Skip to main content
Amnesty International UK
Log in
2013 (24)
Dec 18 2013 2:29PM
Beaten for being gay

When Olympic bronze-medal winning diver Tom Daley made 'that' announcement to his 2.4 million Twitter followers, it made headlines in the national press for days. Sadly, he received a fair number of homophobic comments , but the vast...

Dec 17 2013 6:40PM
Tortured and jailed for peaceful protest and the raising of a flag

Johan Teterissa is a primary school teacher serving a 15-year sentence for leading a peaceful protest in 2007 in Indonesia. He was arrested along with 21 other activists during a government organised event in Ambon, the capital of...

Nov 29 2013 10:56AM
Offices attacked, vital evidence stolen and burned. Write a letter in support of El Salvador’s Pro-Búsqueda

In the early hours of 14 November, three armed men forced their way into the offices of Pro-Búsqueda, an organisation dedicated to locating children who ‘disappeared’ during El Salvador’s civil war. Three staff members were held...

Nov 26 2013 11:56AM
Abolishing 're-education through labour' in China - a glimmer of hope for North Korea?

I recently gave a talk to our Mid-Gloucestershire group on the widespread use of political prison camps in North Korea. After the talk, one of the questions stuck with me: could we put pressure on the Chinese government to use their...

Nov 14 2013 5:19PM
The Men Vanish, the Women Insist on Finding Them

For the Rangel family, 10 November will always be a day of sorrow. On that day four years ago, Héctor Rangel Ortiz phoned his family from a hotel in Monclova, Coahuila, to say that the municipal police had stopped him and his two...

Oct 23 2013 12:43PM
Filep Karma: 15 years in prison for raising a flag of independence

Filep Karma is serving 15 years in prison after participating in an annual ceremony in Abepura in 2004, at which a Papuan independence flag was raised. The Morning Star flag is banned by the authorities as a symbol of Papuan...

Oct 18 2013 1:16PM
My prison life: Kim Young Soon on North Korea's secret prison camps

Last week I had the good fortune of meeting and introducing a remarkable woman in her late sixties or early seventies. She has spent 8 years of her life imprisoned in one of the darkest, most secretive prisons in the world today. But...

Oct 16 2013 12:47PM
Violence against Trade Unionists: continued crimes from Guatemala's civil war

Death threats on the telephone, followed by an attack by armed gunmen and the murder of another trade unionist in Guatemala. A scene that could have come straight from Guatemala City in the 70s or 80s, during the peak of the Guatemalan...

Oct 7 2013 3:56PM
Fears that 20,000 people died in North Korean prison camps

Recently I woke to the words of a truly horrific news item reaching my ears from my bedside radio - news that the lives of 20,000 of my fellow human beings are currently unaccounted for, feared dead. Twenty thousand people I regard as...

Sep 10 2013 2:54PM
Chile: 40 years on, the full story still hasn't been told

Carlos Reyes-Manzo is a photojournalist who was 'disappeared', detained and tortured by the Pinochet regime. This is his story. In 1973 I was a member of the Socialist party's national council and worked as a photojournalist and for...

Sep 9 2013 5:07PM
Enforced disappearance is torture for the families left behind

When someone you love “disappears” it leaves a deep, searing scar. There’s no closure. No grave to place flowers on. Just pain and uncertainty, with an unquenchable thirst for justice. María Guzman describes it as torture. Her life...

Aug 29 2013 4:13PM
More action is needed for Mexico's disappeared

'Disappeared'. It was in Latin America that this word first took on its new and cruel meaning. The "disappeared" have not vanished into thin air: many have been killed. Others will almost certainly never see their family again, held by...

Aug 22 2013 3:18PM
Ellsberg, Manning, Snowden: the varying fates of whistleblowers.

“ It wasn't what he said exactly that changed my worldview. It was the example he was setting with his life. How his words in general showed that he was a stellar American. There was no question in my mind that my government was...

Aug 16 2013 12:00AM
Vedanta: Ten Nil to the Dongria Kondh

In April 2013 the Indian Supreme Court put the decision about whether or not a bauxite mine could be built in Orissa back in the hands of the local village councils. Here one of our Country Coordinators for South Asia provides an...

Aug 9 2013 5:48PM
Indigenous Day in Bangladesh

I had the privilege of attending the Indigenous day celebrations in Dhaka on 9 th August 2011. It was a wonderful colourful event. I saw the clothes and dances of the peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts that I was familiar with and...

Jul 29 2013 2:47PM
India: harassment and delaying tactics increasing after Orissa Mining court decision

The Dongria Khondh indigenous community of Orissa, in eastern India is still in danger of losing their ancestral land and the mountain that is sacred to them in spite of the Indian Supreme Court ruling in April. The ruling gave village...

Jun 25 2013 1:48PM
Personal experience of Land Rights in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

“ Indigenous peoples are guardians of nature” said Ban Ki Moon. On 12 th June Amnesty published “Pushed to the Edge”, which details the human rights issues in the Chittagong Hill Tracts region (CHT) of South East Bangladesh that I...

Jun 10 2013 4:13PM
Turkish police can't hide brutality behind balloons and bunting

Turkey has a Police Day – it’s April 10 th , founding date of its police force in 1845 during the Ottoman empire. Events and parades have the aim, according to the Turkish National Police, of bringing the police “closer to all citizens...

May 15 2013 2:42PM
Almost 30 years on, the search for justice in Guatemala continues

29 years ago today Carlos Cuevas, a 24 year old Guatemalan student and activist disappeared. Almost 30 years on, Carlos’ sister, Ana Lucia Cuevas continues her search for justice for the abduction of her brother. On 15 th May 1984, as...

May 13 2013 10:46AM
El Salvador’s abortion laws could kill 22-year old Beatriz

The issue of abortion rights was a controversial subject for some at Amnesty. But many of those who opted out of campaigning in this area have been touched by the story of Beatriz in El Salvador. This is a case which takes the argument...

1/2
1/2