Country specialists

Ahead of the Indonesian elections this month we joined TAPOL, Survival International and Down to Earth outside the Indonesian Embassy to call for the immediate and unconditional release of prisoners of conscience imprisoned solely for...

In Yarmouk just a few years ago you could never go hungry. A place which began as a Palestinian refugee camp in 1948 developed into a bustling commercial hub. Now, it’s no longer a sanctuary but the scene of some of the worst...

Today's World Book Day celebrates and encourages reading. What will you pick up today? Some Shakespeare, a classic fairy tale such as Puss in Boots perhaps, or something weightier like Dostoyevsky’s Crime & Punishment ? For Guantánamo...

Huber Matos, who was Amnesty’s first Cuban prisoner of conscience, has died aged 95. Matos was a schoolteacher who became an army commander in the revolutionary forces fighting to overthrow the Batista government. However, he disagreed...

The 2013 Human Rights Report on Indigenous people of Bangladesh has been published by the Kapaeeng Foundation, with the support of Oxfam and the European Union. The report shows that, in 2013, the number of incidents of human rights...

“We must be careful today. Last time, the police used tear gas and we had to run.” This was my interpreter’s warning as we walked to the court in Ankara to observe the third hearing of a trial for Amnesty in December 2013. The...

In December 2013, it was widely reported that the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un mercilessly ordered the execution of his once-powerful uncle for acts of treachery. His alleged crimes ranged from corruption and womanising to...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

'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...

“ 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...