Below you’ll find breaking news as well as reports, updates on our campaigns, and victories.
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Update
Still Waiting for Justice for the ACF 17
Today, Aug. 19, is World Humanitarian Day, designated by the U.N. to honor aid workers around the world. Today, Amnesty International remembers 17 aid workers killed in Sri Lanka. Their killers have yet to be brought to justice. The 17 were local staff of the French aid agency Action contre la Faim (ACF) (Action Against Hunger). In August 2006, they were executed in the town of Mutur in eastern Sri Lanka, after an intense phase of fighting between the government and the Tamil Tiger rebels. The Sri Lankan police bungled the criminal investigation into the murders. A subsequent commission of inquiry failed…
August 19, 2010
Update
Maybe Oklahoma Should Stop Trying to Execute Jeffrey David Matthews
Jeffrey David Matthews' execution was stayed yet again yesterday. This time because there is a worldwide shortage of sodium thiopental, the first drug in the three drug series most states use to put prisoners to death.
August 18, 2010
Update
Afghan Couple Stoned to Death
"We love each other no matter what happens." Those were some of the last words of Khayyam and Siddiqa before they were stoned to death for ‘eloping’. This was the first stoning in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
August 18, 2010
Update
A 64 Million Dollar Question
Killing prisoners is an abuse of state power. Even if it saved money it would still be the ultimate human rights violation. But of course, it doesn’t save money. The death penalty costs money. This is especially true in California, where a study recently concluded that abolishing capital punishment would save the state over $100 million a year. And that’s not including the hundreds of millions of dollars California needs to build a new death row. Now comes the news that Governor Schwarzenegger intends to borrow $64 million from his state’s already depleted General Fund to keep the new death…
August 17, 2010
Update
Mother of Cuban Prisoner of Conscience Faces Harrassment
Reina Luisa Tamayo has been repeatedly harassed by Cuban authorities and government supporters, in attempts to prevent her from remembering her son and continuing to protest the detention of political dissidents.
August 17, 2010
Update
Activists in Indonesia at Risk of Torture
A group of 10 Malukan activists were recently detained by Indonesia's anti-terrorism police squad.
August 16, 2010
Update
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We're planning some improvements to our website and need your help. Please take five minutes to share your opinion about our website for the chance to win a free Amnesty International tote bag.
August 16, 2010
Update
Pakistan's Floods: A Crisis of Empathy
As global citizens we may not have the power to control the destruction borne of natural catastrophes but we do have the power to alleviate the alienation borne of a crisis of empathy that is preventing the world from coming to Pakistan’s aid.
August 16, 2010
Update
Easter Island: Eyes on Chilean Police
For two weeks now, unarmed indigenous activists in Easter Island – or Rapa Nui – have occupied public (read Chilean) property, claiming ancestral rights to a land that has seen colonization from Peruvian slave traders to French missionaries to the island’s conversion to a sheep farm by a Scottish-owned Chilean company until 1953. As a result, the Rapanui people have been forced to what is now the only inhabitance on the island: Hanga Roa. When I was in Hanga Roa in May 2010, I spotted a building with a hand-made sign: Rapa Nui Parliament. Outside the physically unassuming building I saw…
August 13, 2010
Update
Can/Will Oklahoma Stop this Execution?
Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry has granted two month-long reprieves for Jeffrey David Matthews. Matthews’ case is deeply troubling, but the Oklahoma Board of Pardons and Paroles voted 3-2 against commuting the death sentence, leaving the Governor with limited options. Today, the Board refused to reconsider its vote, and Matthews is still set for execution next Tuesday, August 17. Of the many disturbing aspects of Matthews' case, the fact that he might be innocent certainly stands out. Matthews was convicted largely on the statements of a star witness who has since recanted his trial testimony. That witness, Tracy Dyer, alleged that…
August 13, 2010
Update
Omar Khadr’s Lawyer Collapses, Trial Postponed
Alex Neve reports from Guantanamo: Omar Khadr’s military lawyer, Lieutenant Colonel Jon Jackson, collapsed in court late in the afternoon while cross examining a witness. Khadr's trial has now been postponed.
August 13, 2010
Update
Exiled from Oklahoma
Sometimes the best defense is no defense. That may be the moral of the story by Dan Barry in yesterday’s New York Times about James Fisher, who accepted a plea deal that freed him from death row after almost three decades behind bars, on the condition that he leave Oklahoma and never return. This doesn’t mean he was guilty of the crime for which he was sentenced to die; after two grotesquely unfair trials, he had simply lost faith in the system’s ability to defend his rights. And no wonder. The victim of the 1982 murder was a man who…
August 12, 2010