January Diary

Best wishes for a happy and peaceful new year from Stratford Amnesty Group. Together let’s make it a good one for human rights.

Join our successful Write for Rights campaign We believe these four inspiring women deserve our support and encouragement in their struggles. You can help, to take action now just follow the links.

Atena Daemi  Jailed for opposing the death penalty. Atena Daemi is an Iranian woman serving seven years in jail for criticising Iran's death penalty on social media. She handed out leaflets and took part in a peaceful protest against the execution of a young woman. The authorities arrested her for this in 2016 - her sham trail lasted just 15 minutes. 

Geraldine Chacon Persecuted for her youth work. Geraldine Chacon is a bright Venezuelan law graduate and Amnesty youth activist. She is an amazing role model for young women in her country, but instead of supporting her work, the Venezuelan authorities have persecuted her for years. 

Nawal Benaissa Hounded for demanding change. Nawal is a campaigner and leading voice in the popular Hirak movement, a rights group working for social justice and better health services for people living in the Rif region of Morocco. Over the course of four months she was arrested four times and ordered to close her Facebook account which had 80,000 followers. In February 2018 she was fined and given a 10 month suspended sentence for 'inciting to commit an offence'.

Nonhle Mbuthuma  Death threats for protecting her community. Nonhle is part of the Amadiba community who've living for centuries in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. For over a decade she's led a peaceful struggle against the company that wants to mine on her people's ancestral land. For this she's faced intimidation, harassment and death threats. A fellow campaigner has been killed. 

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

Sadly Nazanin and her family marked two depressing events during the Christmas period. The British-Iranian mother spent her 40^th birthday on Boxing Day still in prison where Amnesty International considers her to be a prisoner of conscience and December 29^th marked her 1,000 day away from her family.

Stratford group like all Amnesty members continues to highlight this injustice and press for her release. Let's make 2018 her last year in prison. 

There is no monthly meeting in January so our next group meeting will be at 7.00 p.m. on Wednesday February 13th 2019 at the Friends' Meeting House. 

Other group news for January

Saturday January 19th 2019 7.30 Oriflamme and Coventry Philharmonic Concert at St. Mary's Church Warwick in aid of Amnesty International.