Our next meeting is on Tuesday 10th April at the Friends Meeting House, Bath Place, Taunton from 7.30-9.30pm (nearby parking behind Boots). We are pleased to welcome Amnesty trainer Susan Mew to talk about the BRAVE campaign for Human Rights Defenders.
We hope to see you there!
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.
Our next meeting is on Tuesday 13th February at the Friends Meeting House, Bath Place, Taunton from 7.30-9.30pm (nearby parking behind Boots). This meeting will include our AGM as well as news about Amnesty International’s campaigns, letter signing and more.
We hope to see you there!
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.
We were delighted to be able to host another Write for Rights event in December, by kind permission of St Mary’s Church, Taunton. Among the people we talked to we were happy to welcome the Mayor of Taunton Deane, Hazel Prior-Sankey and Rebecca Pow, MP for Taunton Deane, who were both positive and supportive. We posted off some 60 cards and letters to Prisoners of Conscience and their supporters.
At our January meeting we heard members’ reports and discussed future initiatives. We spent some time considering international issues and the effects of Amnesty’s work. Our ‘I Welcome’ Exhibition on refugees was staged in Taunton Library for a week last autumn; it’s hoped it will be on show at The Brewhouse in spring, and at Blundells School, Tiverton.
Further disquieting reports flood out from Myanmar (Burma) about the horrific treatment of the Rohingya people; the UN’s Special Rapporteur has been banned from visiting the country.
Our next meeting is at 7.30pm on Tuesday 13th February at The Friends’ Meeting House in Bath Place, Taunton; visitors are always welcome.
Happy New Year from all of us at Amnesty International Taunton Group!
Our next meeting is on Tuesday 9th January at the Friends Meeting House, Bath Place, Taunton from 7.30-9.30pm (nearby parking behind Boots). Join us for news about Amnesty International’s campaigns, letter signing and more.
We hope to see you there.
Our next meeting is on Tuesday 14th November at the Friends Meeting House, Bath Place, Taunton from 7.30-9.30pm (nearby parking behind Boots). Join us for news about Amnesty International’s campaigns, letter signing and more. There will also be a short talk on human rights in Eastern Europe.
There will be no meeting in December, but instead we will be holding our Write for Rights stall on Saturday 9th December from 10am–2pm at St Mary Magdalene Church, Church Square, Taunton TA1 1SA. Please come along to write messages of support to people around the world who have suffered injustice. Magdalene’s Coffee Shop will also be open for light refreshments.
Hope to see you there!
Our next meeting is on Tuesday 10th October at the Friends Meeting House, Bath Place, Taunton from 7.30-9.30pm (nearby parking behind Boots).
Join us for news about Amnesty International’s campaigns, letter signing and more. We will also have an EGM to elect a Vice-Chair.
Hope to see you there!
For 50 years Israel has occupied Palestinian land, forcing Palestinians from their homes and illegally using that land to house Israeli settlers and to produce millions of pounds worth of products that are sold around the world, including in UK markets. We petitioned the Foreign Secretary to ban the sale of Israeli settlement products in the UK, and to stop UK companies operating in settlements or trading in settlement goods.
We discussed Amnesty’s “I Welcome” campaign for refugees. Amnesty has put together a photo exhibition covering refugees past and present. We plan to show this exhibition at a number of venues in the Taunton area in the next few weeks, including Taunton Library from 16th October. It is also available online, with a commentary by actress (and Amnesty’s UK Ambassador) Juliet Stevenson. We will have a stall, focussing on refugees, at the Tacchi Morris Centre on 27th September when they show Twist, a modern, refugee directed take on Dickens’ novel.
We signed letters for prisoners in Egypt (Mahmoud Abu Zeid, a photo journalist, part of a mass trial of 738 people, whose hearing had been adjourned for the 35th time) and for two Ukrainians condemned to death. The number of countries rejecting the death penalty has risen in the last few years from 16 to 104 – but in the Maldives it has been resumed.
We discussed again the extremely worrying state of affairs in Myanmar (Burma) where Muslim minority Rohingya have been persecuted and forced to flee in Rhakine state. Questions over the stance of leader Aung San Sui Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, remain of international concern.
Our next meeting is on Tuesday 10th October at 7.30pm in the Friends’ Meeting House, Bath Place, Taunton. All welcome!
After a break in August we are back at the Friends Meeting House, Bath Place, Taunton on Tuesday 12th September from 7.30-9.30pm (nearby parking behind Boots).
Join us for news about Amnesty International’s campaigns, letter signing and more.
Hope to see you there!
We wrote as a matter of urgency to the Turkish Minister of Justice about the arbitrary detention of Taner Kilic, a human rights lawyer who is also the Chair of Amnesty International Turkey. Since the attempted coup in Turkey a year ago there have been sweeping arrests and dismissals of journalists, academics and public sector employees.
Amnesty International has called on the Turkish authorities to cease their assault on freedom of expression and dissident voices, and allow media and civil society workers to carry out their legitimate work in peace and without fear of reprisal. Since we wrote about Taner Kilic, Amnesty’s Director in Turkey, Idil Eser, has also been arrested and imprisoned.
Amnesty has written: “It is truly absurd that [such people] are under investigation for membership of an armed terrorist organisation. They should not have spent a moment behind bars. For them to be entering a second week in police cells is a shocking indictment of the ruthless treatment of those who attempt to stand up for human rights in Turkey.”
We discussed letters written by our members on people imprisoned in the Middle East, North Africa and Burma, and those facing the death penalty. We are planning to put on a photographic exhibition this autumn on refugees on the theme of ‘I Welcome’.
Our Book of the Month is Sapiens – a History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari; its theme is the fictions that we have evolved to bind us together.
There is no meeting in August but we will be back at the Friends Meeting House, Bath Place, Taunton on Tuesday 12th September at 7.30pm; all welcome!
Amnesty International Taunton Local Group 