Your local voice for Amnesty International
The UN General Assembly voted to replace Russia with the Czech Republic on its human rights body after its suspension following allegations of rights’ violations in Ukraine. The Spanish government passed draft legislation which will ensure that abortion is available to all, including women from the age of 16 without the permission of their parents.…
Continue reading Good News Europe
Good News World Central African Republic lawmakers have voted to abolish the death penalty, following Chad and Sierra Leone. Momentum is growing for abolition across the entire continent. Believing that the Supreme Court is about to overturn the Roe v Wade decision about access to abortion, the US Senate is trying to rush through legislation…
Continue reading Good and Bad News – June World Update
Good News Britain The Home Office has cancelled its own chartered deportation flight to northern Iraq carrying up to 30 Kurdish asylum seekers, the first flight of its kind for a decade. Gloucestershire councillors have backed the removal of a 248-year-old statue linked to the transatlantic slave trade. However, the Communities Secretary may block this…
Continue reading Good and Bad News in Britain – June Update
The UK and Israel are negotiating a new free trade agreement which both parties hope will be agreed by the end of the year. Amnesty has serious concerns that it could allow the Israeli authorities to consolidate unfounded claims to occupied Palestinian land. This is because a lack of clarity in the terms of a new…
Continue reading The UK-Israel Free Trade Agreement
Good News Kalush Orchestra, the Ukrainian entry, won the Eurovision Song Contest on 14 May. The band members had special permission to leave Ukraine and had to return on the following Monday. The Orchestra then sold their trophy, raising £712,000 to buy drones for the military. Russian human rights activists have formed an ‘underground railroad’…
Continue reading June Update on the War in Ukraine
Eleven Days in May This documentary is harrowing, but necessary, viewing. It remembers the lives and deaths of the 60 children killed in the sustained bombing of the Gaza Strip in May 2021 by showing family members sharing their memories of them through stories, photographs, home movies and personal belongings. In an interview, director Michael…
Continue reading Worth Watching – June 2022
Many of us have participated in government consultation processes and may well have wondered whether it was worth the effort. Here are two salutary stories. Scrapping At-home Abortion Pills A public consultation that led to the government scrapping at-home abortion pills was subject to a targeted campaign by right-to-life groups. Of over 18,000 responses, the…
Continue reading The Problem with the Government’s Consultation Process
More than 1,000 Palestinians are facing expulsion from their villages, one of the largest forcible transfers since Israel’s occupation of the West bank in 1967. The Supreme Court in Israel rejected evidence from residents of Masafer Yatta that their presence long preceded the declaration of the area as a ‘firing zone’ from which Palestinians are…
Continue reading Palestinian Evictions
For They Think That We’re Machines, Amnesty interviewed 34 workers in the security sector in Qatar between April 2021 and February 2022, collected documentary evidence such as employment contracts, photographs and video footage, and reviewed and analysed secondary sources including Qatari laws and FIFA policies. Many of the guards, all migrants working for eight private…
Continue reading Amnesty International Report: They Think That We’re Machines
The Home Office has stated that sending asylum seekers to Rwanda was not a penalty but a deterrent, and deportation would be on a case-by-case basis with monitoring in place. It acknowledged that LGBT+ people in Rwanda face ill-treatment. The Central Africa director of Human Rights Watch said the government’s safety assessment was ‘not grounded…
Continue reading Refugees to Rwanda Update