So its all right then! Sir Jackie has his finger on the pulse and has given us the all clear.  Sir Jackie – believes anyone calling for the Bahrain Grand Prix to be cancelled due to unrest in the Gulf state are “out of order”.  Its worth remebering that this time last year there was far more of a noise to cancel the Bahrain Grand Prix – so have things improved?

Rather than rely on Sir Jackie, lets hear from Amnesty International Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui:-

“The authorities are trying to use the Grand Prix as a platform to show progress, with claims that the human rights situation has improved, whilst stepping up repression in order to ensure nothing disturbs their public image.

Instead of responding to the uprising of February 2011, the last two years have seen continued killings, arbitrary arrests and alleged torture in Bahrain. We are seeing nothing but crackdowns and token gestures to clean up the country’s image.  Families wait for justice for their killed relatives, opposition leaders languish in jail, and children are detained and tried under the anti-terrorism law.

The Bahraini government says the country is engaged in human rights reform. The onus is on them to demonstrate it. They should immediately release all prisoners of conscience, let demonstrators exercise their rights peacefully and allow unrestricted access to NGOs and journalists to monitor the situation around the Grand Prix.”

Amnesty International produced a full briefing on Bahrain this February. lets remeber a few facts:-

At least 72 people have been killed since protests broke out in February 2011.

Amnesty has adopted 20 individuals as prisoners of conscience – 14 have been in prison since they were arrested in 2011 and the rest were imprisoned in 2012.

At least 80 children are held in adult prisons in Bahrain for participating in protests.

Thirteen imprisoned opposition leaders, activists and prisoners of conscience lost their final court appeal this year and stand convicted of terrorism charges due to their role in the 2011 uprisings.

Quoting directly from the briefing

“Amnesty International considers all these individuals to be prisoners of conscience, held solely for having exercised their legitimate rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly. Unless immediate steps are taken to ensure accountability and the release of prisoners of conscience, recent institutional reforms and the national dialogue will be empty
exercises. It is vital that the Bahraini government immediately and unconditionally releases all prisoners of conscience, and upholds the rights to freedom of expression, association and
assembly.
Amnesty International reiterates its call on the government to:
Immediately and unconditionally release all prisoners of conscience held solely for peacefully exercising their legitimate rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly;
lift restrictions on freedom of expression, association and assembly; and ensure that officials responsible for human rights violations, including the killings of protesters and the torture of detainees, are brought to justice.”

So, whilst it is highly unlikely that the Bahrain grand Prix will be cancelled, please remember that some of its people are prisoner of conscience – they still need your support.

The latest email from AIUK is from Director Kate Allen as she heads to New York to attend the Arms Trade Treaty talks. However, she will return in time to attend a specially convened meeting in Southampton on Wednesday 3rd April, 7.00pm

There is a fairly long and convoluted story behind how this came about. The short version is there was contact between one of Kate’s team and our Chair Ted Stevens at the Extraordinary General Meeting in January – where Ted was one of many voicing our unhappiness at what the AIUK Board of Directors were doing. Kate had made clear she was keen to come and talk to groups, but unfortunately couldn’t make the Regional Meeting in Salisbury as planned in February.

Initial plans for her to visit Bournemouth (or even Brockenhurst) moved to Southampton when it was clear it had to be a mid week meeting.

As this meeting is just before AIUK’s AGM, hopefully Kate will give some indication of how the Board are planning to move forward and unite the organisation after the huge votes against them at the EGM.

There are kitchen facilities so there will be tea and coffee from 6.30 with the aim to start promptly at 7.00pm (Kate has a long journey afterwards, so it won’t be a late finish).

The meeting room is at:- [Read more…]

Keeping you up to date with information about our groups activities has usually been a fairly positive experience – helping to give uplift from the constant flow of news about prisoners of conscience, people under threat of execution and other human rights abuses we have long campaigned against.  We all feel the work of local groups like ours is important. Although we raise some funds that go to AIUK, we are a campaigning group and the heart of what we do remains sending letters (and now emails).

You may have been aware that there was an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) held earlier this month. If this is all news to you, this link opens the letter all members should have received, which give the resolutions and background information (from the perspective of the Board of AIUK).

Its hard to summarise in a few sentences. At discussions at our local group meetings in December and January there was great concern at what the Board of AIUK were intending to do.  Some of our frustration was exacerbated by an absence of background information on the AIUK website about what exactly this money that is being diverted to “hubs” in the south and east will be used for.  And for an organisation like AIUK to make many of its staff redundant to facilitate this financial package beggars belief. [Read more…]

Just a quick update to say this event went off well. Getting Jo Public to pause from their Christmas shopping to sign a card is never easy, but we got some sincere people who did stop.

Thanks to everyone who turned out – remember, we will be doing a similar activity on Thursday (13th) at our meeting in Moordown.

For many years now Amnesty International has run a greetings card campaign in December. This has entailed groups and individuals being encouraged to send greetings cards directly to prisoners of conscience (as opposed to letters to governments, etc), sending them a message of hope. Usually to let them know they are in our thoughts (and actions) and not forgotten.

We have usually focused on this at our December meeting. But for a few years now we have gone to the square in Bournemouth and set up a stall for one weekend afternoon to ask the passing public to participate. Initially we combined with some carol singing, as a few of our group belong to singing groups and were able to encourage a decent turnout of folk able to sing in tune and further encourage participation.

Unfortunately in recent years the council has passed over the running of the Square to a private company. Whilst we can do street collections, with permission, setting up a stall even for charitable (and non profit making) now costs. We nearly got arrested after the then manager of Borders (a now deceased seller of books) called the police when we had the audacity to try and set up our stall outside their shop front.

Fortunately, for the past couple of years then manager of Debenhams has allowed us to use space outside their store – including for the 50th birthday celebrations in May 2011. We were all set to repeat this year, but the current manager declined and wouldn’t entertain any negotiation. However, we have now (thanks to Genevieve) the opportunity to run a stall at Castlepoint. The details are:-

Sunday 9th December 2012 2.00 – 4.00pm

“upper level outside Marks & Spencer, against the white balustrades (opposite the SKY pod.)”

The latter detail comes from the management at Castlepoint (writing as someone who has only been to Castlepoint twice, and not for several years, I hope this makes sense!?)
So please either join us to help encourage the passing public to sign/write a card – or take the opportunity to write a card yourself. If you are unable to do so, either join us at our Moordown meeting on December 13th, or follow up yourself via the AIUK site. The photo at the top is Ramze Shihab Ahmed – a 70 year old serving a 15 year sentece in Iraq. Find out more here.