In her 2007 Report speech, Secretary General Irene Khan described how “powerful governments… deliberately fomented fear to erode human rights.”
In my job at Amnesty International I think a lot about torture. I think about how governments are able to make people think that torture is acceptable — at least in some circumstances. And I think about the people I have met who have been tortured - and the disconnection between their experiences and what government officials try to argue.
Continue reading ‘Politicians use fear to attempt to justify torture’
As we pulled together press packs in English and Russian for today’s simultaneous launch of the AIR in Moscow, we wondered nervously how many people would come. Not only was it a wilting 32 degrees C, but the evening before we had heard from a group of journalists and civil society activists how difficult it presently was for independent voices to speak out and be heard in the Russian Federation.
I was stunned one morning last February when I opened the press and read that three Sri Lankan men, with whom I had been in contact and on whose behalf I had been working, had been executed several hours earlier in Saudi Arabia. It was upsetting and confusing. I was greatly distressed by such a brutal and sudden end.
Irene Khan, Amnesty International Secretary General, has posted an entry on the popular 
There was real optimism in international relations in the early 1990s - the Berlin wall had fallen; democracy and freedom were on the march in many parts of the world; peace in Northern Ireland looked possible; talks at Camp David promised reconciliation in the Middle East.
It was a bright morning in Manhattan on the small patch of sidewalk they call Ralph Bunch Park, opposite the UN building. This was the day the First Committee of the UN General Assembly was going to consider a resolution on the international Arms Trade Treaty (ATT).
In June, at last came the chance to hand over our Control Arms ‘Million Faces’ petition to Kofi Annan, the then UN Secretary General. It had been collected thanks to work by arms control activists around the world over the last three years. The biggest photo petition ever!
It was a bright, cold December morning and I was cycling through the streets of London in an orange jumpsuit. Not something I’d normally do, but I had a good reason. I was on my way to an AI demonstration at Downing Street - organised to mark the beginning of a month of activism calling for the closure of Guantánamo and the return of UK residents. My role was back-up protestor - called into action if any of the eight others didn’t make it.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when we launched a campaign for the right to maternal and infant health care at a national health conference in Peru in July 2006. This was the first time I had launched a campaign on the right to health for the most vulnerable.