About this group
Amnesty International Sutton Coldfield and District Local Group is a forum for local Amnesty activists in Sutton Coldfield and the surrounding area to meet and work together to support human rights.
We meet once a month to discuss human rights issues, write letters in support of Amnesty International campaigns, and organise awareness-raising, campaigning and fundraising events.
Monthly Meetings
We meet at 8pm on the second Tuesday of every month (except August) in the Conference Centre, Holy Trinity Catholic Church, 69 Lichfield Road, Sutton Coldfield, B74 2NU.
New members are always given a warm welcome.
Prisoners of Conscience
We are currently campaigning on behalf of Prisoner of Conscience Leila de Lima, a Philippines Senator and prominent Human Rights Defender who was arrested on trumped-up drugs charges in February 2017. She remains in detention, without trial, at the Philippine National Police Custodial Center in Quezon City.
Senator de Lima has long been a vocal critic of Philippines’ President Rodrigo Duterte, whose self-styled “war on drugs” has seen an unprecedented rise in extra-judicial killings – estimated at over 12,000 over his 2-year presidency – together with an ever-increasing targeting of journalists and human rights defenders, and the undermining of judicial independence.
Under previous Presidencies, prominent lawyer de Lima was appointed firstly as Chair of the Philippine Commission on Human Rights, and subsequently as Secretary of the Department of Justice, where she investigated the activities of well-connected drug pushers. As a Senator, she campaigned against Duterte’s violent war on drugs, and in February 2017 was arrested for supposedly violating the drug trafficking law, citing testimonies from those same drug-pushers she had jailed.
De Lima is officially Duterte's first political prisoner and an Amnesty Prisoner of Conscience. In 2018, Amnesty Philippines gave her the “Most Distinguished Human Rights Defender” award. We are calling for her unconditional release.
Campaigns
We are actively involved in current Amnesty International campaigns including Women's Human Rights; Control Arms; Refugees and Asylum and Poverty and Human Rights.