Newsroom

Update

Women and girls in Nairobi's slums live under the constant threat of sexual violence, leaving them often too scared to leave their houses to use communal bathroom facilities. Join Amnesty in calling for greater security for women in Nairobi!

July 20, 2010

Update

Two Native American women were gang-raped by three non-Native men in Oklahoma. Because they were forced to wear blindfolds, however, support workers were concerned that the women would be unable to say whether the rapes took place on federal, state or tribal land. Because of jurisdictional complexities and the uncertainty of the locations of these crimes, the women may never see justice served.

July 19, 2010

Update

The Egyptian government came late to discovering the power of the Internet and social networking, but for the last four years, they’ve made it the center of its efforts to muzzle Egyptian civil society. This week, the activists pushed back and earned an important victory.

July 16, 2010

Update

Raúl Hernández, a member of the Me'phaa Indigenous People's Organization (OPIM), has been detained for over two years for a crime Amnesty International believes he did not commit.  He and four other OPIM members were arrested on April 17, 2008 and charged with the murder of Alejandro Feliciano García on January 1, 2008 in the village of El Camalote, Guerrero State, in Mexico.  The other four OPIM members were released in March of this year, but Hernández remains detained as the sole suspect for the murder of García. The next few weeks will be a vital time for Hernández as…

July 16, 2010

Update

Amnesty International and partner organizations are taking part in the 31 Days of Action campaign during the month of July to shore up support in Congress for the International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA).

July 15, 2010

Update

Amnesty International released a disturbing new report today detailing the crumbling state of health care in North Korea. The report paints a bleak picture of barely-functioning hospitals void of medicines and epidemics brought on by malnutrition.

July 15, 2010

Update

Help us reach our goal of 50 Congress Members' signatures on a Congressional sign-on letter for the women of Atenco by this Friday!  Representatives Keith Ellison and Tammy Baldwin have sponsored a letter that will be sent to the Mexican authorities to demand that justice is upheld for the women of San Salvador Atenco, Mexico.  We currently have around 42 Representatives' signatures, so please encourage yours to sign on to the letter so that we can have a greater impact on the Mexican authorities! The women of Atenco were sexually assaulted and tortured by police officers over four years ago following…

July 15, 2010

Update

An Amnesty International research team is currently in Burundi, where elections will be taking place in just two weeks. The team will be looking at the human rights situation during the elections. Tom Gibson, Amnesty's campaigner on Burundi, is reporting. You can follow his blog here. Today in Bujumbura, we attended the first session of the hearing into the death of Ernest Manirumva, a human rights defender killed on 9 April 2009. Manirumva was vice president of the Burundian civil society organization Anti-corruption and Economic Malpractice Observatory (OLUCOME), an organization that works on corruption. We arrived at the courtroom just…

July 15, 2010

Update

When is it OK for the state to put a prisoner to death?  We at Amnesty International of course say “Never”.  (And two-thirds of the world’s nations agree with us.)  At the other end of the spectrum, US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says the state should be free to kill someone who has been convicted and sentenced to death in a “full and fair trial”, even if he can later show he is innocent. The judge who presided over Troy Davis’ hearing in Savannah, GA, last month is likely to come down somewhere in the middle.  But where?  Amnesty…

July 14, 2010

Update

Good news: the US Department of Defense announced yesterday that Mohammed al-Odaini has been transferred home to Yemen. He had been held at Guantanamo without charge for over eight years--since 2002, from age 18-26--despite the fact that he had been cleared for release in 2005.

July 14, 2010

Update

The New York Times today published a major front page story on the daily life in Gaza. The story chronicles the adversity, disunity, and sheer loss that dominates daily life in Gaza, and the Times’ website includes some very powerful images and video footage. Civilians in Gaza suffer from a complete lack of opportunities, high unemployment, and scarce resources, including water and electricity, the article concludes. The article also claims that the root of the current suffering is the loss of opportunity and the inability of Palestinians in Gaza to produce for themselves. Since these options do not exist for…

July 14, 2010

Update

The cycle has ended, at least in this case.  Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen today commuted the death sentence of Gaile Owens who had been scheduled for execution on September 28.  She was sentenced to death for soliciting the murder of her husband, but her case garnered widespread publicity because of severe abuse she had endured at his hands. Governor Bredesen cited similar cases as his reason for granting clemency, stating: As heinous as the crime was, the record of how Tennessee has dealt with similar cases over the last century makes it clear that her death would have been a…

July 14, 2010