We held our AGM this month; reports and an account of the year’s activities were given. We ended 2017 with the Write for Rights morning in St Mary’s Church, Taunton. Our social media presence has grown, with a wider audience using our WordPress, Twitter and Facebook accounts.
The Monthly Action again concerns refugees. Refugee families, separated by war and persecution, are being kept apart by restrictive UK rules on family reunion. On Friday 16 March 2018, MPs will debate an important bill to improve these rules and reunite refugee families. We need at least 100 MPs to turn up and vote on 16 March to change these unfair rules that keep refugees in UK apart from those they love. To win this vote we need MPs’ constituents (YOU) to tell them you support refugee family reunion. Currently child refugees in the UK have no family reunion rights so they can’t bring their parents to join them here. This must change. Find out more and email your MP here.
We heard again the miserable story of the Rohingya people in Rakhine State in Myanmar (Burma), and the efforts of the UK Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, to bring the UK’s influence to bear on the problem. Amnesty are working on the case of two Reuters journalists imprisoned for reporting from Rakhine State; they have been denied bail and are facing a predicted 14 years in jail.
In a future meeting we hope to hold a workshop on Amnesty’s BRAVE Campaign for Human Rights Defenders. We will let you know the date once confirmed. Our next meeting is at 7.30pm on Tuesday 13th March at the Friends’ Meeting House in Bath Place, Taunton. Visitors are always welcome.
Every year, thousands of people in the UK write letters in solidarity with those suffering human rights abuses around the world as part of Amnesty’s Write for Rights campaign.
Amnesty International Taunton Local Group 