At our AGM in June Jennie
Pickstone and Voirrey cThorstein stood down as chair and treasurer respectively
and we thank them for their contribution to the group.
Stuart Cane was elected as
the new chair and Megan Mandizha as treasurer while Janice Foxley continues
as secretary.
We also had
an excellent talk from Simon Braybrook about his recent trip to Israel
and the Occupied Territories.
May
Meeting Report
Our May meeting introduced
the China campaign which is calling on China to keep its promises it
made to improve human rights when it was awarded the Olympics.
Amnesty is not calling for
a boycott to the games, but is calling on China to ensure that the Olympics
offer a positive legacy, not just sporting, social and economic but
also for human rights.
Instead
China is using the Olympics to make the situation worse by targetting
human rights defenders, using detention without trial to clear the streets
and increasing the suppression of free speech on the internet and by
journalists.
Our April meeting focussed
on two of the group’s ongoing campaigning work in North Africa.
Sudan
Firstly Linda gave an update
of the situation in Sudan. Sunday 13th April marked the latest Global
Day for Darfur, which this year highlighted the plight of children in
Darfur. Of the 4 million people affected by the situation in the region,
1.8m are children, of whom 1 million have been displaced from their
homes.
On the positive side, the
UN has established primary schools in the refugee camps and 28% of the
children now attend primary school, 46% of them girls. However there
is no secondary schooling and many youths end up in armed gangs or as
child soldiers.
African Union troops were
finally deployed at the end of 2007 but they remain under-resourced
and under-equipped so have little effect. The Sudanese government continues
to arm the Janjawid militia with weapons supplied by China and a resolution
seems a long way off.
Amnesty is calling on the
UN Security Council to insist that the Sudanese government immediately
disarm the Janjawid militia, arrest them and prosecute them for the
war crimes they are committing.
Algeria
Naomi then gave an update
on Algeria. Amnesty’s main focus for 2008 on the entire region
is around the response to the “war on terror.” Many terror
suspects face torture at the hands of government agencies, such as the
military police (DRS) in Algeria.
Despite this, the UK continues
to deport terror suspects to Jordan, Libya and Algeria on the basis
of “diplomatic assurances” that torture will not be used.
Amnesty believes that these are unreliable, unenforceable and undermine
international agreements that prohibit torture.
We also continue to call
for information about Djameleddine Fahassi, a journalist who “disappeared
in Algeria in May 1995. We ending the meeting by signing cards for his
wife and daughter Safia and Myriam.
China
Campaign
Our next meeting in May will
be on the China campaign. When China was awarded the Olympic Games,
it promised to improve human rights. Time is now running out and China
is failing to keep its promises. In fact the human rights situation
is deteriorating because of the Olympics as China clamps down on human
rights defenders and censorship of the internet.
To get involved with the
campaign please come along to the next meeting on May 12th.
The Amnesty Cardiff site
is now available in Welsh with grateful thanks to Peter Bradley. Please
note this site may not be viewable in Internet Explorer 6 (please use
IE7 or another browser such as Firefox, Safari or Opera).
