Newsroom

Update

Barack Obama has announced that he will close Guantanamo. Throughout the world, this announcement will be understood as an introduction to a new kind of American leadership, a repudiation of the unilateralism of the Bush administration, and a return to diplomacy and the rule of law. Closing Guantanamo will be a complicated process, which must be accomplished in phases. But the first step clearly is the settlement of the 50 or 60 detainees who have been cleared for release but have nowhere to go. These men have been called the "Guantanamo refugees." Some of these men are stateless, but most…

January 13, 2009

Update

Again and again we're told that closing Guantanamo is "complicated." I don't see what's complicated about it. Flying a chunk of metal with people in it to the moon? That's complicated. Following U.S. and international law? Not so much. Try the detainees in federal courts or release them. If they are tried and found guilty, then incarcerate them in the US. I'll help build a special prison in my neighborhood. If they are found not guilty, then release them. I have a room for rent. The "complicated" rhetoric serves as a stalling tactic and a justification for the whole mess.…

January 13, 2009

Update

Starting tomorrow (Jan. 14), Texas will embark on a three-month spree of executions in which 14 men (one of them white) will be put to death.  Later this year, perhaps as early as late April, Texas will probably carry out the 200th execution under Governor Rick Perry.  This is an appalling number, particularly given what we have learned about the flawed nature of our criminal justice and capital punishment systems.  Texas accounts for 9 of the 130 death row exonerees, the third highest total of any state, and another 5 men have been executed in Texas despite compelling evidence that…

January 13, 2009

Update

Reporting directly from southern Israel, Amnesty International researcher Donatella Rovera answered questions submitted about the Gaza crisis. Our vote for the toughest question answered: How can AI even ask the question whether or not US military equipment was used in the killing of civilians. Also, your home page announcing all of this certainly seemed to try to equalize Hamas/IDF -- how can that be? First paragraph -- you never said that the deaths were caused by the Israeli ASSAULT not only the blockade.... Here is how to stop Hamas: END THE OCCUPATION!! And the toughest question left unanswered: Just what…

January 12, 2009

Update

This week we mark the 7th anniversary of the day the U.S. government first began warehousing “enemy combatants,” terrorism suspects and hapless wrong-place-wrong-time detainees at Guantánamo.  Since then, hundreds of detainees have been locked up and stripped of their legal rights, at least five have died in custody, and scores have attempted suicide (not to mention the more than 500 documented incidents of detainees trying to harm themselves).  The U.S. government’s malfeasance has metastasized all over globe to include torture, kidnapping and extraordinary rendition, as well as the CIA practice of “ghost detentions”—the secret and illegal imprisonment of in overseas…

January 12, 2009

Update

Last week, the UN passed a binding resolution calling for “an immediate, durable and fully respected ceasefire leading to the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza." Resolution 1860 also calls for “the unimpeded provisions and distribution throughout Gaza of humanitarian assistance, including of food, fuel and medical treatment” and “condemns all acts of violence and terror directed against civilians and all acts of terrorism.” In addressing the issue of arms trafficking into Palestinian territories, the resolution calls for “intensified international arrangements to prevent arms and ammunition smuggling The resolution passed, with fourteen members voted in favor.  The United States abstained.…

January 12, 2009

Update

Yesterday morning, a brave Sri Lankan journalist paid the ultimate price for freedom of expression.  Lasantha Wickramatunga, the editor of the Sunday Leader newspaper, was shot by unidentified gunmen  while on his way to work.  He died a few hours later of his injuries.  The Sunday Leader newspaper is known in Sri Lanka for its articles exposing political corruption in privatization deals and for drawing attention to human rights abuses in connection with the recent upsurge in fighting between the government and the opposition Tamil Tigers. This isn’t the first time that the Sunday Leader and its staff have come…

January 9, 2009

Update

After thirteen days of shelling Gaza in attacks that have killed over 683 Palestinians, the Israeli government has agreed to a daily three hour truce to allow for humanitarian supplies to enter Gaza. But is this sufficient? Consider the following: 1. Historical blockade of Gaza Avi Shlaim, a professor of international relations at the University of Oxford and a former Israeli soldier, writes in his Guardian article, How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of a humanitarian crisis:  “Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy of the Gaza Strip.  With a large population of 1948 refugees…

January 8, 2009

Update

As we enter the new year the U.S. State Department is finishing the touches on its annual human rights report. When I took over as Egypt country specialist for Amnesty back in the 1990s, Egyptian activists used to look forward to the report's publication.  It was a rare occasion that any official body of influence called the Egyptian government on its human rights abuses.  It gave their work particularly against torture, legitimacy and moral support. But this year, as in the past few years, the report will be ignored by my activist colleagues in Egypt.  Today's New York Times has…

January 7, 2009

Update

The below piece was written in January of 2009. Police continue to kill people with impunity in numbers close to 1,000 annually, disproportionally impacting black people. E-mail us at [email protected] to get involved in your state.   Today is Oscar Grant’s funeral.  He is the latest in a long string of unarmed black men to be killed by police.  The night he died, Oscar, 22, was out celebrating New Year’s Eve.  At around 2 a.m., he and friends were pulled off of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train- Northern California’s subway system- by police officers.  He was unarmed and…

January 7, 2009

Update

Amnesty International has called on the US State Department to suspend all transfers of military weaponry and equipment to Israel until it conducts an investigation into whether US weapons were used in human rights violations.  Israel has been using F16’s, Apache helicopters, gunboats and bunker buster bombs in a week-long series of devastating attacks on the Gaza Strip. Monitoring of the use of American-made weaponry is not unprecedented.  The State Department monitored the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories during the second intifada after Israel dropped a 2,000 pound bomb from an F-16 on an apartment building killing not only…

January 7, 2009

Update

So it ain’t breaking news that the Bush administration concocted a legal flip-flam to justify the kidnapping, capture, detention and torture of hundreds of people from around the world, under the guise of national security. But to witness how and exactly what they did in meticulous detail – legal memos, public statements (ie, lies) by administration officials, accurate re-enactments of torture, and testimony from a few extraordinarily strong men who survived death-defying treatment – was beyond maddening. This happened last night as my husband pulled me away from Facebook to watch Torturing Democracy, an excellent new documentary produced by National…

January 7, 2009