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…]

In this month’s newsletter, from the South America Team at AIUK, we encourage you to highlight two South America cases that feature in the Write for Rights Campaign.  There are updates on Brazil and Colombia and a reminder of three Urgent Actions that we have circulated during October.

Write for Rights Campaign

We have two cases in this year’s Write for Rights Campaign.  Máxima Acuña, a subsistence farmer in Peru, has been repeatedly harassed and physically attacked for standing up to one of the world’s biggest gold and copper mines.

Leopoldo López, a Venezuelan opposition leader who features in the on-line version of the campaign, is serving a prison sentence of 13 years and nine months prison sentence without any credible evidence against him.  [Leopoldo is already one of our casefiles – see take action].   We encourage you to feature Maxima and Leopoldo in your Write for Rights activities.

FCO Contacts

On 27 October, we called on Nigel Baker, the new Head of the FCO’s South America Department.  We identified a number of opportunities to work together in support of human rights in the region, especially in Colombia, Brazil and Venezuela. [Read more…]

This newsletter from Sue Bingham, AIUK Cuba Coordinator has some updates from the International Secretariat Caribbean team in Mexico and some significant  news stories from Cuba:

1) A number of dissidents, including Guillermo Fariñas,  winner of the 2010 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought,  carried out hunger strikes to protest against what seems to be a rising tide of repression of opponents of  the Cuban government. They were not in detention at the time.
Many people wanted to know why Amnesty has been silent on this subject. The IS view is that AI’s policy on hunger striking – for those detained – is neutral.  This means we understand hunger strikers have a right to take this extreme measure, as a form of free expression. We do not try and deter hunger strikers – although it is of course concerning – or express support. In this case as they were not detained, it’s complex to comment on the actual hunger strike.
Amnesty would only be able to comment on the current human rights concerns they were raising, in other words, the alleged increase in violence and detentions reported, but obstacles remain in independently verifying those claims.

2) The Caribbean researcher has been busy preparing a report on police brutality & its effects on female relatives of victims in Jamaica (which will be launched on 23 Nov), and will now begin to focus on the Cuba study – ONLINE FREEDOMS – which is scheduled to be released in March / April 2017. There will be opportunities for campaigning activities then. [Read more…]