Cambridge City Amnesty International

Our next letter writing evening will be in CB2 bistro on Norfolk Street (just off East Road, opposite the Grafton Centre) from 8pm on Monday 21st July. We’ll be upstairs as usual. Newcomers are especially welcome - no previous letter writing experience is required!

The next group meeting will be a training workshop on Media and Lobbying by Sarah Oliver and Liesbeth ten Ham. It will take place on Thursday 10th July at Jesus Lane Friends’ Meeting House, starting at 7.45pm.

The next group meeting will be on Thursday 13th March, Jesus Lane Friends’ Meeting House, starting at 7.45pm.

Fiona Muchembere Programme Manager, Governance and Advocacy of Camfed will speak on the plight of women in rural Africa. Camfed is an international organisation dedicated to eradicating poverty in Africa through the
education of girls and the empowerment of young women. Five days after International Women’s Day, Fiona will look at both the causes and consequences of the massive exclusion from education of girls and young women. She will discuss how Camfed’s programmes are empowering the world’s most disadvantaged social group.

The next group meeting will be on Thursday 14 February at the Friends Meeting House, Jesus Lane. Meetings start at 7.45pm

The next group meeting will be on Thursday 13th December at 7.45pm at the Friends Meeting House, Jesus Lane. We’ll be writing greetings cards to prisoners and human rights defenders across the world. There’ll also be an exhibition of human rights cartoons.

All meetings are at the Friends Meeting House, Jesus Lane, Cambridge, and start at 7.45.

• 11 October, Gitti Dunham, country co-ordinator for Central Asia
• 8th November, China Olympics campaign workshop (tbc)
• 13th December, Greeting Card Campaign action and human rights cartoon exhibition
• 10th January, talk by Act together, Women’s Action for Iraq and
  (DVD) showing of Baghdad Days. This is a film about Hiba Bassem, a young woman from Kirkuk who returns to Baghdad after the war, to finish her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts. The film is a diary of her year as she tries to find a place to live, looks for work, graduates from college, deals with family problems and struggles to come to terms with her position as a woman on her own.

The Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane, Cambridge CB5 8BA

Thursday 13 September.

7.45pm, Campaigning against Modern Day slavery

After our summer break during August, we will be having a talk by Lucy Chandler, long term trustee of Anti-Slavery International, who will speak about slavery today. She will also show a moving DVD about today’s issues.

Today in the UK, an estimated 5,000 people are enslaved as a result of human trafficking for sexual exploitation and forced labour, many of them working in the cleaning and catering trades.

Amnesty International is an international movement of ordinary people from around the world standing up for humanity and human rights. Amnesty works independently and impartially to promote respect for all the human rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It concentrates on ending abuses of the rights to physical and mental integrity, freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination.

Anti-Slavery International, founded in 1839, is the world’s oldest international human rights organisation and the only charity in the United Kingdom to work exclusively against slavery and related abuses.

The Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane, Cambridge CB5 8BA

Thursday 12 July.

7.45pm, Business Meeting AI Cambridge City Group
8.15pm (approx), Barrie Hay, AIUK country-co-ordinator for the South Caucasus, who will talk about human rights issues in the South Caucasus, some current actions and about the role of (volunteer) country co-ordinators in AIUK.

Since the collapse of the USSR the South Caucasus has suffered from poverty and corruption. There is impunity for the authorities in many countries. Torture is used to gain confessions. Prison conditions are appalling with high rates of HIV and TB. In Georgia, there are continuing allegations of torture and ill treatment in police custody. Executions continue in Belarus and Uzbekistan.

Media and political control by the state remains the norm. Violence against women has reached epidemic proportions in Russia, and there is trafficking of thousands of women annually to the West from former USSR states.

There are a number of ethnic and other conflicts, including Chechnya in the Russian Federation and South Ossetia in Georgia, where disappearances, torture and other human rights violations against the civilian population by state and non-state actors are widely reported. There is widespread persecution of ethnic minorities and religious repression. Anti-terrorism measures are often used as an excuse to justify this repression.

The South Caucasus countries of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan present different challenges for Amnesty International in tackling human rights violations. As well as the violations facing the rest of the Former Soviet Union, a new report on the plight of some 600 000 Azerbaijanis who were displaced from Nagorny Karabakh following the conflict in the late 1980s, and one of the largest proportions of internally displaced peoples in the world, illustrates AI’s concerns in the region.

The Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane, Cambridge CB5 8BA

Thursday 14 June.

7.45pm, Business Meeting AI Cambridge City Group
8.15pm (approx), Dr Louise Pirouet, chair of CamOak (Cambridge Oakington Concern) will talk about the latest developments at Oakington, and changes in the treatment of asylum seekers particularly as it affects minors.

The Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane, Cambridge CB5 8BA

Thursday 10 May.

7.45pm, Business Meeting AI Cambridge City Group
8.15pm, AI Workshop: Terror, Security & Human Rights, led by Liesbeth ten Ham

Terrorism is not a new phenomenon. But the “War on Terror� is. The terrible attacks against the US on 11 September 2001 have had repercussions for the whole world and have changed the global human rights environment.

This aim of this workshop is to give an overview of Amnesty’s work in this area, and to come up with ideas for actions.