace to send on his behalf to the Egyptian Ambassador to London, and to President Al Sisi of Egypt.
The general situation in Egypt remains threatening. 12 men are facing the death penalty for actions in 2013; women influencers are being convicted and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. However a major piece of good news is that all charges against Human Rights lawyer Azza Soliman have been dropped, and her travel ban lifted.
We discussed the dangerous situation in Afghanistan, and how to mobilise opinion and effective action from the UK Government in rescuing and giving sanctuary to Afghans in danger.
In India there have been no developments in the BK16 human rights defenders, but a heartening message has come to the mid-Devon group from one of them, Vernon Gonsalves, a 61 year old writer, professor and trade union activist:
“Heartfelt thanks for the cards and letters of solidarity you have been sending. Words are indeed powerful means of support – and don’t we all need support always – though I must say we have never, through these 3 years, been allowed to feel alone. It’s persons like you who keep reminding us that the path towards justice may be long, but won’t be lonely.”
The 3 part ITV series on the Stephen Lawrence case was recommended – ‘Stephen’, a drama about Doreen and Neville Lawrence’s crusade to achieve justice for their son.
We meet on the second Tuesday of the month at 7.30pm in the Friends Meeting House in Bath Place – visitors always welcome. Email: amnestytaunton@gmail.com for further details. Follow us too on Facebook and at amnestytaunton.com
Atena Farghadani is a 29 year old Iranian artist; she was jailed this summer for over 12 years for her art and her peaceful activism. Since then she’s faced further charges: she shook her lawyer’s hand when he visited her in prison and is now facing charges of ‘illicit sexual relations falling short of adultery’.
We sent cards to Atena and wrote to the Iranian President urging her release. There is also a petition to sign on the AIUK website here.
Members had written letters and cards, which we all signed, on behalf of people imprisoned or facing the death penalty in Morocco, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran.
We’re taking part in the annual Christmas Tree Festival in the Taunton United Reform Church, held from 11–13 December. Trees are displayed and decorated by groups in the town, which makes a thought-provoking and seasonal display. We hope you can go along and see our tree!
Another annual event for the Christmas period is Amnesty’s Write for Rights campaign, when we send cards worldwide to those persecuted and write on their behalf to their Governments. Done on a national scale this campaign has a considerable impact. We’ll be writing cards at our meeting on Tuesday 8 December at 8pm in the Silver Street Baptist Church. Do join us to write cards and enjoy some Christmas nibbles.
Our next monthly meeting is on Tuesday 10th November at the Silver Street Baptist Church, Taunton, TA1 3DH. 8pm start.
In Japan, Matsumoto Kenji could be hanged any day now, and he does not know why. He has been on death row for over 20 years. He was sentenced to death in the early nineties for robberies and murders committed with his brother (who killed himself in detention). Matsumoto has had a mental disability and low IQ from birth, allegedly caused by mercury poisoning. Despite this, he was ruled mentally competent and his sentence confirmed in 2000.
We wrote to the Japanese Minister of Justice asking her to commute Matsumoto’s death sentence, to improve the treatment of death row prisoners and introduce a moratorium on the death penalty. You can send an email to the Japanese authorities asking them not to execute him by clicking here.
We have begun to work on behalf of our new Burmese Prisoners of Conscience, five journalists on the Unity newspaper, sentenced to 7 years imprisonment for ‘disclosing state secrets’ in an article on an alleged secret chemical weapons factory. Unity has been forced to close after the imprisonment of most of its staff; their sentencing has had a chilling, intimidating effect on journalists working in Burma.
We meet at 8pm on the second Tuesday of the month in the Silver Street Baptist Church, Taunton. All are welcome.
Following the release of peaceful activist Dr Tun Aung earlier this year, our group now has new prisoners of conscience in Burma that we will be campaigning to have released.
Lu Maw Naing, Yarzar Oo, Paing Thet Kyaw, Sithu Soe – reporters for the Unity newspaper – and Tint San, its chief executive officer, have been sentenced to seven years imprisonment for “disclosing state secrets” as a result of their legitimate work as journalists, after Unity published an article about an alleged secret chemical weapons factory. They are prisoners of conscience, and their detention demonstrates the continued risks to media workers and restrictions on freedom of expression in Myanmar. The Unity newspaper has been forced to close following the imprisonment of most of its staff; their sentencing has had a chilling, intimidating effect on journalists working in the country.
If you would like to help us by writing letters on their behalf, please email: martin@crich.eclipse.co.uk who will send you our appeal sheet with details of the addresses to write to. Alternatively, visit our Burma page on our website here for all the details you need.
Thank you very much for your support.
From the 15-18 September the biennial DSEI Arms Fair returns to London. At past DSEI Fairs, Amnesty has uncovered torture equipment being illegally traded. At the last DSEI Fair in 2013 for example, Amnesty uncovered two companies advertising a variety of torture equipment, including electric shock batons and leg irons. Previous fairs have all seen a variety of illegal weapons including cluster bombs, leg irons and electric shock weapons advertised for sale.
A key loophole we wish to see closed in these EU torture trade laws relates to the ease by which companies can continue to promote market and advertise tools of torture at arms fairs within the EU.
The DSEI Arms Fair therefore gives us a great opportunity to pressure the UK Government to support our calls to close the loopholes in these EU tools of torture laws and to stop torture equipment being traded in the UK at DSEI and other UK defence and security exhibitions.
Our next monthly meeting is on Tuesday 8th September at the Silver Street Baptist Church, Taunton, TA1 3DH. 8pm start.
Amnesty International Taunton Local Group 