A belated Happy New Year to you, and welcome to the latest newsletter. Our next meeting will be on Thursday 5 February 2026, from 7.30 pm to 9.00 pm, at Moordown Community Centre. At the meeting we’ll review our campaigning and possible events for the year ahead, and take part in letter writing and online actions.

Before then, there is also an upcoming webinar organised by the South West England Network, details of which are below…

Faissal Sharif, Amnesty UK Country Coordinator for Afghanistan, will speak about the incredible challenges of his lived experience growing up as an Afghan refugee in Germany.
Hear Faissal’s insights not only into the situation in Afghanistan and why his family had to leave, but also more broadly into the challenges faced by many refugees forced to leave their home country and seek asylum elsewhere. This is likely to involve stressful and difficult decision-making, often harrowing journeys, perhaps having your close relatives scattered in different places across the world and adjusting to an alien culture while also facing racial prejudice.
To register for this free event please click on this link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/KdUHDR16QgKbTxBrlaSzeA
To find out more about the Amnesty SW Network please email  aswenetwork21@gmail.com

Write 4 Rights (W4R)

W4R is Amnesty International’s annual campaign, sending greetings cards to prisoners of conscience, their families and other human rights defenders around the world.  Worldwide several million messages of support and appeal letters are now sent during a W4R campaign. They made a big difference to the people and communities confronting injustice and facing human rights violations.
We had four different W4R events in November and December. One person we sent cards to (and campaigned on behalf of) was Dr Damisoa in Madagascar. He was forced to flee his farming and grazing land because of drought induced famines exacerbated by climate changes. Now leading a neglected resettlement site in the northern Boeny region, he fights for basic rights like food, clean water, and medical care for more than 160 people.
You can still take actions, including online, for all the W4R cases. We will be send Dr Damisoa greetings cards for his birthday, in April, as well.
https://amnestyat50.co.uk/write-for-rights-2025

South America Newsletter

The January South America Newsletter is on the website. It was published two days after the US’s military action in Venezuela and summarises and links to Amnesty Internationals statement about the human rights concerns it raises. There are also updates on Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, and Argentina. There are two Urgent Actions relating to separate attacks on human rights defenders in Colombia.
https://amnestyat50.co.uk/south-america-newsletter-january-2026

Alena Chekhovich Webinar

You may be interested in this recording of the webinar by Alena Chekhovich, a human rights defender from Belarus. She is a  lawyer and legal analyst at Belarusian human rights organisation Human Constanta. She works on behalf of vulnerable communities, in particular refugees and stateless people, in Belarus. Alena’s main focus is on discrimination, arbitrary detention and exile of foreigners, detention conditions, access to justice and the rule of law, torture and other inhumane treatments, and on strategies to reduce statelessness and raise awareness of the right to international protection.

Alena has, through her human rights work, become subject to intimidation and targeted harassment in Belarus. She had to leave Belarus in December 2022 and now works in exile. This was the second webinar by the Amnesty International South West England Network, and we attended it live at our meeting in December.
https://amnestyat50.co.uk/alena-chekhovich-webinar