The latest newsletter from the South America Team at AIUK – Ellie May (Brazil), Richard Crosfield (Colombia), Graham Minter (Rest of South America).

This month, you can read about our South American coordinator’s petition hand-in, asking for the Venezuelan opposition leader to be released. They have Urgent Actions on behalf of a Venezuelan transgender lawyer, an Argentinian social leader, the Asháninka Meantari community in Peru and two for Colombia, including the Peace Community. The Brazilian Coordinator has also submitted information to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office ahead of the next UN Periodic Review on Brazil taking place early May.
Finally, this month also sees the release of Amnesty’s global Annual Report.  Amnesty hailed 2016 as the year of “us against them”, with leaders singling out groups of people as a threat to national interests. All South American countries have their own reports. You will find links to each under each country section for reference and all other South American countries with a report listed at the end of the newsletter.

Venezuela

On 17 February Graham Minter joined a small group of AIUK staff on a visit to the Venezuelan Embassy to deliver over 2000 petition signatures calling for the release of the opposition leader Leopoldo López. You can read Graham’s blog reporting the experience here.
You will find an Urgent Action on behalf of a transgender lawyer Samantha Seijas. On 31 January he and his daughter were beaten about the head and face by police officers from the Aragua Police Force when they visited a police station opposite their home to file a complaint.  [Read more…]

Hello
Welcome our the latest newsletter.
Our next meeting is on Thursday 9th February 2017, 7.30 at Moordown Community Centre.
On the agenda – Planning 2017; Case file & campaign updates and letter writing.

Good news on cluster bombs

Just before the Christmas, the Government finally admitted that Saudi Arabia had indeed dropped UK cluster bombs in its bombing campaign in Yemen and in doing so, confirmed that Amnesty International research was entirely correct. When we alerted the UK government to this in May 2016, the Government strongly denied it, as did Saudi Arabia.
This is a major victory for our research work and campaigning to keep the government under pressure on this issue. Amnesty joined with 100s of other organisations around the world to campaign to ban cluster bombs because of the risks they pose to civilians. Cluster bombs scatter 100s of lethal bomblets that can continue to kill and cause horrific injuries long after the conflict has ended. The UK rightly banned these horrific weapons and their use in Yemen provides yet more evidence of indiscriminate nature of the Saudi Arabian led coalition’s bombing campaign. [Read more…]

The latest newsletter from the South America Team at AIUK . In this month’s newsletter, they encourage us to write to the authorities in Brazil urging them to tackle the rising tide of killings in the country’s prisons.  There is some good news from Colombia but trade union leaders and human rights defenders remain under threat.  In Argentina, security forces have again attacked a Mapuche indigenous community.  Amnesty has expressed concern about the continued crackdowns against the opposition in Venezuela.

“Brazil

We urgently need you to take action for recent killings in Brazil’s prisons. Since January 1^st over 120 inmates have died during riots and disturbances in north and north-eastern states. [Read more…]

[Read more…]

The latest newsletter from the South America Team at AIUK – Ellie May (Brazil), Richard Crosfield (Colombia), Graham Minter (Rest of South America).

“Let us start by wishing you a Happy New Year! We hope you’re all rested after the holiday season and ready to get stuck into some human rights campaigning as we’ve got plenty to keep you busy over the next few months.

In this newsletter we have actions for Venezuela and Brazil and we’re excited to see the launch of the Amnesty Latin America wide platform for Human Rights Defenders. We also have updates from Colombia following our Colombia Coordinator’s meeting with the FCO and his written requests to the Colombian Ambassador.

Regional

On 9 December, Amnesty launched an online platform to register and raise awareness of attacks against territory, land and environmental rights defenders in Latin America.  The platform consists of an interactive map that displays individual stories of people and communities who defend these rights and who have suffered threats or attacks due to their work.  You can access the platform here.  [Read more…]