AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL Group 23, Houston
NEWSLETTER
JANUARY 2008

P.O. Box 130901, Houston, TX 77219-0901
281-587-5386
http://www.amnestyhouston.org
mail@amnestyhouston.org

Monthly meeting first Wednesday of every month (except holidays).

NEWS AND NOTES

Monthly Meeting Agenda:

       Introductions
       Reports by Coordination Groups:
       Group case (Avdo Palic)
       Death Penalty
       Radio Committee
       Stop Violence Against Women Campaign
       Denounce Torture Campaign
       South Asian Regional Action Network (SARAN)
       Refugees
       Out Front Campaign
       Who Will Bring Letter Next Meeting
Old Business:
New Business:
       TCADP Annual Conference
       Houston International Festival
      Co-hosting Counsel on American Islmaic Relations screening of "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib"
      "Music For Life" Concert
      New POC Case?
      Sri Lanka Country Specialist "Get On The Bus" event
 

Local Group 23 News:

• Bill Ohsie spoke about AI's position on the prison at Guantanamo Bay at a poetry reading called "Poems From Guantanamo".
• We wrote 153 letters for the December Write-a-Thon. Phivan Wright prepared all the letters and completed the mailing.

• Phivan Wright would like to have someone assist her with tabling the concerts. It would entail getting volunteers to sit at the table, communication with the venue and AI concert ladies and making sure that someone picks up the tabling materials. If you are interested, please contact Phivan at pvlwright@mindswithoutborders.org.
• We also have openings for Group Coordinator, Refugee Committee coordinator and New Member coordinator.

Ever wish you owned a Fender? Well here’s your chance! Fender Guitars has joined with Amnesty International to create an Amnesty logo acoustic guitar. The guitar has AI’s famous logo inlaid on the first fret and a standard guitar maple neck with a smaller acoustic guitar body, so electric players will feel right at home. It is also the most environmentally friendly guitar ever produced! Sound Cool? It won’t be in stores ‘till January 2008. But you can buy it through Amnesty International for $520.00

If the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were monitoring the Pentagon's weapons distribution in Iraq, it would likely move to close it down, citing poor bookkeeping.

"Unfortunately it appears the Pentagon was much more careless than some of the shady U.S. gun-shop owners the ATF monitors," said Colby Goodman, Amnesty International USA's program manager for arms transfers. Goodman was commenting on a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released in July that revealed the Pentagon could not account for 30 percent of the weapons the United States distributed to Iraqi forces between 2004 and 2007.

"They really have no idea where they are," said Rachel Stohl, a senior analyst at the Center for Defense Information who has studied the small-arms trade and received Pentagon briefings on the issue. "It likely means that the United States is unintentionally providing weapons to bad actors."

Amnesty International's own research indicates hundreds of thousands of U.S.-approved arms shipped from Bosnia to Iraq could also be missing. In a May 2006 report, Dead on Time, Amnesty International revealed that Taos Inc., a U.S company with multiple Defense Department contracts, subcontracted to a Moldavian/Ukrainian company, Aerocom, to transport machine guns and rocket propelled grenades from Bosnia to Iraqi security forces between July 2004 and June 2005. U.S. military air traffic controllers in Iraq, however, said Aerocom never requested landing slots in that country.

AI fears this shipment may now be in the hands of human rights abusers inside or outside Iraq. In exchanges with the Pentagon regarding the Bosnia transfer, AI noted that the Department of Defense (DOD) had allowed a subcontractor who had smuggled arms to Liberia to facilitate arms shipment to Iraq. Various U.S government contracts contain a clause prohibiting U.S. government funding to companies previously involved in criminal activities. In response the Defense Department said it was, "conducting an assessment to determine if DOD controls governing DOD-contracted arms, ammunition and explosives shipments needed to provide continuing effective oversight of related transportation arrangements."

Aerocom smuggled weapons to Liberia in 2002 and was operating without a valid license in 2004, according to the U.N. Security Council. The country that initially reported Aerocom's illegal activities to the UN: the United States of America.

Amnesty International USA Executive Director Larry Cox met in with Pakistan's Ambassador to the United States, Mahmud Ali Durrani, Nov. 16 to press for the immediate lifting of the state of emergency, the reinstatement of the judiciary in Pakistan and permission for United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights Louise Arbour to visit the country.

"I appreciate Ambassador Durrani's willingness to discuss the current crisis in Pakistan and hear Amnesty International's deep concerns about the suspension of the judiciary, detention of activists, lawyers and journalists and suppression of public demonstrations," said Cox following the meeting. "The Ambassador expressed similar concerns about the human rights situation in his country. Yet he also noted that the people being arrested are breaking the law by publicly assembling to demonstrate their opposition to the current actions of General Pervez Musharraf.

"Amnesty International is pleased that Ambassador Durrani agreed with our recommendation to allow U.N. High Commissioner Louise Arbour to visit Pakistan, and that he would strongly advise his government to permit such a visit. While General Musharraf continues to disregard basic rights of Pakistani citizens, the Ambassador's assurances point to a small step in the right direction."

In a new report released Nov. 13 Amnesty International charges the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan with exposing detainees to risks of torture or other ill-treatment at the hands of Afghan authorities.

The report documents how ISAF forces - particularly those from Belgium, the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands and Norway - have transferred detainees to Afghanistan's intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), despite consistent reports of torture and other ill-treatment by the NDS.

"As a primary financial supporter of the National Directorate of Security, the United States has the responsibility to ensure that no further torture is committed," said AIUSA Executive Director Larry Cox. "This means not funding the NDS until the transfers of detainees to Afghan authorities is suspended and effective safeguards are established."

The United Nations reiterated its concerns about the NDS as recently as September when it called for investigations into allegations of torture and other ill-treatment by the NDS. Over the past two years, Amnesty International has received numerous reports of torture and other ill-treatment of detainees by the NDS, including beatings, exposure to extreme cold and food deprivation.

"The Bush administration should demonstrate that the United States still cares about human rights in the war on terror and use its position in NATO to encourage its partners to ensure that ISAF forces are not complicit in the torture of detainees in Afghanistan," said T. Kumar, Amnesty International USA advocacy director for Asia and the Pacific.

Amnesty International highlighted cases of detainees reporting being tortured after Canadian forces handed them to Afghan authorities. The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission corroborated the account of a farmer who said he was captured by Canadian troops while he says he was working the fields west of Kandahar. The troops handed him over to Afghan soldiers, starting what he described as a bloody six-month odyssey at the hands of Afghan interrogators from the military, police and intelligence services. He said they "beat him with rifle butts, deprived him of sleep, shocked him with electrical probes and thrashed him with bundles of cables."

The report also details how the Belgian and Norwegian governments lost track of transferred detainees and the difficulties encountered by British and Dutch forces in ensuring independent monitoring of detainees once in Afghan custody.

The report also examines Memorandums of Understanding and other bilateral agreements between the Afghan government and ISAF forces including those from Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom.

"NATO must work with its forces to ensure that the bilateral agreements are adhered to and detainees are treated in accordance with international standards," said Cox. "Otherwise, these agreements have less value than the paper they are written on." Amnesty International recommended that the ISAF temporarily suspend all detainee transfers to Afghan authorities and that independent monitors be given unrestricted access to all detention centers and unsupervised access to all detainees.

Responding to reports Nov. 13 that internet giant Yahoo! had reached a settlement involving two Chinese journalists jailed and allegedly tortured for emails the company turned over to the Chinese government, Amy O'Meara, AIUSA's director of business and human rights, said, while the settlement provided a "small measure justice" to the families involved, it failed to address the underlying problem, internet companies collaborating with government repression.

Shi Tao, a former writer for the financial publication Contemporary Business News, was sentenced to a decade in prison for allegedly providing state secrets to foreigners. Wang Xiaoning was arrested in 2002 after Yahoo! HK gave authorities information linking him to political writings posted online.

"Compensation may help bring a small measure of justice to the families of Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning, but it does not fix the underlying problem," O'Meara said, "Shi Tao was sentenced to 10 years in jail because Chinese authorities used email account information supplied by Yahoo! to convict him. Band-Aid fixes are not going to stop a case like this from happening again.

"Yahoo's commitments to protect privacy and free speech are suspect given the pledge it signed this summer that further impinges on Chinese users' ability to express political dissent online. Yahoo! must urgently enact policies that will prevent others like Shi Tao or Wang Xioaning from being jailed for political or other writings posted on the Internet. Internet companies doing business in China must carefully consider the human rights implications of their actions. It would be unfortunate if companies saw individual settlements like these as the easy way to sweep underlying problems under the rug."

Last May Juozas Imbrasas, mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania's Capital City, refused to grant permission for a European Union-sponsored anti-discrimination tour to make its planned stop in Vilnius. About the same time Vilnius City Council, citing "security reason," also voted unanimously to ban a tolerance campaign rally in support of human rights, including the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, scheduled for May 25. The mayor also supported the decision by local bus drivers to refuse to drive busses containing advertising referring LGBT rights. The mayor stated that "with a priority for the traditional family and seeking to promote family values, we disapprove of the public display of 'homosexual ideas' in the city of Vilnius." The advertisement had been paid for by the Lithuanian Gay League with money granted from the EU. On October 24, the Vilnius City Council refused to grant permission for a 30 meter rainbow flag, a symbol of the LGBT rights movement, to be hoisted on the Town Hall Square, saying the square was unsafe due to construction, though the square was open to the public at all other times. These are just a few examples of how the LGBT community's human rights are infringed in Lithuania.

Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference:
The marchers were making their third circuit around the perimeter of the Maryland Correctional Adjustment Center: in reality a rather forbidding hodgepodge of gothic and modern institutional buildings that house Maryland's death row set incongruously near downtown Baltimore. "Hey, hey, ho, ho, the death penalty has got to go," they chanted somewhat raggedly and with lagging enthusiasm as they made the third pass by the Super Max unit of the sprawling jail. Then from the other side of the wall a lone voice repeated their chant, "Hey hey, ho, ho the death penalty has got to go," then two voices, then three. Some of the Marchers stopped to listen. Others picked up the chant with renewed gusto, "Hey Hey, Ho, Ho, the Death Penalty Has Got to Go!" A lone prison guard approached, inviting them to "keep moving."

But far beyond the prison walls, indications are that their voices are being heard and in a very important place, the governor's mansion. Moments earlier, the marchers, a coalition of abolitionist groups that included most of the 375 participants at AIUSA's Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference not coincidentally set in Baltimore November 16-18, were reminded just how close they were to abolition in Maryland.

"I've been here in Maryland before. I've been here all week and you guys are so close to getting the death penalty abolished," Bud Welch, an avowed abolitionist even though his daughter Julie was killed by Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing, told the gathering. "I met with your governor two days ago. You are so lucky to have Martin O'Malley as your governor. I never met a governor in any other state that is as firm as he is about abolishing the death penalty." Welch said the state sanctioned execution of McVeigh had brought him no peace and ultimately served no purpose, other than to add another corpse for another father to bury.

"I met Bill McVeigh, the father of Tim McVeigh, three and half years after Julie's death and when I met Bill McVeigh, I met a bigger victim of the Oklahoma City bombing than myself," Welch said. "And I say that despite the fact that I no longer have Julie. I've travelled all over the world telling wonderful things about Julie. But Bill McVeigh is never able to tell anything wonderful that Tim once did. On June 11 2001 we took Tim McVeigh from his cage in Terra Haute Indiana and we killed him. Bill McVeigh and I that morning became two fathers that had one thing in common. We had both buried our children. They died in very different ways, but we had both buried our children."

The death penalty abolition march highlighted day two of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference which drew activists from all six Mid-Atlantic States. The conference included panel discussions, workshops and plenary sessions addressing a range of human rights issues. Participants also took part in AIUSA's resolutions process.

Amy Goodman, host and executive producer of the nationally broadcast public affairs program Democracy Now addressed the Opening Plenary Saturday morning and reminded the activists of their unique power - and the responsibility that goes with it.

"You occupy a very privileged position coming from the most powerful country in the world and you can use that privilege for good," she said. "But there is a force more powerful, it's all of you gathered together. That voice is more powerful than any single voice, even the president of the United States.

"Wherever it might be, in the Niger Delta or Haiti, or East Timor when the guns are targeted on them, they do all they can. But ultimately they look to us. We're the ones who can turn those guns when they come from our country and that is why it is so important that you are here today."

Letter writing actions have moved to a special section of our website.