COORDINATOR’S CORNER
First of all, I am very grateful
for all the good wishes for Baby Lucas and Mommy Alexi -- we're all doing well,
at the one-month mark Lucas is cute and thriving (knock the proverbial wood),
and we're gradually getting back to work, at least some important
things like newsletter
columns and writing actions. I'm
looking forward to bringing him to his first Amnesty meeting, hopefully in the
near future. Thanks to Martha Ter
Maat for the wonderful column last month celebrating Lucas's birth (on June 19)
and also reminding us of the work still needed in this country to ratify the
International Convention on the Rights of the Child. I hope everyone can take the time to send a little note on
behalf of little Lucas, if you didn't get around to it last month (like me, I
confess); you can still visit the AIUSA website Children’s Human Rights
page
http://www.amnestyusa.org/children
to learn more and take action on the
Children’s
Convention as well as AI’s other concerns about the human
rights of children.
Martha's
membership in All Saints Church in Pasadena has led to very productive
collaboration with several groups in the church, which is known for its
progressive approach to promoting social justice. Last month, All Saints hosted Cosette Thompson, Amnesty's
director for the western region of the USA, who spoke on human rights and
sexual identity, giving an overview of responses to LGBT (Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual and Transgender) individuals around the world. Unfortunately, while some societies
actively work to promote tolerance and acceptance, there are all too many
examples of (officially or unofficially sanctioned) intolerance, persecution,
torture and murder. Within the
context of its yearlong campaign against torture, Amnesty International
recently released a report on the worldwide use of torture against
LGBT individuals.
The
following week at All Saints, social justice and the collaboration with Amnesty
International were featured in the service, and our group was again invited to
staff a table there. We
can look forward
to more opportunities to collaborate in the future, and strengthening our ties
with groups in the church which are also actively working on the human-rights
issues we focus on.
This
month, we have a very special guest at our monthly meeting on Thursday evening,
July 26: Tseten Phanuchuras, who will give a first-hand account of Tibet and
discuss the human-rights situation there
(see the calendar for details).
Please join us at the special location (a block from the usual place)
for delicious Indian refreshments and a touching and informative evening with
the speaker.
Thanks
to group member Joyce Wolf for organizing this event; along with Robert Adams,
Joyce coordinates our group's work on behalf of imprisoned Tibetan monk Ngawang
Pekar. And thanks to our
multi-talented
Lucas "the big one, not the baby" Kamp, simultaneously our
Letter-Writing Coordinator as well as our Electronic Media Coordinator, for
graciously opening his home to us for this event.
Hope
to see you there!
Cheers,
Larry Romans,
Coordinator
818-354-5809 ljr@ljr.net
UPCOMING
EVENTS
Thursday,
July 26, 7:30 PM. Monthly Meeting Special Meeting Location: 187 S. Catalina Ave. #2, in
Pasadena (just south of Cordova, north of Del Mar, about a block north of our
regular meeting place) phone: 626-795-1785. Help us plan future actions on Tibet, the Campaign against
Torture and abolition of the death penalty. This month we welcome special guest
Tseten
Phanucharas, who fled
Tibet two months before the Dalai Lama.
She's a past president of the L.A. Friends of Tibet, and she will talk
to us about human rights in Tibet. This is a great opportunity for our group to
learn more about Tibetan history and culture and perhaps get some fresh
perspectives for our long term commitment to work on behalf of prisoner of
conscience Ngawang Pekar
Tuesday,
August 13, 7:30 PM.
Letter-writing Meeting at the Athenaeum.
Corner of California & Hill in the basement recreation area. An informal meeting, a great place for
first-timers to ask questions!
Sunday, August 19,
7:30 PM. Rights
Readers Human Rights Book Discussion
Group at Borders Books on S. Lake Avenue. This month we
discuss The Tattooed Soldier by
Hector Tobar (see
below).
GOVERNMENT ACTION
NETWORK
No Excuses Left for Failing to Arrest
All Remaining War Crimes Suspects
It has
been nine years
since the outbreak of war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a war which produced
a series of
gross human rights violations. The United Nations Security Council established
the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, to
bring to justice
those who committed human rights violations anywhere in the formerYugoslavia.
According to Security Council Resolutions and the UN Charter, all
member governments
are responsible for cooperating with the Tribunal, including by arresting
suspects. However, the Tribunal has depended largely upon the NATO-led
peacekeeping force (SFOR) stationed in Bosnia-Herzegovina to arrest those who
have been indicted.
While SFOR troops
have made some arrests in Bosnia, there are still more than 25 indictees at
large, many of them known to be living in Bosnia. The very slow pace of these
arrests has several harmful effects, including:
- many of these suspects who are still at
large continue
to exercise political influence behind the scenes, thereby
reinforcing ethnic
intolerance and obstructing efforts to institutionalize interethnic
power-sharing;
- long intervals between arrests prevent the Tribunal
from consolidating trials of individuals who are subject to the same
indictment, thereby wasting the Tribunal's limited resources;
- the slow pace of prosecutions makes it very
difficult for families of the victims of "ethnic cleansing" to
have a sense of closure about the loss of their loved ones, which in turn
limits the potential for eventual reconciliation.
More decisive action by SFOR in
pursuing every single indicted suspect would send a powerful message of
deterrence to would-be perpetrators of future war crimes and crimes against
humanity. A strong message that these crimes will not be tolerated by the
international community cannot help but contribute to long-term stability in
the Balkans and elsewhere.
Write to Colin Powell
and Donald Rumsfeld
and tell them no more excuses!
Sample letter below:
Honorable Colin
Powell
Secretary of
State
U.S. Department of
State
2201 C St., N.W.
Washington, DC
20520
Honorable Donald
Rumsfeld
Secretary of
Defense
U.S. Department of
Defense
The
Pentagon
Washington, DC
20301
Dear Secretary
[Powell] [Rumsfeld]:
The Bush
Administration deserves credit and thanks for persistently seeking the transfer
of Slobodan Milosevic to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia. However, it is long past time for our government to fulfill its own
obligation to cooperate with the Hague Tribunal.
About 25 publicly
indicted war crimes suspects remain at large. The Tribunal also has issued
other indictments that have not been made public. Many indicted suspects are
known to be in Bosnia, where thousands of international peacekeeping troops are
deployed. Yet SFOR, the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Bosnia, has made only
one arrest in the last year.
U.S. credibility is
at stake. Pressured by the US and other governments, reformers in
Belgrade risked
their political futures by sending Milosevic to The Hague. But the US
Government has been very reluctant to use its troops in Bosnia to arrest other
indicted suspects whose continuing presence and influence in the country
undermine efforts to heal the deep wounds of "ethnic
cleansing."
The apprehension of
all alleged war criminals in Bosnia is vital to justice and lasting stability
in theBalkans. The sooner SFOR carries out its responsibility to make arrests,
the sooner our troops can come home for good. I urge you to make every effort
to ensure that SFOR promptly arrests all remaining indictees. Please let me
know how the Administration plans to address this issue.
Sincerely,
OUTFRONT for HUMAN
RIGHTS!
Ecuador: Death Threats to Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual and Transgender Human Rights Defenders
Orlando Montoya,
Director of Equidad, a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT)
organization based in Quito, Ecuador, and members of this organization received
several anonymous death threats during the end of March and throughout April
2001. E-mails addressed to him accused him of being an "ideologist of
human scum" and promised that he would "be the first" (Orlando
Montoya mentalizador de la escoria humana seras el primero). Orlando Montoya is
a well know human rights defender and was a co-founder of the first LGBT
organisation in Ecuador, Sociedad Gay, Gay Society. He has been advocating LGBT
people's rights, in particular he has been campaigning on eradicating human
rights violations against LGBT people, including torture and ill-treatment,
since 1985.
Neptali Arias
Zambrano, Director of Friends for Life Foundation, Fundación Amigos por
la Vida, an LGBT human rights organisation and Cristhian Landeta,
Coordinator of
Rainbow Youth, Juventud Arco Iris, an AIDS prevention group, based in
Guayaquil, received an e-mail whose subject box read: Exterminio de Sodoma y
Gomorra, "The Extermination of Sodom and Gomorrah" on 3 April 2001.
The message compared Ecuador's two main cities, Quito and Guayaquil, with Sodom
and Gomorrah, promising to clean both cities of queers. Amigos por la Vida,
Friends for Life, has received at least five new telephone threats in the last
two weeks of April. A anonymous male caller said "we are keeping an eye on
you" (los estamos vigilando).
Death threats have
been received by other members of the LGBT community since March
2001. On 30 April
2001, a number of Ecuadorean human rights organizations from Quito and
Guayaquil presented a letter to the authorities informing them of the death
threats that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people and defenders of
their rights have been receiving since March. They expressed concern
that the threats
could be a sign of a wider homophobic movement similar to the one that took
hold of the country in 1993 and 1994. At that time, more than 20 LGBT people
were killed in individual attacks. They also asked the Attorney General to take
action to find those responsible for the threats and bring them to
justice.
These threats comes
at a time when police officers have allegedly tortured and threatened to kill
LGBT people. According to reports from human rights NGOs, at least 60 have been
arbitrarily arrested in the last six months in Guayaquil alone. LGBT
organizations
such as those named above have reported many cases of ill-treatment and torture
and other allegations to the authorities, but little progress has
been made. Amnesty
International is monitoring these reports of police
abuses.
Please appeal to the
President and the Attorney General of Ecuador to request that an
immediate, exhaustive
and independent investigation is carried out into the threats and intimidation
against gay rights groups and that those responsible are brought to
justice.
Please also remind
the President and the Attorney General of the importance of adhering
to the principles
of the UN Declaration on the Right and Responsibility of Individuals, Groups
and Organs of Society to Promote and Protect Universally Recognized
Human Rights
and Fundamental Freedoms which states in Article 1 that "Everyone has the
right, individually and in association with others, to promote and to strive
for the protection and realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms at
the national and international levels".
Appeals to:
President
Dr. Gustavo Noboa Bejarano
Presidente Constitucional de la República del
Ecuador
Palacio de Carondelet
García Moreno 1043
Quito
ECUADOR
Salutation: Sr. Presidente/Mr.
President
Email:
despresi@presidencia.ec-gov.net
Attorney General
Dra. Mariana Yépez de
Velazco
Ministra Fiscal General de Estado
Robles 731 y Av. Amazonas
Quito
ECUADOR
Fiscal General/ Dear Attorney
General
Copies to:
Fundación
Equidad
Rabida N 26-32 y Santa María
Quito
Ecuador
equidad@ecuanex.net.ec
Fundación Amigos por la Vida
Pedro Carbo 1106 y Colón, 10º
piso
Guayaquil
Ecuador
LETTER COUNT
Prisoner of Conscience (Ngawang
Pekar):
11
Campaign Against Torture
3
Environment & Human
Rights
9
Government Action Network
2
Summer Postcard Action
14
Urgent Actions:
11
Total:
50
Want to add your letters to the
total? Get in touch with lucas.kamp@jpl.nasa.gov
RIGHTS
READERS
Human Rights Book Discussion
Group
Borders Books & Music
475 South Lake Avenue, Pasadena
Sunday, AUGUST
19, 7:30 PM
|
|
The Tattooed
Soldier by Héctor
Tobar
Pulitzer
Prize-winning reporter Hector Tobar's debut novel is a tragic tale of destiny
and consequence set in downtown Los Angeles on the eve of the 1992 riots.
Antonio Bernal is a Guatemalan refugee |
haunted by memories of his wife and child murdered at the
hands of a man marked with a yellow tattoo. Not far from Antonio's apartment,
Guillermo Longoria extends his arm and reveals a tattoo--yellow pelt, black
spots, red mouth. It is the mark of the death squad, the Jaguar Battalion of
the Guatemalan army. A chance encounter ignites a psychological showdown
between these two men who discover that the war in Central America has followed
them to the quemazones, the "great burning" of the Los
Angeles riots.
Finalist for a 1999
PEN Center USA West Award
In his fiction debut, Hector Tobar writes with a
journalist's eye and a novelist's heart. He brings the urban landscape to
gritty life on the page, and reveals the inner landscape of his characters with
stunning immediacy and precision.
PRISONER OF CONSCIENCE
Ngawang Pekar,
Tibetan Monk
Group 22 continues to seek the
release of prisoner of conscience (POC) Ngawang Pekar (naw-wan pee-kar), a
Tibetan Buddhist monk. He has been imprisoned since 1989 after being arrested
by Chinese authorities for participating in a peaceful demonstration in the
city of Lhasa, Tibet Autonomous Region, in support of Tibetan
independence.
By all reports, the oppression of
Tibetans by the Chinese authorities appears to be continuing unabated. For
example, in Lhasa there were renewed restrictions on the age-old traditional
celebration of Trunglha Yarsol (the Dalai Lama's birthday), including the
distribution of circulars "illegalizing" the holiday and the
arbitrary arrest and brief detention of hundreds of Tibetans just two days
prior to the anticipated 6 July celebration. Also, in May of 2001, a Tibetan
woman, and communist party member, "Migmar," was sentenced to six
years' imprisonment for watching a video of the Dalai Lama in her home, and in
March of 2001, following her release from Drapchi prison in February, a
twenty-five-year- old nun, "Sangmo," became blind as a
result of torture
and ill-treatment during her six-year imprisonment.
Per the suggestion of former
Tibetan POC Jampel Monlam, we request that you write a respectful letter to the
Chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Regional People's Government as our action on
behalf of Ngawang Pekar this month. Below is a sample letter that you can
either copy verbatim or, preferably, use as a guide in composing your own
letter:
Dear
Chairman:
I am writing to you out of
concern for a prisoner being held in Tibet Autonomous Region Prison No. 1. The
prisoner's name is NGAWANG PEKAR (layname: Paljor).
Ngawang Pekar, a Tibetan monk,
was arrested in 1989 for participating in a peaceful demonstration in the city
of Lasashi and sentenced to 8 years in prison. Subsequently, his sentence was
increased by an additional 6 years. Amnesty International considers him to be a
prisoner of conscience and I am concerned that he has been imprisoned
solely for
the peaceful exercise of his universally recognized right to freedom
of expression.
I am further deeply concerned about reports that he has been beaten and denied
access to medical care since his arrest.
I respectfully urge you to
request that Ngawang Pekar's case be reviewed and that he be immediately and
unconditionally released in accordance with the international laws to which
China is signatory. I further request that he be allowed access to independent
non-governmental agencies so that his current state of well-being may be
determined and made known.
I thank you for your attention to
this important matter and would greatly appreciate any further information that
your office may be able to provide.
Sincerely,
Address your letter to:
Legchog
Zhuren
Xizang Zizhiqu Renmin
Zhengfu
1
Kang'angdonglu
Lasashi 850000, Xizang
Zizhiqu
People's Republic of
China
Remember to include your name and
mailing address to enable a reply and that overseas postage for a normal letter
is now 80 cents. Please notify the Group 22 Coordinator if you
receive a reply.
JUST EARTH
NETWORK
Indigenous leaders in Colombia
threatened
For the last three years, Amnesty
International has been closely following the case of environmental
defender Grigory
Pasko, who was initially arrested by Federal Security Service (FSB) officers in
November 1997 and accused of espionage and revealing state secrets. Pasko, a journalist and former captain
in the Far Eastern Fleet, was arrested because he filmed and reported on the
human and environmental threats stemming from the illegal dumping of nuclear
waste by the Russian Navy into the Sea of Japan. The treatment of Pasko reflects a trend in Russia where
environmental activists are persecuted for speaking out on behalf of the
environment, as evidenced by other cases such as that of Aleksander
Nikitin. The real irony of the situation lies in
the fact that under the Russian Criminal Code it is a crime to withhold
information about the condition of the environment or on incidents or
catastrophes, which endanger human life -- precisely the kind of information
Pasko revealed.
Pasko was declared an
Amnesty Prisoner
of Conscience after his initial arrest and during his 20-month
pretrial detention. He was subjected to a military trial,
and at the time Amnesty raised concerns about the fairness of the trial and the
impartiality and independence of the court. The trial lasted from February until July 1999 at which time
Pasko was sentenced to three years imprisonment because of "abuse of
office." However, he
was immediately released from detention under the terms of a
nationwide amnesty. The charges of treason and espionage
were dismissed by the court.
Military prosecutors appealed
against the dismissal of the treason charges and called for the case to be
tried anew. The Russian Supreme
Court's Military Collegium decided in November 2000 that the July 1999 decision
did not correspond to the materials and the facts of the case, and
agreed to send
the case back for a retrial. The
trial was scheduled to begin on June 4th, but has been delayed until June 20th
and Grigory Pasko faces up to 20 years' imprisonment for doing
nothing more than
exercising his fundamental right to freedom of
expression.
Write to the Russian
authorities!
o
urge
them to fully and unconditionally acquit Pasko once and for all.
o
Ask
that all charges against him be dropped, as there is no evidence that
he committed
any crime under Russian laws.
o
Emphasize
that the information Pasko released was already public and did not constitute a
threat to national security.
o
Remind
the authorities that the government of Russia has committed itself to upholding
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including the right to
freedom of opinion
and expression.
Send letters
to:
Military Court of the Pacific Fleet
General-Mayoru S. Volkov
Russian Federation
690600 Primorsky Krai
g. Vladivostok
ul. Stetlanskaya 55
Voennomu Sudu Tihookeanskogo
Military Procurator of the Pacific
Fleet,
General-Major Valery Suchkov
Rossiyskaya Federatsiya
Primorsky Krai
g. Vladivostok
Voennaya prokuratura Tihookeanskogo
Flota
Voennomu prokuroru
General-Mayoru SUCHKOVU V.
Chairman of the State Duma Committee for
Ecology,
Grachev, V.A.
Rossiyskaya Federatsiya
103009 g. Moskva 103009
Okhotny ryad 1
Gosudarstvennaya Duma Rossiyskoy
Federatsii
Komitet po Ekology
Predsedatel
Grachevy, V. A.
You can send your letters to the individuals above care
of:
His Excellency Yuri Ushakov
Ambassador
Embassy of the Russian Federation
2650 Wisconsin Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20007
Editor's Last
Word:
Read us on line:
http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~aigp22
Martha Ter Maat, 626-281-4039 /
mtermaat@hsc.usc.edu
