Amnesty in Salisbury & South Wiltshire
Promoting human rights from Salisbury UK
We today erected the display in the cloister at Salisbury Cathedral to celebrate the signing of Magna Carta and to illustrate the #StopTorture campaign.
It will remain in place for many weeks. There is also a panel on the Human Rights Act.
Reading this blog can sometimes seem depressing as we highlight individuals imprisoned for their beliefs; the widespread use of torture around the world; the use of the death penalty and recently, a desire by some of our (UK) politicians to abolish the Human Rights Act.
Successes
There are successes however, some of which have been a long time in the making. After six years of legal proceedings and campaigning by Amnesty members around the world, Shell Oil have at last been made to pay for the devastation caused by oil spills in the Niger Delta.
Others successes have been unprecedented. For the first time ever, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled that UK secret services acted illegally in their surveillance activities.
And that’s not all. Because of you Guadalupe found justice in El Salvador. With a window of just 48 hours, we asked you to tweet El Salvador’s members of parliament calling for a pardon for Guadalupe – a young woman imprisoned after suffering a miscarriage. Every tweet counted: her pardon was granted by a majority of just one vote. Thank you. We’re continuing our work to ensure Salvadoran women are not criminalised by the total abortion ban in the country
Burma has dropped off the radar in the last couple of years and things have improved there. But not totally and there are still prisoners of conscience. For example, long-standing prisoner of conscience Dr Tun Aung has recently secured release.
February saw two historic victories in the age-old battle for the right to privacy and free expression. The USA and UK’s past intelligence-sharing on Communications surveillance was ruled illegal and the Security Services conceded their current regime for intercepting legally privileged communications is also unlawful. These landmark rulings, in which Amnesty were co-claimants, should mean there are more significant positive changes ahead.
A great step towards justice was made in January when three journalists imprisoned in Egypt had their sentences overturned on the basis of a flawed trial. Peter Greste was allowed to return home to Australia but Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohammed are awaiting a retrial in Egypt, currently set for 22 April. Egypt must now drop all charges against them and free, not retry these prisoners of conscience.
Forced to sign a confession after being kidnapped and tortured by marines, Claudia Medina Tamariz has had the last of the charges against her dropped, and she is now a free woman. Claudia thanked the 300,000 Amnesty members around the world who demanded justice. We continue to call for an investigation into the torture she suffered, and for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.
A month after Claudia’s release, the Mexican president came to the UK and we delivered your Stop Torture petition signatures to him – in a giant piñata. Ahead of the visit you called on the UK representatives meeting him to raise the issue of torture. Guess what? They did. Thanks to Amnesty supporters campaigning, the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Scotland all helped send a strong message: it’s time for Mexico to respect human rights.
So campaigning does sometimes work.
UPDATE: 28 APRIL
Human rights myths Thanks to http://www.RightsInfo.org – see link at the bottom of this site.
As we pointed out in our previous blog, the Conservatives, if they form an administration after the election, want to abolish the Human Rights Act #HRA. Amnesty has launched a campaign with a link to KeeptheAct spelling out the benefits of the act for everyone in the UK. For example:
These are some of the day to day stories of the HRA and how it helps ordinary people in their daily lives. But it is a story a lot of our newspapers do not tell, preferring to peddle disinformation and myths. The act protects ordinary people and means that public bodies like the police and local authorities must respect our basic human rights. 
It does seem strange that we are celebrating 800 years since the signing of Magna Carta with politicians waxing lyrical over that document whereas its modern version is derided and is under threat, often for quite spurious reasons. Go to KeeptheAct and add your voice.
UPDATE: 5 May … still no sign of a draft of what the British Bill of Rights will contain. People go to the polls in a couple of days time without knowing what is planned. Since the election campaign has been based largely on the deficit and who is going to spend the most on the NHS, oh and being run by Scotland: what is, or is not, in the BBoR may seem trivial. But it touches on all our rights and on our relationship with Europe so it is important.
The #Conservative party #manifesto was published today 14 April and as promised, there is a plan to scrap the Human rights Act #HRA. The manifesto says on p73:
We will scrap Labour’s Human Rights Act and introduce a British Bill of Rights which will restore common sense to the application of human rights in the UK. The Bill will remain faithful to the basic principles of human rights, which we signed up to in the original European Convention on Human Rights. It will protect basic rights, like the right to a fair trial, and the right to life, which are an essential part of a modern democratic society. But it will reverse the mission creep that has meant human rights law being used for more and more purposes, and often with little regard for the rights of a wider society. Among other things the Bill will stop terrorists and other serious criminals who pose a threat to our society from using spurious human rights arguments to prevent deportation.
This will have profound implications in our relations with Europe and we still do not know what the new bill will look like even after many years of discussion about the abolition of the HRA. Incidentally, although the Act was introduced under the Labour administration, it was voted for by many Conservatives as well.
A draft of the BBoR has been a long time a coming and the latest we heard was that it was to be published before Christmas. One assumes a draft will now appear before polling so that voters can see in more detail how it differs from the existing HRA.
The Conservatives seem to have got themselves into something of a bind with this Act. They were happy to go along with the anti-European sentiment expressed by most of our newspapers and were obviously spooked by the Ukip surge over the last few years. There has been a torrent of misinformation and disinformation about the workings of the HRA which, apart from the honourable exception of Dominic Grieve MP, they have made little or no attempt to counter with facts.
What got them steamed up most of all – and got our tabloids into a fearsome lather – was the case of Abu Qatada or the ‘preacher of hate’ as he was called. Many attempts were made to deport him but the problem was not just the HRA but the fact that he might be tortured when he was returned to Jordan, or the Jordanians would convict him using evidence obtained from torturing others. Is this an example of ‘spurious human rights arguments’? Since, quite apart from the ECHR, we are signatories to treaties banning the use of torture, there was a problem in getting him out of the country in any event. We might note in passing that the Jordanians had to clean up their judicial act as part of the agreement to send him back.
A puzzle though is that the other area which gets politicians steamed up is the issue of a right to life yet this is quoted as being ‘an essential part of a modern democratic society.’ Something about a cat.
The fact remains that many ordinary people are beneficiaries of the Act. Lawyers can use it in their day to day work with individuals and their dealings with authorities of one kind or another. Little of this gets published in the media and most are unaware of it unless by chance they know of someone who has benefited.
As far as the Strasbourg court is concerned, the UK are the ‘good guys’ since we still have a largely uncorrupted police and judiciary and people can appeal decisions in cases of injustice. Our police operate under PACE and suspects have a right to a lawyer. Very few of the cases which go to Strasbourg get overturned – we believe there were only eight last year.
As one of the original countries, along with France, who prepared the ECHR after the war at the behest of Winston Churchill – a Conservative – if we leave the Convention it will have significant repercussions in places like Belarus, Turkey and Russia. Belarus is the last country in Europe with the death penalty and human rights are largely ignored.
It will be interesting to see how our local Conservative candidate John Glen reacts to this. When he came to see the local group to discuss this topic he did agree to be more balanced in his comments which we welcomed. This followed an article in the Salisbury Journal saying he wanted it abolished. But now it is part of the manifesto for his party we shall have to see…
This is the monthly report on the state of death penalty around the world, thanks to Lesley for compiling it.
The news that Ray Hilton has been released after 28 years on death row is both heartening and shocking. That the state of Alabama should have so badly conducted his trial and then refused to allow the fresh ballistic evidence to be heard, which was the only evidence against him, is particularly shocking. There can be few better examples of the dangers of this penalty than a case such as this.
This month’s #deathpenalty report is attached thanks to Lesley. It makes depressing reading especially concerning countries in South East Asia and #Pakistan.
The monthly meeting took place tonight, Thursday 19 March at 7.30 as usual. It was held over from last week as we had the Cathedral lecture and service. A fuller report will appear soon.
It was announced in the Salisbury Journal this week that a group of students at Burgate School in Fordingbridge, Hampshire has won the Amnesty International Youth award for the ‘most committed’ category. Every congratulations from the Salisbury Group.
New link added to the list: Globalconsilium
Around 160 people attended the Cathedral this evening to hear Dominic Grieve QC MP give a brilliantly lucid lecture in support of the Human Rights Act. He traced some of the key clauses of the Magna Carta and showed how they had continuing relevance today. We hope to include a transcript of his lecture soon. His lecture followed the annual Amnesty evensong which also was very well attended with around 120 people.
Amnesty in Salisbury & South Wiltshire 