Letter From Yoko

Letter From Yoko

John wrote, “You may say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one.”

That’s what being part of Amnesty International means for me. We are a worldwide movement of dreamers and activists — who are shining a light of hope for those imprisoned for their beliefs.

Join me and make a donation to Amnesty International. Your gift will support our work freeing individuals who are imprisoned only for having the courage to speak, to demonstrate, and to express the thoughts that you and I do freely every day.

Because the need is so great, several leading Amnesty supporters have agreed to match any contribution you make now through December 31.

As I write this, the unjustly imprisoned are suffering behind bars.

Right now, a Tibetan filmmaker — Dhondup Wangchen — is languishing in a Chinese prison simply because he made a film that explores the views of Tibetan people toward the Beijing Olympics and the Dalai Lama.

After a secret trial, he was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment for “subversion of state power” and has reportedly been tortured.

Amnesty is pressuring the Chinese government to release Wangchen, investigate the allegations of torture to bring those responsible to justice.

Will you help Amnesty be a light for prisoners like Wangchen? Make a donation that will go twice as far.

Because of people like you, Amnesty International is a tenacious, tireless advocate for humanity. There is no greater champion for prisoners of conscience and no stronger force for human rights.

Together we can not only imagine, but also build a more just, more peaceful world.

You have my deepest gratitude for your commitment to human rights.

In Peace,

Yoko Ono
ARTIST & HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST
AIUSA

Greenpeace Pirates?

Greenpeace Pirates

A Russian court has just formally charged 28 Greenpeace activists from around the world, along with a freelance photographer and videographer, with piracy.

If convicted, each could face up to fifteen years in a Russian prison. All for the crime of peacefully protesting oil drilling in the Arctic. It’s the most serious threat to Greenpeace’s environmental work since French secret service agents bombed and sunk the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior — killing a crew member — back in 1985.

But we didn’t back down then and can’t back down now — no matter how far those in power go to silence the people who speak out against Arctic oil drilling and environmental destruction. With your support, we can stop drilling in the Arctic just like we stopped French nuclear weapons testing three decades ago.

The scene from the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise two weeks ago was almost unbelievable.

Using a helicopter and ropes, fifteen armed Russian special forces agents boarded the ship and started rounding up everyone onboard, assembling them on the helideck and taking control of the ship. The crew was eventually moved to the main area of the ship and put under guard while the ship was towed to the Russian city of Murmansk.

It was in Murmansk where, just yesterday, the last of the Greenpeace activists and the two freelancers were charged with piracy. They’re not pirates. Peaceful protest isn’t piracy. It’s the voice that our environment desperately needs right now.

Don’t let that voice and the voices of those charged with piracy in Russia be silenced. Please help support our work to save the Arctic and protect the environment by making a gift today.

Greenpeace doesn’t take a dime from corporations or governments so we can do what’s necessary to protect the environment. Especially when corporations and governments are the ones threatening our environment in the first place.

We rely entirely on financial support from people like you to do the work that we do. I wouldn’t want it any other way. Thanks for all you do.

Sincerely,

Phil Radford
Greenpeace USA Executive Director

P.S. A Russian court has just formally charged 28 Greenpeace activists, along with a freelance photographer and videographer, with piracy for protesting Arctic drilling.

Amazing Activists

Amazing Activists

Amnesty activists are amazing. And to prove it, we wanted to send you an update on three victories your activism helped us win:

Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience Nasrin Sotoudeh released from prison in Iran! Nasrin, a human rights lawyer, was arrested 3 years ago and sentenced to prison for defending political activists and juveniles facing the death penalty. Amnesty activists took on her case and never gave up on her. Last week she was released and reunited with her family. Welcome home, Nasrin!

20-year victory: USA signs historic treaty to end irresponsible arms sales around the world — In April, when the Arms Trade Treaty was adopted at the UN, we pledged that we would demand that the Obama Administration and the U.S. Congress sign and ratify this landmark treaty to end the unscrupulous trade in deadly weapons used by dictators, war lords and criminal gangs to commit atrocities. Today, we are one step closer: Secretary of State John Kerry signed the treaty this morning. This is the result of decades of dedicated activism from Amnesty members — your work paid off!

Amnesty welcomes a new leader — It’s Steven W Hawkins’ first day as Amnesty International USA’s Executive Director. Steven brings a deep commitment to social justice and grassroots organizing. He chose to come to Amnesty because of you — a vibrant movement of individuals committed to creating a world in which everyone can enjoy all of their human rights. Follow Steven on Twitter @StevenWHawkins!

Thanks for your continued dedication to making the world a better place.

In solidarity,

Cammie Croft
Chief Digital and Communications Officer
Amnesty International USA

Attacks On Egyptian Women

200 Attacks On Egyptian Women In Four Days

What if protesting put you at risk of sexual violence? Mobs of men are sexually assaulting women and girls protesting in the vicinity of Egypt’s iconic Tahrir Square. Law enforcement and other leaders are standing idle; some are blaming the women themselves and denouncing the protests.

Nearly 200 brutal attacks were reported in just four days. Will you help us pressure Egypt’s leaders to condemn the violence now?

Please make an urgent donation to Amnesty so we can continue to document human rights abuses like these in Egypt and around the world.

This is not a new phenomenon. Attacks on women protesters have been reported during past protests in Egypt. However it is clear they have greatly increased in the latest unrest.

Amnesty has sent researchers to Egypt to document the abuses and provide videos and other materials that we can use to:

Show the media what is happening to women and girl protestors in Egypt.

Support activists calling on leaders in Egypt – including prominent women in public life – to condemn the violence and press for action.

Help call global attention to the crisis and demand an end to violence against women in Egypt.

The time is now. Your donation will provide help and hope to peaceful protestors who face violence for speaking out against government oppression in Egypt and around the world.

Sincerely,

Cristina Finch
Managing Director, Women’s Human Rights Program
Amnesty International USA

Threat of Execution

Dear Gabriel,

Abdullah al-Qahtani is still alive, but the threat of execution is still dangerously real.

Abdullah is the Saudi Arabian man whose attorneys say he was tortured by Iraqi security forces into confessing to being a member of a terrorist organization. He was sentenced by Iraqi courts to death by hanging.

Last week, pressure from activists like you likely helped spare Abdullah’s life, but make no mistake — his execution is imminent. His attorney urges continued vigilance:

“We thank Amnesty International members for their support; it is helping. We call for everybody’s continued help to save Abdullah’s life, to pressure the Iraqi government to give Abdullah the chance to a fair and just trial.”

Keep up the pressure — click here to join our call for justice for Abdullah. Your actions can help spare this man’s life.

With great appreciation,

Samir Goswami
Director, Individuals and Communities at Risk Program
Amnesty International USA

BTW – Amnesty’s just-released 2012 Word Death Penalty Report depicts a stark rise in executions in Iraq — at least 129 people were executed, almost double the 2011 figure of at least 68. Abdullah’s case is a clear illustration of the lack of respect for human rights among Iraqi authorities.

All Around The World

Dear friends,

It’s not often you get to feel the world shift a little bit — but three years ago, that’s exactly what happened.

On October 24, 2009, 350.org’s first ever day of action took the world by storm, with over 5,000 events in 181 countries. The International Day of Climate Action helped put the 350 movement on the map in every corner of the globe.

It’s hard to describe it in words, so take two minutes to watch this video — and consider chipping in to support the work ahead of us:

WATCH THE VIDEO

CNN called the event “the most widespread day of political action in our planet’s history.” Foreign Policy magazine called it “the largest ever global coordinated rally of any kind.” For 24 hours, the global climate movement was the top story on Google News.

But it isn’t the media attention that inspires me most — it’s everything that has happened since.

In the last three years, a truly global movement has risen up to fight the climate crisis. Millions of people have been touched by 350 campaigns, trainings, and mass mobilizations. We’ve launched and won critical climate battles all over the world — and we’re just getting started.

Our most important work is ahead of us — we’re planning a landmark global convergence, embarking upon an educational road-tour, and launching hard-hitting campaigns in countries all around the world.

We’re working with local groups and partners in India, the Philippines, and Australia to scale up campaigns to move beyond coal and shift to renewable energy. Our friends in France and Indonesia are carrying on the fight to #EndFossilFuelSubsidies and cut off corporate polluters from public handouts. And so it goes around the world — everywhere we’re able, we’re working with incredible grassroots activists to push for the solutions that the planet and its people so desperately need.

Whether you joined us three years ago, or just found out about 350.org yesterday, thank you for all that you do to build this movement.

Let’s keep shifting the world. Together.

Onwards,

Will Bates for the 350.org team

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi In U.S.

Dear Gabriel,

We host. You ask. She answers.

Amnesty International USA is deeply honored to host a once-in-a-lifetime town hall event featuring Burmese freedom fighter, Nobel Laureate and Amnesty Ambassador of Conscience, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

Rights Generation: Daw Aung San Suu Kyi Inspires the Next will take place in front of a live audience of young activists at the Newseum in Washington, DC, on Thursday, September 20, from 11:30AM-1PM ET.

Ask Daw Suu your question about human rights and she may answer it live on stage in front of a global audience.

This is Daw Suu’s first visit to the U.S. in more than 20 years, after spending years in detention and house arrest. She credits the Amnesty movement with helping to secure her release, and says hope for the future kept her going during those dark and uncertain times.

That’s why she wants to hear from you, the next generation of human rights activists. Together she seeks to ignite and fuel a passion for human rights work.

“Throughout these years, you have helped us keep our small wick of self respect alight. We hope that you will be with us in the years to come…and that you will help us be the country where hope and history merges.” — Daw Aung San Suu Kyi

Be a part of this historic conversation with one of the most revered human rights leaders of our day. Click here to submit your question to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi for our live Sept. 20 event.

Sincerely,

Suzanne Nossel
Executive Director
Amnesty International USA

P.S. Want to watch? We’ll be live streaming the event online at amnestyusa.org/rightsgeneration. Mark your calendars and tune in on Thursday, Sept. 20 from 11:30AM-1PM ET!

Kites for Afghan Women

Dear Gabriel,

Last month, you and 18,000 other activists took action in support of Afghan women in advance of our “Shadow Summit” for Afghan Women’s Rights. You submitted messages of solidarity and support, and your words of encouragement soared far into the sky on the first day of the NATO summit in Chicago to let the world’s leaders know that we care about women’s rights.

They listened.

The Shadow Summit for Afghan Women’s Rights was a true testament to what AIUSA is capable of achieving when we all work together. At the very last minute, the government of Afghanistan invited three women to join the Afghan delegation at the NATO summit.

Amnesty International’s Shadow Summit speakers included prominent Afghan women’s rights leaders Afifa Azim, Manizha Naderi, Hasina Safi and Mahbouba Seraj, U.S. Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Melanne Verveer and former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, author of the best-seller “The Dressmaker of Khair Khana”, and Jerome McDonnell, host of Chicago Public Radio’s program “Worldview”, moderated the panel discussions. You can listen online to the first panel.

After the program, Shadow Summit participants headed out to Chicago’s Navy Pier with your messages and flew the kites in solidarity with Afghan women. To see pictures from the event, check out our album.

After the kite action, Mahbouba, Afifa and Hasina expressed their gratitude for Amnesty’s support in creating such a crucial opportunity to have their voices heard, and their hopes that we will all continue to work together to demand Afghan women’s political participation and representation as the transition unfolds – and beyond.

Afifa Azim, director and co-founder, Afghan Women’s Network, said:

“We want the world to know that the women of Afghanistan are not victims. They are active members of society and agents of change who worked very hard, even when it was underground, to make sure children were being educated and progress was being made. We cannot go back to the darkness and we expect to be heard as the new policies are being made. We are asking the U.S. and the international community to support us.”

We won’t give up on the fight for women’s human rights around the world. With your continued support, we know it is possible to achieve.

Thank you for taking action. Together we’re making a difference and we look forward to the next steps.

Cristina M. Finch
Policy and Advocacy Director, Women’s Human Rights
Amnesty International USA

Brave Syrians Not Alone

Dear Friends,

This morning, 4 western journalists are home safe with their families, the echoes of the horror and heroism of Baba Amr still ringing in their ears. Over 50 Syrian activists, supported by Avaaz, volunteered to rescue them and scores of wounded civilians from the Syrian army’s killzone. Many of those incredible activists have not survived the week.

Abu Hanin is one of the heroes. He’s 26, a poet, and when his community needed him, he took the lead in organizing the citizen journalists that Avaaz has supported to help the voices of Syrians reach the world. The last contact with Abu Hanin was on Thursday, as regime troops closed in on his location. He read his last will and testament to the Avaaz team in Beirut, and told us where he had buried the bodies of the two western journalists killed in the shelling. Since then, his neighborhood of Baba Amr has been a black hole, and we still don’t know his fate.

It’s easy to despair when seeing Syria today, but to honour the dead, we must carry forward the hope they died with. As Baba Amr went dark and fears of massacre spread, Syrians took to the streets — yet again — across the country, in a peaceful protest that showed staggering bravery.

Their bravery is our lesson, the gift of the Syrian people to the rest of us. Because in their spirit, in their courage to face the worst darkness our world has to offer, a new world is being born.

And in that new world, the Syrian people are not alone. Millions of us from every nation have stood with them time and time again, right from the beginning of their struggle. Nearly 75,000 of us have donated almost $3 million to fund people-powered movements and deliver high-tech communications equipment to help them tell their story, and enable the Avaaz team to help smuggle in over $2 million worth of medical supplies. We’ve taken millions of online actions to push for action from the Security Council and the Arab League and for sanctions from many countries, and delivered those online campaigns in dozens of stunts, media campaigns and high-level advocacy meetings with top world leaders. Together we’ve helped win many of these battles, including for unprecedented action by the Arab League, and oil sanctions from Europe.

Our team in Beirut has also provided a valuable communications hub for brave and skilled activists to coordinate complex smuggling operations and the rescue of the wounded and the journalists. Avaaz does not direct these activities, but we facilitate, support and advise. We have also established safe houses for activists, and supported the outreach and diplomatic engagement of the Syrian National Council — the opposition movement’s fledgling political representative body. Much of the world’s major media have covered Avaaz’s work to help the Syrian people, including features on BBC, CNN, El Pais, TIME, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, AFP and many more, citing our “central role” in the Syrian peaceful protest movement.

Today, a dozen more nightmares like that visited on the city of Homs are unfolding across Syria. The situation will get worse before it gets better. It will be bloody, and complicated, and as some protesters take up arms to defend themselves, the line between right and wrong will blur. But President Assad’s brutal regime will fall, and there will be peace, and elections, and accountability. The Syrian people simply will not stop until that happens — and it may happen sooner than we all think.

Every expert told us at the beginning that an uprising in Syria was unthinkable. But we sent in satellite communications equipment anyway. Because our community knows something that the experts and cynics don’t — that people power and a new spirit of citizenship are sweeping our world today, and they are fearless, and unstoppable, and will bring hope to the darkest places. Marie Colvin, an American journalist covering the violence in Homs, told Avaaz before she died, “I’m not leaving these people.” And neither will we.

With hope, and admiration for the Syrian people and courageous citizens everywhere,

Ricken, Wissam, Stephanie, Alice, David, Antonia, Will, Sam, Emma, Wen-Hua, Veronique and the whole Avaaz team.

Death Sentence for Programming

Dear Gabriel,

Iranians just held parliamentary elections. But many bloggers, students, journalists, filmmakers and other activists couldn’t exercise their right to vote.

They’ll be in jail.

One prisoner, Canadian resident and web programmer Saeed Malekpour, faces a death sentence and could be executed at any time. What did Saeed do to warrant this harsh sentence, based on charges of “insulting and desecrating Islam”? He wrote a web program that was used — without Saeed’s knowledge — for uploading pornographic images online.

Remind the Iranian authorities that death sentences are the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment, in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Demand that Iran commute Saeed Malekpour’s death sentence for “cyber crimes” and give him a fair trial, free from torture and coercion.

Saeed’s case is a harbinger of what is to come as Iran unleashes a frightening new crackdown on freedom of expression. Amnesty’s report released this week, “We are ordered to crush you”: Expanding Repression of Dissent in Iran, reveals a widening net of repression in Iran — a net increasingly focused on Internet users and free speech on the web.

Freedom of expression was already on life support in Iran. Now, a “Cyber Army” has been unleashed to impose a total information blackout in the country.

Internet users in Iran increasingly find themselves caught in the crosshairs of this new wing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, a shadowy group entrusted with cutting off the free flow of information in the country. The “Cyber Army” has also extended its reach abroad, blocking Amnesty’s website in Iran, and carrying out attacks on websites like Twitter and the Voice of America.

Many Iranians are scared into silence. And if anyone dares to fight back and criticize the government publicly, their words will cost them dearly. Harsh sentences like Saeed’s aren’t unheard of, and those imprisoned in Iran often face terrible mistreatment — torture, forced confessions, years of solitary confinement.

Iran cannot be allowed to violate human rights with impunity, online or offline. Saeed Malekpour must not be executed for his alleged crimes. As Iranians head to the ballot box, cast your “vote” today by taking action for freedom of expression in Iran.

Sincerely,

Elise Auerbach
Iran Country Specialist
Amnesty International USA