Press release me, let me go

There was a sort of collective gasp in the office last week. People were circulating a news report about an influential Saudi cleric called Sheikh Habadan. He was on Saudi TV saying women should wear a niqab (full veil) but with only...

Today we released a fantastic new online film called "Sleepwalk", the next phase in our campaign against UK government plans to extend detention without charge limits to 42 days. It feels like Ive been working on nothing else for the...

Big up to the people of Pakistan. We at Amnesty always talk about creating mass movements, but frankly we’ve been dwarfed by what’s happening there. A campaign called Yeh Hum Naheen – This is Not Us – and financed by British and...

Every morning the media team comes together to run through what’s happening in the world. And for the last few weeks I’ve been banging on about India and the unfolding crisis in the northern state of Orissa. Dozens of people have been...

So, the US is angry because a US judge has ruled that 17 ethnic Uighur detainees held at Guantánamo Bay should be released into the United States. And who wouldn’t be in their place? What’s the world coming to when you can’t hold a few...

At first glance there’s something ridiculous about news of Iran’s “gender sensitive car ”. Could it even be a hoax story? (Well, apparently not). A government-backed Iranian car company called Iran Khodro is launching it next June, to...

Is 42 days ‘politically dead’? Nick Robinson of the BBC says so , and the UK political blogosphere have all reported as much – though most are just reiterating what he said. If its corpse still seems to be twitching it may just be...

Pick up a newspaper any day of the week and youll likely find at least one story about violence against women. Sad but true, and today there are some startling examples. In the Independent , Kim Sengupta reveals that of five prominent...

Today marks 40 years since one of the worst cases of mass killing took place in Mexico City’s history – the Tlatelolco massacre. As Al-Jazeera English reports, the massacre occurred when hundreds of students took to the main square in...

Georgia and South Ossetia have slipped right off the news agenda – clearly not enough wealthy bankers there – but that doesn't mean everything’s hunky-dory. EU monitors started their mission there today , and already they’re having...

I was recently watching My Beautiful Launderette on DVD. My girlfriend’s idea. I wasn’t massively keen. I’d seen it on TV in the eighties and remembered it as only ok-ish. But, hey, it was pretty good! It’s definitely strange though...

Some of you may have heard Amnesty’s Democratic Republic of Congo researcher on the Today programme at 6.50 this morning. He spoke movingly of the dreadful impact that the conflict in eastern DRC is having on the general population in...

I was only saying two days ago that “good news” in the human rights world isn’t really a cue for unrestrained joy. Releasing a handful of political prisoners while leaving thousands in jail (Burma) is not exactly an occasion for...

Scatological humour has come under attack in Russia, as a broadcaster that showed an episode of South Park, featuring the above-named festive singing stool, fa(e)ces court proceedings and could lose their licence. They are also being...

Other Amnesty bloggers have got there before me, but it seems only right to say in this post that there’s a palpable sense of relief in the office today that Troy Davis has avoided execution in Georgia, USA – for now – following his...

Amid the reports that Burma’s decided to release 9,000 prisoners for good conduct, Amnesty has learned that U Win Tin – Burma’s longest serving prisoner of conscience who’s been in prison for 19 years – is free at last. At 78, U Win...

“His guilt or innocence doesn't matter. No one should be incarcerated for 33 years in the shadow of the execution chamber. It is an act of barbarism to keep any man in those conditions.” I could easily have written it myself, but this...

It’s not all doom and gloom at Amnesty International you know! In fact – there’s excellent news right here in this very post. Mohamed Erraji , the Moroccan blogger who was facing a two-year sentence for remarks made about the Moroccan...

There was an amazing news item on Channel 4 News this week. It was a film of a Taliban compound in Afghanistan. Amongst other stuff it had a stunning “film within a film” (“supplied to us by the Taliban themselves”, said C4’s Alex...

If you think we’ve got a crisis here, have a look at what’s happening in Malaysia, where a second blogger has been arrested this week as the embattled government seeks to clamp down on its critics. The government appears to be at risk...