Group Newsletter May 2019

Welcome to the latest newsletter.
For a variety of reasons this newsletter is between meetings. Our next meeting  is on Thursday 13th June 7.30pm  at Moordown Community Centre.
In this newsletter we wanted to highlight some of our upcoming events to ensure as many of you as possible can get involved (don’t worry, you’ve missed the street collection!)

South American Newsletter May 2019

This is usually buried near the bottom of the newsletter, but there are several South American issues to bring to your attention.  The latest edition of the South America Regional Newsletter is now on the blog and worth a read as this continent has so many issues relating to human rights violations.  There are more South American posts below.
https://amnestyat50.co.uk/south-america-newsletter-may-2019
We are planning our third AmnesTea. This will be on Sunday the 30th June 2019, 3pm to 5pm. Our secretary, Lucy Freeman has offered to host this event again at her home in Southbourne – obviously we were well behaved last time! What is an AmnestyTea? Well you, and any friend come along – possibly bringing cake 🙂 – and drink tea (or coffee, or whatever your comparable  beverage)
To make this more exciting, and more of a fundraiser, we are proposing a book stall. So basically bring along (1) people (2) cake (3) books (4) cash to spend..
You can read more about the previous events here   https://amnestyat50.co.uk/amnesttea-in-southbourne-june-2016  and https://amnestyat50.co.uk/amnestea-in-southbourne

For the 5th year running we will be holding a stall, and taking part in the parade, at BourneFree. This will be on Saturday 13th July. This is Bournemouth’s LGBTI Pride event and the stalls are in Bournemouth Gardens. In many countries the LGBTI community are persecuted and, sadly, there are always cases we can feature. Unlike some events we do, its relatively easy to get cards signed and have conversations about Amnesty International and the work we do.
You can read more about last years event here   https://amnestyat50.co.uk/bournefree-2018
We need to have people running the stall from 8am till 5pm, so any help will be very welcome.

Welcome Venezuela

On 8 May, Amnesty launched a new campaign calling for the international protection of Venezuelan migrants and refugees who have fled the massive human rights violations in Venezuela.  This campaign is part of Amnesty’s comprehensive strategy on the human rights crisis in Venezuela, which includes research and campaigning on the situation inside the country.

The campaign seeks to ensure that no Latin American or Caribbean country puts up entry barriers to Venezuelan migrants and refugees and that they refrain from returning people to Venezuela.  We are urging the British Government, along with other members of the international community, to support, politically and financially, regional efforts to protect Venezuelan people fleeing the human rights crisis. Amnesty have produced a report – go to the South America newsletter link above and its at the end of the Venezuela section.

Chocó department in Colombia

As Amnesty has reported in recent years, the Chocó department in Colombia is suffering most from the violence that has followed the Peace Accord with the FARC and the FARC’s withdrawal from its territory. Many human rights defenders have been murdered, while thousands of its rural inhabitants – many of them indigenous or Afro-Colombian – are being forced off their land. About 7,000 of its residents are under death threat or at risk of forced displacement.

In addition, the community’s access to basic services, including physical and psychosocial health care, is almost non-existent

Amnesty is now asking us to sign a petition (link below) calling on the Colombian government to guarantee the rights to truth, justice, and reparation for the victims of the conflict in Chocó and to develop a comprehensive protection mechanism for those living in the department. We wrote a letter at our last meeting – you can also download this from within the South American newsletter on the blog.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/get-involved/take-action/colombia-derechos-en-accion/