2007 Regional Conference Highlights

The Northeast Regional Conference took place on the weekend of October 25-27 on the campus of Boston University. More than 600 activists joined us from Maine to New Jersey. This conference marked two auspicious anniversaries. Back in the fall of 1977, Amnesty International received the Nobel Prize for Peace and the Northeast Regional Office held the first regional conference in the history of AIUSA. Our keynote speaker back then was Dr. John Karefa-Smart, a one-time independence leader of Sierra Leone and former prime minister who had been arrested over a political dispute. Amnesty had helped to gain his release.

This fall, our keynote speaker was Ishmael Beah, also from Sierra Leone and the author of A Long Way Gone, a memoir about his experiences as a child soldier in the region's civil war.

Other highlights of the conference included an opening panel about the search for justice in Africa, which featured Bukeni Tete Waruzi from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch; and three morning panels on current human rights controversies in China, Russia, and the United States. There were 27 workshops on a wide variety of topics. Juan Melendez, a former death row inmate from Florida spoke during the workshop on capital punishment.

We were especially pleased to celebrate the release of our former Special Focus Case, Professor Mesfin Woldemariam of Ethiopia, who was released this summer, and we welcomed Yang Jianli and his wife, Christina Fu, who live in the Boston area. Jianli is a democracy activist from China. He had been arrested after entering China with false papers and spent five years in jail. AI campaigned on his behalf with specific concerns about the fairness of his trial and the medical problems he faced in prison.

We also heard from Mohamed Eljahmi, whose brother Fathi is a prisoner of conscience in Libya because of his outspoken criticism of the government. Fathi Eljahmi is our newest Special Focus Case.

Photos by Daniel Yeow, David Rendell and Cynthia Gabriel

Larry Cox, AIUSA Executive Director	Mohamed Eljahmi, brother of Fathi al-Jahmi, Northeast Special Focus Case
Globalizing Justice: Focus on Africa panel was an overview of the justice issues in Africa and the need for universal jurisdiction.	Joshua Rubenstein, Northeast Regional Director, Reed Brody, Human Rights Watch , Sita Balthazar, Helmets for Scholars, and Bukeni Tete Waruzi, AJEDI-Ka/Projet Enfants Soldats.

Ishmael Beah, former child soldier and author of A Long Way Gone	Yang Jian-li, co-founder of the Foundation for China in the 21st Century, recently released prisoner.
Fathi al-Jahmi, Northeast Special Focus Case