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(2012, dir. Alison Klayman, 91 mins., R)
Amnesty 317 is on site at the Indianapolis Museum of Art tabling for the showing of Never Sorry. We will be here for additional screenings Friday and Saturday. Please stop by for an Ai Weiwei fact sheet, and take action on one of our current human rights actions.
A version for tumblr that can be read without opening a new tab, since plenty of people would scroll past this story otherwise.
The bravest woman on Earth.
Today is Women’s Day- a good day to celebrate this incredible young woman.
(via wilwheaton)
Celebrate Life Event February 27
Just a reminder to attend the fourteenth annual Celebrate Life-Alternatives to the Death Penalty, a party to celebrate the alternative sentences available for capital trials. It is being held in the Capitol Rotunda (200 West Washington Street) at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, February 27, 2013. Alternatives work. Indiana citizens prefer them, and we will be celebrating their use.
Amnesty International USA Indiana members will recognize Tom Hinesley, Chief Deputy Public Defender for the Capital Division, for his efforts to obtain alternative sentences for those on Indiana’s death row. Bill Pelke, President and Co-founder of Journey of Hope…From Violence to Healing, will share his story about the process of healing from the murder of his beloved Grandmother through reconciliation. Randy Steidl, exonerated from Illinois’ death row, will inspire us with his story of innocence. We will also discuss plans for the 20th anniversary of Indiana Journey of Hope happening this coming October.
Join Amnesty International! Speak out for human rights…for the fun of it!
Midwest Regional Conference 2012 kicked off this evening. Local activists from across the Midwest clustered the registration table, picking up conference materials and Amnesty gear.
Malala Yousufzai reunited with family
CNN: There were tears of joy when Malala Yousufzai’s family was reunited with her for the first time since she was flown to a British hospital for treatment.“In the condition when I saw my daughter … we were hopeful but we did not expect … that she can talk, that she can see,” her father Ziauddin Yousufzai said.
“I love her, and this morning, last night when we met her, there were tears in our eyes and they were out of happiness, out of happiness,” he said.
He described his daughter’s progress as a “miracle for us” and became emotional as he told how the family at one point had started to think about making funeral arrangements for her.
Photo: Malala Yousufzai with her father Ziauddin Yousufzai and other members of her family at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England, in a photo released on October 26, 2012. (© University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust)
Award-winning journalist Michelle Shephard on the Uyghur detainees of Guantanamo:
There are some that still remain in Guantanamo but many of them have been settled elsewhere in countries that are willing to accept them. And that’s difficult to find because many countries don’t want to anger China by accepting them. But the Uyghurs were swept up with others sold by Pakistani forces to the U.S. I find their cases some of the saddest because many of them — they’ve told me when they were handed over from Pakistan to the Americans, they were overjoyed. They thought, ‘Oh great, now we’re with the Americans. Everything will be fine. We love Americans! We oppose China and the U.S. stands up to China so isn’t this great.’
And it took a lot of them a long time to realize that they were in custody for a while. And their case was complicated by other events that happened. They were told when they got to Guantanamo that essentially their arrests had been a mistake — that they had been swept up with others — but they would be sent, released at some point. But then we had the Iraq War, and the U.S. needed China’s help in this so that complicated their case. And for many of them, it took years until they were released and they were only released when another country agreed to take them because they couldn’t be sent to China for fear of torture.
(Photo credit: Ashwaq Arrabyee)
A very good discussion of the Uyghur situation, and that of the Guantanamo Uyghurs.
Amnesty International Group 317 in Indianapolis has written letters on behalf of China’s ethnic Uyghur people in the past.
Please visit amnestyusa.org to take action.
(New York) — Amnesty International today condemned the guilty verdict and prison sentences upheld by a Bahrain appeals court against two former leaders of the Bahrain Teachers’ Association (BTA) who are imprisoned for calling for a teachers’ strike in 2011.
Family members called the ruling a “nightmare.” Mahdi ‘Issa Mahdi Abu Dheeb was sentenced to five years in prison while Jalila al-Salman – who was not present in the courtroom – was handed a six-month sentence. The new ruling reduces their sentences from 10 years’ and three years’ imprisonment, respectively.
Following his arrest after calling for a teachers’ strike early in 2011, Abu Dheeb has already spent some 18 months in prison, while al-Salman spent five and a half months in prison before being released on bail. Amnesty International considers Abu Dheeb to be a prisoner of conscience and will grant the same status to al-Salman if she is returned to jail.
“With this guilty verdict, Bahrain’s justice system has added to a growing list of outrageous injustices. Mahdi ‘Issa Mahdi Abu Dheeb is a prisoner of conscience who must be released immediately and unconditionally, and Jalila al-Salman must not be put behind bars – these convictions must be quashed as a matter of urgency,” said Philip Luther, director for the Middle East and North Africa program at Amnesty International.
“All these teachers did was to call for a strike in their role as trade union leaders – they were merely exercising their rights to freedom of expression and association, and certainly did not commit a crime.”
Their lawyers have said they will appeal the decision before Bahrain’s Court of Cassation.
