tagged w/ Amnesty International
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“Toast to Freedom” is a music video dedicated to human rights activism around the world. Nearly 50 artists contributed to the video, celebrating Amnesty International’s 50th Anniversary. The basic tracks for “Toast to Freedom” were recorded at the legendary Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock, N.Y. One of the last studio recordings by the late Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Levon Helm, it was also one of the closest to his heart.
The song continues a long relationship between Amnesty International and the creative community, which has helped spread the word of its mission almost from the start in 1961. Artists contributing to “Toast to Freedom” included: Levon Helm, Kris Kristofferson, Carly Simon, Angelique Kidjo, Ewan McGregor, Saul Hernandez, Donald Fagen, Warren Haynes, Keb Mo, Eric Burdon, Taj Mahal, Florent Pagny, Marianne Faithfull, Jane Birkin, Jimmy Barnes, Rosanne Cash, Shawn Mullins, the Blind Boys of Alabama and Gentleman, among others.
This piece includes a number of color photographs, as well as the “Toast to Freedom” HD music video, the “Making of Toast to Freedom” HD video and the “Toast to Freedom” (Long Version) HD music video.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2012/05/03/toast-to-freedom-a-celebration-of-amnesty-internationals-50th-anniversary/“Toast to Freedom” is a music video dedicated to human rights activism... more
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why is china so scarred of the truth?
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A great new promo from Amnesty International
Each year hundreds of thousands of activists mark International Human Rights Day on 10 December by taking part in Amnesty International’s letter writing marathon. We write letters and sign online petitions to demand that the rights of individuals are respected, protected and fulfilled. In doing so, we show solidarity with those suffering human rights abuses and try to bring about real changes to their lives.
Amnesty International will be staging events, lighting lanterns and using social media to shine a light on these people’s stories and encourage others to take action during this global moment.A great new promo from Amnesty International
Each year hundreds of thousands of... more
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In 1994, at the age of 16, Christi Cheramie was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. To impose this sentence on a person who was under 18 years old at the time of the crime violates international law. Christie Cheramie is now 33 years old and has spent more than half of her life in prison.
Authorities in the USA must ban the imposition of life without parole sentences against children and review the cases of more than 2,500 prisoners currently serving such sentences to bring them into line with international law, Amnesty International said today in a new report.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mVpMs07oY4In 1994, at the age of 16, Christi Cheramie was sentenced to life imprisonment without... more
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The practice of enforced disappearances has increased dramatically since Pakistan joined the US-led "war on terror" in 2001. Disappearances occur across the country but especially in Balochistan province in the south-west, which faces violence from ethnic and religious armed groups and state security forces. Activists, journalists, and students have been especially targeted and an increasing number have been found dead with their bodies showing signs of torture.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqilC8r73cUThe practice of enforced disappearances has increased dramatically since Pakistan... more
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The Syrian government has turned hospitals into instruments of repression in its efforts to crush opposition, Amnesty International said today in a new report.
The 39-page report Health Crisis: Syrian Government Targets the Wounded and Health Workers documents how wounded patients in at least four government-run hospitals have been subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, including by medical workers.
Hospital workers suspected of treating protesters and others injured in unrest-related incidents have themselves faced arrest and torture.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCEAd0etmx0The Syrian government has turned hospitals into instruments of repression in its... more
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Amnesty International yesterday urged Canadian authorities to arrest and either prosecute or extradite former US President George W. Bush for his role in torture, ahead of his expected visit to Canada on 20 October.
“Canada is required by its international obligations to arrest and prosecute former President Bush given his responsibility for crimes under international law including torture,” said Susan Lee, Americas Director at Amnesty International.Amnesty International yesterday urged Canadian authorities to arrest and either... more
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Troy Davis and Lawrence Brewer were executed Wednesday night. And the nation's reaction couldn't be more divided.
There was heartbreak and outrage at the news that Davis, 42, was put to death for the slaying of a Georgia police officer -- a crime that many, including former President Carter, do not believe Davis committed. Some say the execution of Davis could ultimately lead to the end of the death penalty in the U.S. by underscoring flaws in the legal system.
Among the tweets this morning, carrying the hashtag #TroyDavis: "A KKK member once said they dont need to walk around n sheets,they get us by becomin officers, judges, & lawyers" and "It's so sad it takes the death [of] an innocent man for folks to question the death penalty, so sad".
Davis used his dying breath to insist he was not responsible for killing Mark MacPhail, an off-duty Savannah, Ga., police officer gunned down in 1989 while coming to the aid of a homeless man. "I personally did not kill your son, father and brother," he told the victim's family as he was strapped to a gurney in a Georgia prison in preparation for the lethal injection. "I am innocent."
Doubt about Davis' guilt had been raised after key witnesses recanted their testimony. Death penalty opponents around the world closely followed the case as it made its way through the courts, including a last-minute attempt for a reprieve from the U.S. Supreme Court -- and were shocked and saddened when it did not come.
Meanwhile, Brewer, a 44-year-old white supremacist, was also put to death Wednesday night in Texas for the racially motivated 1998 dragging death of a black man.
The brutality of the killing shocked the nation and ultimately led to new state and federal hate crime legislation. The victim, James Byrd Jr., was looking for a ride home when Brewer and two friends turned on him. They drove him down a remote road, beat him, and then chained him to the back of a truck and dragged him for several miles before dumping his decapitated body in front of an African American cemetery.
Brewer also proclaimed his innocence, to a degree, acknowledging a role in the attack but insisting he did not kill Byrd.
The reaction on Twitter to his death was almost gleeful in some corners, seeming to reflect a belief that Brewer got what he deserved. Among the Tweets: "JUSTICE SERVED" and "That dude deserved guns AND electric chairs...hot mess!"
As the news cycle churned, reaction in the Davis case seemed to move on to efforts to overturn the death penalty, with many calling the execution a watershed moment.
But there were also plenty of comments pointing out a perception of hypocrisy in the different reactions to the deaths. Among them:
--"Lawrence Brewer was also executed while claiming his innocence. Said he assaulted the man, but did not kill him. He didn't get any attention"
--"Why no outrage among celebrities over the execution of racist lyncher Lawrence Russell Brewer?...looking at you @AlecBaldwin"
--"Funny that people are calling 'racism' for Troy Davis when Lawrence Russell Brewer was also executed yesterday, for killing a black man."
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/09/troy-davis-lawrence-brewer-2-executions-2-very-different-reactions.htmlTroy Davis and Lawrence Brewer were executed Wednesday night. And the nation's... more
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Yesterday in America, two men were executed, but you will probably only have heard of one of them: Troy Davis, who was killed in the state of Georgia for the murder of a police officer. The other executed man, Lawrence Brewer, put to death in the state of Texas for murdering a black man in 1998, has barely featured in the news at all. Unlike Davis, he did not win the backing of Amnesty International and its trendy supporters. No one tweeted and retweeted their sorrow over Brewer or made a public spectacle of how heavy his execution weighed upon their hearts, as many did with Davis. No one lit candles outside the American Embassy for Brewer in full glare of photojournalists’ clicking cameras. No one wore t-shirts saying “I AM LAWRENCE BREWER”.
It might seem obvious as to why Davis was championed while Brewer was ignored: there were many doubts about Davis’s conviction, whereas Brewer was undoubtedly guilty. Furthermore, he was a racist toerag, a supporter of the Ku Klux Klan, whose murder of James Byrd Jr was racially motivated and horrifically executed. But if you are opposed to the death penalty on principle, as many of the Troy Davis campaigners claimed to be, then you should be just as outraged by the execution of Brewer as you were by the execution of Davis. You should be as opposed to the state killing of a guilty racist as you are to the state killing of a possibly guilty black man. Even James Byrd Jr’s son asked for the state of Texas to show mercy to his father’s killer, but no army of bleeding-heart Twitterers backed him up.
The airbrushing of Brewer from yesterday’s heated discussions on the death penalty speaks volumes about the Troy Davis campaign. It seems pretty clear that it was motivated, not by a principled, across-the-board opposition to the state killing of citizens, but rather by campaigners’ desire to indulge in some very public moral preening. Unlike the Brewer execution, which was ugly and complicated, the Davis execution could be squeezed into a cosy moral narrative in which the state of Georgia was depicted as backward and racist and those who opposed the execution of Davis presented themselves as purer than pure, good and decent, and more than willing to prove it by writing tweets of concern every four or five minutes. What message should we take from this disparity in campaigning? That Troy Davis did not deserve to die but Lawrence Brewer did? Such moral flightiness, such brutal arbitrariness, reveals much about today’s very changeable campaigners against the death penalty.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/brendanoneill2/100106437/two-men-were-executed-in-america-yesterday-but-only-one-of-them-won-the-pity-of-the-human-rights-brigade/#disqus_threadYesterday in America, two men were executed, but you will probably only have heard of... more
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http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/21/justice/georgia-execution/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
CNN...
Troy Davis put to death in Georgia
By the CNN Wire Staff
updated 11:56 PM EST, Wed September 21, 2011
Davis case to become global 'scandal'
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
NEW: Inmate tells victim's family he was not guilty
Troy Davis put to death late Wednesday
U.S. Supreme Court denied stay of execution
The original prosecutor says the facts support Troy Davis' sentence
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PART ONE...
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Jackson, Georgia (CNN) -- Troy Davis, whose case drew international attention, was put to death by lethal injection for the 1989 killing of an off-duty police officer in Savannah, Georgia, prison officials announced Wednesday night.
Davis was defiant to the very end. After he was strapped to the death gurney, he lifted his head to address the family of the slain officer.
He told the family of Mark MacPhail that he was not responsible for the officer's death and did not have a gun at the time, according to execution witnesses.
Davis said the case merited further investigation, talking fast as officials prepared to give him the lethal cocktail.
The execution followed the U.S. Supreme Court's rejection of a stay, allowing the state to proceed. Davis was declared dead at 11:08 p.m. ET.
Throughout the day, Davis' lawyers and high-profile supporters had asked the state and various courts to intervene, arguing he did not murder MacPhail in 1989.
Davis initially had been scheduled to die by lethal injection at 7 p.m. ET. But the proceeding was delayed more than three hours as the justices pondered a plea filed by his attorney.
Several hundred people, most of them opposing the proceeding, gathered outside the state prison in Jackson where Davis, 42, awaited his fate. Others held a vigil in a nearby church.
The inmate's sister, Martina Davis-Correia, was among those who held a vigil outside the prison. Before the U.S. Supreme Court's decision, she said officials needed to take more time to examine the case. "When you are looking at someone's life, you can't press rewind."
More than 100 officers, many in riot gear, stood guard over the largely-quiet gathering, which featured candles, occasional prayers and songs. At least three people who crossed the street had been taken away in handcuffs.
"Tonight the state of Georgia legally lynched an innocent man," Davis' lawyer Thomas Ruffin Jr. said. "Tonight I witnessed something tragic."
Davis' supporters, who also rallied outside the U.S. Supreme Court building, argued that his conviction was based on the testimony of numerous witnesses who had recanted, including a jailhouse informer who claimed Davis had confessed.
"There's a genuine feeling among people here and across the nation that we're about to do the unthinkable," said Isaac Newton Farris Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
But prosecutors have stood by the conviction, and every appeal -- including the last-minute petitions filed Wednesday -- has failed.
Davis's supporters cheered and hugged each other when news of the earlier delay reached them. But it did not sit well with McPhail's mother, who remained at home.
CONTINUED...
.http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/21/justice/georgia-execution/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
CNN...... more
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In 2008 an oil pipeline owned by Shell, failed and began spilling oil in Bodo Creek. Oil kept pouring out for more than two months before it was repaired. By then, many of the 70.000 people living in Bodo village had lost an important means of livelihood.
The pollution killed much of the marine life in the river.
Without the ability to fish the community of Bodo has become impoverished.Loading...
In 2008 an oil pipeline owned by Shell, failed and began spilling oil in... more
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Despite an obligation under international law to treat anyone below 18 as a child, police in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) continue to jail 16- and 17-year old boys as adults! Although India has amended its national juvenile justice law to make it consistent with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, boys above 16 are falling through the cracks in J&K's juvenile justice laws.Despite an obligation under international law to treat anyone below 18 as a child,... more
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More than 12 million people live in Egypt's sprawling informal settlements (slums). Over the years, the authorities have treated these people with contempt, subjected them to unlawful forced evictions and threatened them with arbitrary arrest under repressive emergency legislation if they dared to protest.More than 12 million people live in Egypt's sprawling informal settlements... more
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At least 88 people are believed to have died in detention in Syria during five months of bloody repression of pro-reform protests, a new Amnesty International report reveals today.
Deadly detention: Deaths in custody amid popular protest in Syria documents reported deaths in custody between April and mid-August in the wake of sweeping arrests.
The 88 deaths represented a significant escalation in the number of deaths following arrest in Syria. In recent years Amnesty International has typically recorded around five deaths in custody per year in Syria.At least 88 people are believed to have died in detention in Syria during five months... more
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Egyptian authorities and political parties must put the rights of the country’s 12 million slum-dwellers at the top of their agenda if they are to meet the demands for social justice and human dignity championed during the “25 January Revolution”, Amnesty International said today in a new report.Egyptian authorities and political parties must put the rights of the country’s... more
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U.N. declares famine in southern Somalia
By Robyn Dixon | 2:19 p.m.
To declare a famine, child malnutrition must be at 30% or higher, daily deaths at two per 10,000 people and people are not able to access food and other basic necessities.
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U.N. declares famine in southern Somalia
Famine, a highly technical term, means that the rate of child malnutrition and deaths in two areas of southern Somalia, a country riven by fighting and drought, has risen. Agencies appeal for aid.
PHOTO: Eleven-month-old Abdifatah Hassan, suffering from severe malnutrition, is cared for at a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders at a camp housing Somali refugees in Dadaab, Kenya. The United Nations officially declared famine in two regions of southern Somalia, saying child malnutrition rates exceed 30% and as many as six children age 5 or younger are dying daily. The region is suffering its worst drought in 60 years and tens of thousands are feared dead.
(Roberto Schmidt / AFP/Getty Images / July 4, 2011)
By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times
July 20, 2011, 2:19 p.m.
Reporting from Johannesburg, South Africa—
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For months, people have been trudging out of the desert, leaving their dead children behind and carrying those who have managed to survive. On Wednesday, the horror of hunger and death unfolding in the Horn of Africa officially got a name: famine.
It's actually a very technical term — unless you're one of those walking for weeks in a last-ditch hope to save your family.
For the United Nations to declare a famine, as it did at a news conference in Nairobi, child malnutrition must be at 30% or higher, daily deaths at two per 10,000 people and people are not able to access food and other basic necessities.
According to Unicef, the U.N. agency that focuses on children, the rate of child malnutrition rate in southern Somalia has doubled in a single month; in some places it has reached 55% and infant deaths have increased to six per day.
Yet the global response has been dismal. An appeal late last year for $535 million to address the need is still more than $250 million short. Officials hope the famine declaration will help focus global attention on the Horn of Africa.
Across the country, about 3.7 million people, half the population, are facing starvation, with an estimated 2.8 million of them in the south. The agency says another 6.3 million in other countries in the Horn of Africa affected by hunger.
It's the worst African hunger crisis in 20 years, according the Rozanne Chorlton, Unicef's representative on Somalia. The last time things were this dire in Africa was 1991. Then, as now, it was in Somalia.
The U.N. famine declaration Wednesday formally covered two regions of southern Somalia, Bakool and Lower Shabelle, where farmers' crops failed and their livestock died. Malnutrition rates exceed 30% and more than six children age 5 or younger are dying daily in some areas. But in coming months, neighboring regions will inevitably fall into famine too, said Mark Bowden, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Somalia.
U.N. and non-governmental agencies are appealing for $300 million in the next two months to increase their operations in the worst-hit areas.
If it seems extraordinary that millions of Africans can be facing starvation in 2011, despite the focus of a raft of humanitarian agencies and their early-warning networks, it is, Bowden said.
Part of the problem is that many donors had written off Somalia as too hard, he said in a telephone interview. Aid agencies must grapple with a long-running civil conflict and Somalia's extremist Shabab militia, which controls much of the south, where the worst hunger is.
"We have good warning systems, but we don't always listen to them, particularly if we put some countries in the too-difficult-to-deal-with basket," Bowden said.
Two decades with no government and the failure of successive efforts to restore peace have left donors cynical. The country's global reputation for piracy and mayhem have done it no favors.
The 1991 Somalia famine occurred after civil war destroyed agriculture and clan warlords hijacked humanitarian aid, leading to the U.S.-led Operation Restore Hope. That resulted in bloody fighting with militias in Mogadishu portrayed in the book and film "Black Hawk Down."
But Bowden, who recently met Somali refugees walking to Ethiopia, said the problem today was mainly one of successive drought, compounded by global warming.
"They are victims of drought. They are also victims of climate change. They're people who have lost everything after years of successive drought."
The situation is complicated by the Shabab, which in the past has imposed informal taxes on humanitarian agencies, limited their access, and demanded they send female staff home. The World Food Program withdrew early last year from areas controlled by the Shabab because of security threats and unacceptable working conditions. It recently announced it would resume it work there if conditions allowed.
Aid agencies have been negotiating access with local leaders, but security remains uncertain.
"We need predictability," Unicef's Chorlton said in a telephone interview. "The important thing is that those who are there [in Somalia] should be able to act unhindered to deliver the services to children and families that are so desperately needed."
Unicef has doubled its food, health and water programs in Somalia, she said.
"Somalis have always helped each other to cope in times of crisis, and they have been incredibly resilient over the years. I think what has not been quantified is that people's resistance has been so undermined over the last year, it's no longer adequate to the task," she said. "The issue is now we need donors to massively increase their contribution."
.U.N. declares famine in southern Somalia
By Robyn Dixon | 2:19 p.m.
To declare... more
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Amnesty International Unveils Global Report on Human Rights and Urges Lawmakers to Invest in Development, Support Cyber-activists/Internet FreedomAmnesty International Unveils Global Report on Human Rights and Urges Lawmakers to... more
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