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We came to the floating village of Peak Kantel by boat at the very end of the dry season. Ben Sok, the village chief, whose 78 years made him older than most Cambodians, welcomed us in his boat house. He offered grilled eel and tea and a long story about his village’s struggle to be… a village.
Ben Sok suggested we stay the night in the village school, a blue floating wooden primary, with a wooden railing where we could hang our hammocks and mosquito nets at nightfall. Evidently, the school was his pride. Very soon he came to tell us of the incident over a year earlier when government officials, accompanied by armed police, gendarmerie and military, came to take the school away. It was planned as the first step of evicting Peak Kantel.
Continue reading ‘Fighting to stay afloat, Cambodia, 12-14 March 2006′
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We decided to launch the AI Report 2007 in Beirut, part of a volatile region in which the human rights record is a challenging one.
A week prior to the event, with the help of Lebanese AI members, we had almost everything prepared. Then, four days before the launch, the country was rocked by an explosion of violence.
Continue reading ‘Launching Report 2007 in a volatile environment’
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In her 2007 Report speech, Secretary General Irene Khan described how “powerful governments… deliberately fomented fear to erode human rights.”
In my job at Amnesty International I think a lot about torture. I think about how governments are able to make people think that torture is acceptable — at least in some circumstances. And I think about the people I have met who have been tortured - and the disconnection between their experiences and what government officials try to argue.
Continue reading ‘Politicians use fear to attempt to justify torture’
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Irene Khan, Amnesty International Secretary General, has followed up her post on Comment is Free with a post on one of the world’s most popular blog sites - The Huffington Post.
Our world today is deeply polarized. Comparisons are increasingly being made with the Cold War but in many ways it is more complex and dangerous now, because the opponents are not just governments but also armed groups with little or no stake in international relations.
Like the Cold War times, the political agenda is being driven by fear: fear of ‘rogue states’ with weapons of mass destruction; fear of being blown up by terrorist bombs; fear of being swamped by migrants; fear of ‘the other’ and of losing one’s national identity.
Read more: Report 2007: The State of the World’s Human Rights
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As we pulled together press packs in English and Russian for today’s simultaneous launch of the AIR in Moscow, we wondered nervously how many people would come. Not only was it a wilting 32 degrees C, but the evening before we had heard from a group of journalists and civil society activists how difficult it presently was for independent voices to speak out and be heard in the Russian Federation.
Continue reading ‘Launching Report 2007 in Moscow’
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As I stood in the launch room of the Foreign Press Association in London, watching the videos, photos and individual testimonies of those on the front line of human rights, I felt a genuine swell of emotion and pride wash over me. Which I had certainly not been expecting!
The Editorial and Publishing Programme has been working with researchers, campaigners and policy and legal advisers for at least six months, trying to ensure we represent the organization’s research and the concerns of the individuals we work with and for accurately and powerfully.
Continue reading ‘A swell of emotion and pride’
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I was stunned one morning last February when I opened the press and read that three Sri Lankan men, with whom I had been in contact and on whose behalf I had been working, had been executed several hours earlier in Saudi Arabia. It was upsetting and confusing. I was greatly distressed by such a brutal and sudden end.
Continue reading ‘Shocked by Saudi executions, February 2007′
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Irene Khan, Amnesty International Secretary General, has posted an entry on the popular Comment is Free blog on the website of the UK’s Guardian newspaper.
There was real optimism in international relations in the early 1990s - the Berlin wall had fallen; democracy and freedom were on the march in many parts of the world; peace in Northern Ireland looked possible; talks at Camp David promised reconciliation in the Middle East.
“But just a decade and a half later, the world is again mired in conflicts and crises, reviving a cold war mentality of a polarised international community, proxy wars and human rights sacrificed in the name of security or political expediency. Agendas driven by fear dominate.
Read more: Ending the politics of fear
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It was a bright morning in Manhattan on the small patch of sidewalk they call Ralph Bunch Park, opposite the UN building. This was the day the First Committee of the UN General Assembly was going to consider a resolution on the international Arms Trade Treaty (ATT).
Our objective was extremely ambitious: out of 192 governments represented in the UN, we wanted to get 150 votes in favour of the move to start negotiations on an ATT. The stunt was called ‘Race for an ATT ‘ - to lobby 192 states in 192 minutes.
Continue reading ‘Racing for an Arms Trade Treaty, New York, October 2006′
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In June, at last came the chance to hand over our Control Arms ‘Million Faces’ petition to Kofi Annan, the then UN Secretary General. It had been collected thanks to work by arms control activists around the world over the last three years. The biggest photo petition ever!
Early in the morning, before UN business got underway, we erected a statue in a public open space opposite the UN building. It was in the shape of a Kalashnikov AK-47, made of prosthetic limbs.
Continue reading ‘Delivering the Control Arms petition, New York, June 2006′