Newsroom

Update

As we enter into the Year of the Ox, I did some research about the characteristics of this sign of the Chinese zodiac. Let me tell you, if the descriptions of the Ox are right, 2009 is shaping up to be the Year of the Human Rights Activist. According to Wikipedia, Ox people are "unswervingly patient, tireless in their work...they are articulate and eloquent...kind, caring souls...these people enjoy helping others...they engage all the trials of the whole world and seek solutions for them." I'd say that pretty much describes every Amnesty member I've had the privilege to meet. So with…

January 26, 2009

Update

In a moving piece on 60 Minutes last night, CBS correspondent Bob Simon interviewed both Israelis and Palestinians and asked if hope was fading for a two state solution. Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, a former candidate for Palestinian president, said his optimism was waning. "While my heart still wants to believe that the two-state solution is possible, my brain keeps telling me the opposite because of what I see in terms of the building of settlements. So, these settlers are destroying the potential peace for both people that would have been created if we had a two-state solution," he said. A…

January 26, 2009

Update

The BBC continues to draw sharp criticism for its refusal to air a charity event for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The famed UK station refused to air an emergency appeal put on by the Disaster Emergency Appeal (DEC) stating that it did not want to appear to be "backing one side over the other," in the words of BBC director Mark Thompson. In a blog entry on the BBC site, Thompson wrote, "The danger for the BBC is that this could be interpreted as taking a political stance on an ongoing story." More than 50 MPs have written to…

January 26, 2009

Update

Over 10 years ago, I worked in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. As a legal advisor, I researched Israeli policy and practice of demolishing the homes of Palestinians. In the night, bulldozers would appear before a Palestinian home and raze it to the ground. Often, the occupants were able to flee in their nightclothes. Sometimes, they could not. I stood in countless piles of rubble during my time there, witness to inhumane and senseless destruction. One of my most harrowing visits to the crumbled ruins of a 92 year-old woman’s home haunted me for many nights. In dreams, as she had…

January 26, 2009

Update

What’s all this talk about not wanting to look backward? Inquiries from the ACLU to the U.S. Senate produce more and more evidence that the U.S. government not only violated the human rights of freedom from torture and indefinite detention, but that such violations came from directives from the highest levels of the administration. Yet the sentiment from some of our representatives in Washington seems to find criminal accountability politically inconvenient. If a person shot and killed another in the streets of Anytown, USA, would we say, oh, just let ‘em go, we wouldn’t want to look backward? Not in…

January 26, 2009

Update

Larry Swearingen has received a stay of execution.  He was one of 14 prisoners scheduled for execution in Texas between the beginning of this year and early April.  (Of those 14, three – all African American – have already been put to death, and the other ten are all either African American or Hispanic.) For Swearingen, forensic evidence that now raises serious doubts about his guilt seem to have swayed the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to put the execution on hold and allow him to file a further appeal in Federal District Court.  Several forensic pathologists, including the…

January 26, 2009

Update

In Texas, Larry Swearingen has been granted permission by the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to file another writ of habeas corpus in Federal District Court.  This is similar to the permission for which Troy Davis has appealed in the 11th Circuit.  Swearingen has a pretty strong innocence claim: all the forensic evidence, including the revised testimony of the woman who conducted the victim’s autopsy, now suggests that he was in prison at the time of the murder and therefore could not possibly be guilty. However, his new appeal has been limited to issues of whether his defense…

January 26, 2009

Update

One positive piece of President Obama’s much heralded executive orders that seems to be overlooked in all the excitement is the unambiguous statement that contractor abuses fall within the scope of inquiry and review and that that work will be done by government employees, not contractors. Companies hired by Defense, State and other agencies of the US government have been involved in almost every stage of the ‘war on terror’, from escorting convoys to building and maintaining facilities to interrogating detainees and providing security to US officials, and all too often with no accountability when implicated in a range of…

January 24, 2009

Update

Sir John Holmes, the UN humanitarian chief, said he was said he was shocked by "the systematic nature of the destruction" in Gaza. Equally troubling are the reports about shooting and killing of children by Israel during the conflict. The BBC reports: One of the most alarming features of the conflict in Gaza is the number of child casualties. More than 400 were killed. Many had shrapnel or blast injuries sustained as the Israeli army battled Hamas militants in Gaza's densely populated civilian areas. But the head of neurosurgery at the El-Arish hospital, Dr Ahmed Yahia, told me that brain…

January 23, 2009

Update

An Amnesty International delegation recently entered Gaza shortly before Israeli attacks ended to document the true scale of devastation wrought on civilians.  Amnesty researcher Donatella Rovera has been keeping a dairy of their findings.  Here is a excerpt from an entry she posted earlier this week to Livewire: Today, Tuesday, it seemed as though Gaza was beginning to draw a collective breath after the shock of the past three weeks of Israeli bombardments. The streets, previously deserted, filled up again and tens of thousands of people who had fled their homes for fear of Israeli attacks began returning to them.…

January 23, 2009

Update

In a case of interesting timing, today’s New York Times reports in "Freed by U.S., Saudi Becomes a Qaeda Chief"  that a former Guantanamo detainee is now a deputy leader of Al Qaeda in Yemen and opines that this has “underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.” A related Times online forum debates “The Risks of Releasing Detainees.”  To me, however, this case--and the Pentagon’s reports of recidivism--underscores the failure of the Bush administration’s attempt to identify and prosecute those responsible for 9/11. By…

January 23, 2009

Update

Those were the words shouted at me and several hundred other people as we were walking to the National Mall to attend Obama's inauguration. (More about our petition action there in Zeke's post). Those words were yelled by some protesters who were unhappy with the views espoused by Obama and concerned about the policies they expect he will implement. Now, I'd be lying if I said I didn't take some offense at being told I was going to hell simply because I was walking toward an event that made those people unhappy. But I was also glad to see the protesters.…

January 23, 2009