Tag Archives: group meeting
Read all about our September 2014 meeting here…
28 SepTorture is out of control in Mexico – there’s been a 600% rise in cases of torture and ill-treatment over the last 10 years. Think of Claudia Medina Tamariz, dragged from her home by marines in the middle of the night, tortured with electric shocks, sexually assaulted and left tied to a chair in the scorching afternoon heat.
Over 2 years later, no investigation of Claudia’s complaint has been made. Since last year Amnesty International has been in frequent contact with the authorities in Mexico, and its recommendations verbally welcomed – but action has yet to be taken.
We signed letters on behalf of those imprisoned or persecuted in Libya, Morocco, Yemen, and Egypt, including human rights activist Yara Sallam.
With regret we said goodbye to Laura, who’s returning to the Midlands. As well as campaigning for those imprisoned or persecuted in the Middle East and North Africa, Laura has set up this WordPress blog for us.
We’re most grateful to local musician Damian Clarke who, in support of Amnesty International, gave a very entertaining lunchtime fundraiser concert to a sizeable audience in St John’s Church on September 12.
At our October meeting Neil Guild, the prospective Labour Parliamentary candidate for Taunton, will be coming to talk to us about his stance on human rights issues. We meet on the second Tuesday of the month at 8pm in the Silver Street Baptist Church – all are most welcome.
Report from the July meeting of Amnesty Taunton Group
15 Jul
Where is Syrian human rights lawyer Khalil Ma’touq?
A human rights lawyer for many years, he’s defended hundreds of political prisoners. He disappeared on his way to work in October 2012 and has not been seen since. At July’s meeting of Taunton Amnesty International Group, we remembered Khalil Ma’touq and joined many others in pressing for news of what has happened to him.
Susan Mew of the Minehead Group came to talk to us on the Human Rights in the UK. The European Convention on Human Rights was mainly drafted by British lawyers and civil servants and was fully supported by the Conservative government of the time. It expresses core British values and beliefs and diminishing UK rights will affect our ability to argue for them elsewhere.
Over the past month, group members have continued campaigning for prisoners of conscience in the Middle East and North Africa, for Dr Tun Aung of Burma, for those condemned to death in the US, China and Iran, and for the plight of protesters in Brazil.
Our next meeting, on Tuesday 12th August at 8pm, will be an informal meeting held at the Racehorse Inn, East Reach, TA1 3HT.
Report: Amnesty Taunton group meeting June 2014
24 Jun
Amnesty has become increasingly concerned about the policing of large scale demonstrations in Brazil. We wrote letters on behalf of Edison Silva dos Santos and Douglas Rafael Pereira da Silva, two unarmed young men who were shot dead during demonstrations. No one has been held accountable for their deaths, and Amnesty International continues to receive reports of excessive and unnecessary violence by the police.
Read more here and call on the Brazilian authorities to defend human rights at the World Cup.
We discussed Amnesty’s Stop Torture campaign and our work to end the Death Penalty. We learned of the success of ex-MEP Sir Graham Watson in getting a response from Baroness Ashton about EU actions for prisoners of conscience in Burma, with particular reference to our prisoner Dr Tun Aung.
Watch (and listen!) out for our group in Taunton Town Centre, supported by the Blackdown Samba Band, on Saturday 28th June.
Our next meeting is at 8pm on Tuesday 8th June at the Silver Street Baptist Church and will include a workshop on the Human Rights Act in the UK. All are most welcome.
Read all about our May 2014 local group meeting
20 MayThis month we invited Rebecca Pow, the Conservative Parliamentary candidate for Taunton Deane, to discuss her position on the human rights issues that concern Amnesty. Although Human Rights issues were not a familiar topic to Rebecca, she did express interest in Amnesty’s work on Women’s Human Rights and was able to tell us about the Conservative party’s position on issues such as repealing the Human Rights Act and reducing the influence of the European Court of Human Rights.
Mahdi Abu Dheeb
Mahdi Abu Dheeb, President of the Bahrain National Teachers’ Association, is the subject of this month’s appeal. For normal Union activities he was arrested, thrown from a second floor window, beaten up and held incommunicado for days. He’s now in prison serving a 5 year sentence. His plight links to one of Amnesty’s main campaigns this year, “Stop Torture”. As well as writing on his behalf, we sent appeal cards to the governments of other victims: a sudden tidal wave of cards and letters undoubtedly has, at the least, an unsettling effect on such regimes.
We meet at 8pm on the second Tuesday of the month in the Silver Street Baptist Church. All are very welcome.
Here’s what happened at the April 2014 Taunton Amnesty meeting…
11 AprHakamada leaves prison after 46 years on death row © Jiji Press/AFP/Getty Images
A piece of welcome good news! Japanese death row prisoner Hakamodo Iwao has at last been released. He was sentenced to death in 1968 after a trial of dubious validity, and has been under sentence of death for an unbelievable 44 years. However, the prosecution has appealed against this release. The Tokyo High Court could take up to two years to rule, adding to the psychological distress already endured by this elderly gentleman.
The Group debated what campaigns and countries to focus on particularly this year. We will be working for the Stop Torture and Crisis and Tactical Campaigns. We will continue to work for Dr Tun Aung of Burma; two members will focus on North Africa, and another on China, besides continuing work on such issues as the Death Penalty.
April’s monthly action highlighted the dreadful plight of persecuted civilians in the Central African Republic, where society has broken down in a series of sectarian and inter-ethnic conflicts. Amnesty is appealing to the Americans to support an immediate intervention by international peacekeeping forces. Click here to sign the petition.
Our May meeting will be addressed by Rebecca Pow, prospective Conservative candidate for Taunton, on human rights issues. All are most welcome to come and hear her at 8pm on the Tuesday 13th May 2014 at Silver Street Baptist Church.
Missed our March meeting? Catch up here…
18 Mar
“The world’s worst humanitarian crisis”. March 15th 2014 marks the third anniversary of the Syrian uprising.
Amnesty, along with other humanitarian organisations such as Oxfam, Save the Children & Christian Aid, plans to highlight the plight of over 250,000 civilians trapped in besieged areas of Syria with little food, water or medicine. We are pressing for humanitarian aid to be delivered to Syria, shining a light these people’s plight.
We signed letters and emails to the Syrian Government and the main Opposition parties, urging them to deal with this appalling situation.
Our speaker this month was Ann Marcus of Amnesty International UK, who is the Country Co-ordinator for Egypt and spoke most interestingly and with great authority on the affairs of that troubled country.
After a period of hope for Egypt’s future after the events of the Arab Spring, and the election of Mohamid Morsi as the new President, a familiar pattern of repression has been re-asserted. There is, sadly, plenty of work for Amnesty to do.
We meet on the second Tuesday of the month at the Silver Street Baptist church; all are welcome.
Read all about it! Report from our February meeting
18 Feb
In March 2010, Darius Evangelista was arrested by police in the Philippines, on suspicion of theft. Fellow detainees saw him brought back to their cell badly injured. “Get rid of him” a policeman ordered. They never saw him again. Neither have his family.
No one has been brought to justice for his torture, enforced disappearance and possible extrajudicial execution. As part of Amnesty’s focus this year on victims of torture, we wrote to the Director General of Police in Manila. Find out how you can join us in appealing for justice for the Evangelista family.
The Group held their AGM this month. Highlights have been Laura’s development our new website, our campaign for Dr Tun Aung of Burma, Barbara’s untiring efforts on the Death Penalty and Pat’s very successful Write for Rights day.
National feed-back on Write for Rights (where people are asked at Christmas to send greetings & appeals for those imprisoned or persecuted) has been encouraging. Ihar Tsikhanyuk of Belarus wrote: “When I feel left with no hope to fight, I’ll get a letter and it inspires me. The light of hope appears again.”
At our March meeting Ann Marcus of Amnesty UK will speak on the Middle East and North Africa. All are extremely welcome to attend at 8pm on Tuesday March 11th 2014 at the Silver Street Baptist Church, Taunton.
Join us for our group AGM and meeting on Tuesday 11th February 2014
4 FebAll are welcome to join us at 8pm on Tuesday 11th February at the Silver St Baptist Church. Part of this meeting will be the group’s 2014 AGM. Click here to view location on a map.
Missed January’s meeting? Read all about it here.
Missed January’s meeting? Read all about it here…
25 JanThe first meeting of 2014: an occasion to look forward to new plans and initiatives, and maybe, even, in hope.
One for whom we hope, and on whom we are still concentrating as the New Year begins, is Dr. Tun Aung, the Group’s adopted Prisoner of Conscience in Burma. He has been sentenced to 17 years’ imprisonment after an unfair trial, having been arrested following riots between Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in Maungdaw, a town in western Burma, in June 2012. Independent eyewitnesses confirm that Dr Aung actively tried to calm the crowd during the rioting and played no role in the violence. Nevertheless, he was convicted of inciting riots and various other criminal offences.
Speaking in London in July 2013, Burma’s President Thein Sein gave his guarantee that all prisoners of conscience would be freed from his country’s jails by the end of the year; we continue to press him for Dr Tun Aung’s release.
We heard reports on the Death Penalty (possibly some improvement in China, Singapore and Saudi Arabia, but more, and more brutal, in Iran) and signed a plea for a prisoner in Iraq. One of Amnesty’s main campaigns for 2014 is for victims of torture.
The group’s AGM will be held in February; in March Ann Marcus will speak on the Middle East and North Africa. All are welcome at our meetings, 8pm the second Tuesday of the month at the Silver Street Baptist Church.
Amnesty International Taunton Local Group 