Salisbury group held its Write for Rights in the Cathedral
November 2025
The Salisbury group held a successful Write for Rights in the Cathedral Cloisters today and there was an unbroken file of people agreeing to sign. We highlighted two individuals and one group of individuals. The latter were Guerreras por la Amazonia who call themselves the ‘daughter of the earth’ who despite threats and intimidation, continue to demand climate justice for their communities. Climate issues are being seen more and more in human rights terms in recent years. The activities of resource firms who are deforesting large chunks of the Amazon, are having a dramatic effect on the wildlife and on he indigenous peoples. The group took action against Chevron-Texaco to limit the methane flares they emit.
We highlighted Sai Zaw Thaike from Myanmar where the military junta still holds sway although a little less confidently these days. He is a photo journalist who was arrested 3 years ago and sentenced to 20 years of hard labour, tortured and held in solitary confinement for exposing what happened after cyclone Mocha.
Sonia Dahmani (pictured) from Tunisia was our third person. Sonia is a lawyer who has spoken out about racism, migration and prison conditions. She has been harassed and accused of spreading false news. She is under arrest and one of several who have been treated this way by the authoritarian president Kais Saied.
[Since preparing the Write for Rights, it appears that she has been released in the past few days. This is good news]
View of the signing.
Our thanks go to group members Andrew for arranging the event with the Cathedral, Fiona for organising the signing itself, and Tony, Val, Peter and Lesley for assisting on the day.
The group will be hosting a signing in the Cathedral cloister on Sunday 30 between 12 noon and 3 pm. We aim to do this every year and it is an opportunity for people visiting the Cathedral – for a service or other reason – to stop for a few moments to sign. There are many, many people who are imprisoned or under house arrest for their beliefs or because they are human rights defenders.
An evensong took place this evening (June 23rd) at 5:30 in the Cathedral. The notice on their website does not mention this is the annual evensong in partnership with the Amnesty group.
Talk by Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe inspiring for those who heard it
March 2025
UPDATE, 12 March: For those who would like to revisit the talk, the Cathedral has produced a recording, available until 17th March.19 March: now removed.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was interviewed in Salisbury Cathedral by the Rt Revd Bishop of Sherborne, Karen Gorham, about her experiences of being imprisoned in Iran and life after her release. Unfortunately, the sound system was such that many could not hear large chunks of what was said, some claiming only being able to hear a quarter of the discussion.
The local group was pleased that the Bishop, Nazanin and her husband all mentioned the role played by Amnesty and the introducer mentioned the local group in particular.
The event was a sell-out with nearly 1,000 people in attendance. It took place on International Women’s Day.
Nazanin made the point that there was a difference between being political prisoner and a hostage.
Being a hostage brought with it a different set of rules since what the legal case was did not matter. She also said you only appreciate freedom when you don’t have it for a long time. After release she found ‘adjustment quite difficult’. For a long time she said ‘my body was free but my mind was in prison’. Even meals were difficult because she found the rush of having to eat in prison was difficult to shake off.
She discussed the Boris Johnson affair. Johnson blurted out that Nazanin was in Iran to ‘train journalists’ which was untrue: she was there on holiday. This was used by the Iranian authorities against her. It took a long time for Johnson to meet her and he failed explicitly to apologise for his error despite the effect it had on her confinement. Both have been extremely critical of the British government during her ordeal.
Richard, her husband spoke about the ‘of the kindness of strangers’ . He also spoke of the role of Amnesty and of the symbolic nature of the Amnesty logo of a candle in a coil of barbed wire.
We apologise for the partial nature of this post for reasons outside our control.Image, Amnesty International.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in conversation at the Cathedral
February 2025
Nazanin will be in conversation with the Bishop of Sherborne on Saturday 8th March in the Cathedral. This is a free event. Details and booking are on the Cathedral site. Members of the Salisbury group and other Amnesty groups around the country campaigned on behalf of Nazanin over a long period of time. We were delighted when she secured her released from prison in Iran. Members of the local group were a little disappointed therefore not to be invited to play a part in the event.
The 52nd Vigil was held today in the Market Square in Salisbury and 30 attended. There was a kind of irony around today’s event as we looked out over the Market Square which was festooned with Christmas lights with the market in full swing. The Vigil is about peace in the region where Christianity began. With an estimated 44,000 dead in Gaza the notion of ‘peace and goodwill to all men’ seemed a long way off. Gaza and Palestine generally (however it is delineated) is precisely the area where Christianity was started yet here we are looking at a raging war and hatred seeming to be the defining spirit.
There is a temporary cessation of hostilities in Lebanon but few would confidently this to extend for any length of time.
Today (Sunday 1st December) we were in the Cathedral Cloisters from 10:00 until noon for a Write for Rights event so if you are in the area, please give us a call.
Members of the Salisbury Group will be at the Cathedral cloisters from around 10 o’clock on Sunday for our annual Write for Rights and people in Salisbury are invited to come and sign. We must not forget that many people are in prison or at risk of execution often for no more than disagreeing with the powers that be in their country. They have committed no crime but have may said something disobliging or critical of a president, king or other leader and frequently without trial, can end up in prison for many years. Human Rights defenders, lawyers or journalists are all caught up in this activity.
United Kingdom
The situation in the UK is fast approaching a kind of crisis concerning the issue of deporting people to Rwanda. The government will be tabling a bill next week to disapply sections of the Human Rights Act to enable the deportation of immigrants to Rwanda. Previous plans were blocked by the Supreme Court because the human rights situation in Rwanda is unsatisfactory. Refugees sent there were at risk of refoulement that is being sent back to a country where they would be at risk of bad treatment of some kind. A plan last June to despatch a plane load from Boscombe Down, an airfield a mile or so from where this is being written, was halted by the European Court.
The issue of the ‘boat people’ has become a major issue for the government being one of the Prime Minister’s 5 objectives. Although only a small part of the overall level of immigration, it has assumed huge significance to the point where there might be a confidence vote next week if the bill is not passed. Ostensibly, it is partly due to anger around the gangs involved in organising the crossings. The hope is that if the Rwanda deportations can get underway, this will act as a disincentive to people wishing to cross the Channel. There are many who view this as wishful thinking.
Critics, including Conservative politicians, point out that the bill – even if it becomes law – will not prevent claimants appealing to Strasbourg thus delaying the deportation process until way beyond the likely date of the General Election. This is leading some politicians to demand that we leave the European Court as well.
A leading proponent of this is Danny Kruger the MP for Devizes in Wiltshire, who is co-founder of the ‘New Conservatives’ whose ten point plan is built around immigration matters.
The whole matter has reached almost absurd levels. The Supreme Court looked carefully at the evidence and concluded that Rwanda is not a safe country. Critics and journalists are frequently detained and tortured in detention. Opposition is effectively banned. There are disappearances. A new treaty has been signed between the UK and Rwanda a few days ago which claims to overcome these human rights problems identified by the Supreme Court and clear the way for deportations to take place.
It is almost an example of national hysteria combined with false promises coming home to roost. It was claimed that Brexit would enable the UK to regain its sovereignty a benefit of which was to stop boat crossings and reduce immigration generally. Yet recent figures show immigration at a record 745,000. The vast majority are here legitimately and are needed in a range of sectors such as health, horticulture and care homes. These organisations would find operating without them almost impossible. Yet hysteria has been ratcheted up by the media with its focus on the boat crossings. New proposals will prevent family members joining those already here which will cause great anguish in many, many cases.
We have now arrived at a situation where the government wished to disapply parts of the Human Rights Act and even contemplate departing from the European Convention to join Russia which was ejected in 2022. The statements around this matter by local MP Danny Kruger are to be regretted.
Just under 100 cards were signed on Sunday and around a third of passers by stopped to sign. We shall be repeating the exercise in St Thomas’s Church on Saturday 11th starting at 10 am.
The Salisbury group took part in the annual Christmas tree festival organised each year by St Thomas’s church in the city. Our photo was taken in the Cathedral and was placed in front of the Amnesty candle which stands in the Trinity Chapel. We are grateful to the Cathedral for allowing us to place it there. All the entries can be seen by clicking this link.
Supporters may know that we have a prisoner of conscience window in the Cathedral and one of our members posts up a new POC each week, something we have been doing for decades now. We were gratified to receive this message from Forum 18 a member of which saw the latest POC and wrote to us concerning the plight of individuals in Kazakhstan and other countries in the region. Kazakhstan is a country which does not receive that much attention:
Having visited Salisbury since I was a teenager, I’ve long admired the Group’s initiative in every month having information on a prisoner of conscience beneath the Cathedral’s Prisoner of Conscience Window. The combination of the window, the cathedral, and monthly updated credible verified information on a prisoner of conscience is very helpful.
As this month the prisoner of conscience chosen is from Kazakhstan, you might find it help to see information on some of the other prisoners of conscience in that country: http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2570
The information comes from Forum 18, for which I work. We provide truthful, original, detailed, and accurate monitoring and analysis of violations of freedom of thought, conscience and belief of all people – whatever their belief or non-belief – in Central Asia, Russia, Russian-occupied Crimea and Donbas, the South Caucasus particularly Azerbaijan, and Belarus. We also publish occasional analyses on Turkey. The name ‘Forum 18’ comes from Article 18 of both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights.
We publish articles by e-mail, on our website ww.forum18.org , and are on Facebook @Forum18NewsService and Twitter @forum_18 . If it would help, I’d be glad to arrange for any of the Group to receive the weekly news summary. Anyone may free-of-charge use or reproduce material we publish with due credit to Forum 18.
Many thanks once again for the Group’s continuing work, including on the Prisoner of Conscience Window.
Amnesty in Salisbury & South Wiltshire 