P.O. Box 130901, Houston, TX 77219-0901
832-310 9326
http://www.amnestyhouston.org
mail@amnestyhouston.org

Monthly meeting first Wednesday of every month (except holidays).

NEWS AND NOTES

Monthly Meeting Agenda:

       Introductions
       Reports by Coordination Groups:
       Group case (Bárbara Italia Méndez)
       Avdo Palic
       Death Penalty
       Radio Committee
       Stop Violence Against Women Campaign
       Counter Terror With Justice Campaign
       South Asian Regional Action Network (SARAN)
       Refugees
       Out Front Campaign
       Demand Dignity Campaign
       Who Will Bring Letter Next Meeting
Old Business:
       IFEST Volunteers
       Meeting With Lisa Adler
       Quaker Peace Fest - March 6
New Business:
 

Local Group 23 News:

• Phivan Wright, Fernanada Villalpando, Javier Razo and Hana Pinard attended the AI Texas State Meeting at the University of North Texas. It had mostly students and was well attended.
• Jimmy Dunne gave a talk about AI at the Humanists of Houston at Bayland Community Center to about 20-30 people.
• Michael Skadden was one of the speakers at a meeting of Ethiopian Mitchell Association that included Mayor Bill White. About 400 people attended. Michael spoke about the AI, human rights and the case of Birtukan Mideksa.
• Phivan Wright went with Lisa Adler, the new AI Southern Regional Field Organizer to meetings with the director of the local ACLU, the director of the Houston Peace and Justice Center (HPJC) and a meeting with the student group at Kinkaid.
• Lisa Adler met with local AI 23 and Rice University AI members at the Thai Village Restaurant where she introduced herself and got to talk to everyone. Bill Ohsie, Phivan Wright, Hana Pinard, Esmeralda Salinas, Summer Ozio, Nancy Bailey and Dave Atwood from AI 23 attended.

• We have openings for Group Coordinator and Secretary.

Just weeks ago, nearly 16,000 of our activists signed an urgent appeal to President Compaoré of Burkina Faso asking him to step up the government's response to the devastatingly high maternal mortality rates in his country. President Compaoré responded in a big way! He has committed to fight maternal mortality in Burkina Faso, including lifting all financial barriers to emergency obstetric care and access to family planning.

President Compaoré made these promises after a recent meeting with an Amnesty International delegation to discuss the findings of our new report exposing the barriers women face in Burkina Faso to receiving adequate health care during pregnancy and child birth.

Amnesty International's interim Secretary General has hailed recent global efforts to end the death penalty but warned that more needs to be done to achieve the goal of full abolition.

Claudio Cordone told delegates at an anti-death penalty summit in Geneva that campaigners were "winning" the fight against capital punishment.

"The day is coming when we can see an end to the death penalty worldwide. We must push on to consign the death penalty to join apartheid, slavery and torture as embarrassments to human history," Cordone told members of the 4th World Coalition Against the Death Penalty on Wednesday.

In 2009, for the first time in modern history, the whole of Europe was execution-free. Burundi and Togo became the 94th and 95th countries worldwide to entirely remove state killings from their law, while several other nations reduced - or stopped - executions.

Among them was Pakistan, which carried out no executions in 2009 compared to at least 36 killings the year before.

Other countries who did not execute in 2009 include Indonesia, India, Mongolia, Algeria, Bahrain, Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon and Jordan.

However, the progress was tempered by the use of executions for political purposes in Iran. China and Saudi Arabia also continued to carry out frequent executions, while Saudi Arabia and Iran continued to execute child offenders.

"We don't know exactly how many thousands of people are being executed in China, it's still a shameful state secret," said Cordone. "while in the USA we still see grotesque incidents such as the botched execution of a man who after two hours of failed attempts to kill him obtained a reprieve, now awaits a new date for his death.

"Those countries which persist in pursuing such an obscene punishment are steadily isolating themselves from the international community, becoming a hard core that we need to challenge with increased assertiveness," said Cordone, welcoming the cooperation between civil society, governments and intern-governmental organizations in the fight to rid the world of the death penalty.

More than 1900 activists from over 100 countries were expected to gather at the World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Geneva on 24, 25, 26 February.

Amnesty International said it was deeply disappointed by the South Korean Constitutional Court's decision to uphold the death penalty on Thursday.

In a five to four ruling, the Constitutional Court stated that capital punishment did not violate "human dignity and worth" protected in the Constitution.

"This is a major setback for South Korea and runs counter to the current abolitionist trend in the country, which has not executed in over a decade," said Roseann Rife, Asia-Pacific Deputy Programme Director at Amnesty International.

Amnesty International considers South Korea to be abolitionist in practice, as it has not carried out any executions since President Kim Dae-jung took office in February 1998. President Kim himself had previously been sentenced to death in 1980. However, death sentences are still handed down with currently 57 people remaining on death row.

Increasingly countries are moving away from using the death penalty as the ultimate punishment. More than 70 per cent of countries have a moratorium on executions or have abolished capital punishment.

"Despite this ruling, we call on the South Korean government to retain the country's abolitionist position and urge them to fully abolish this practice in the law. Any move backwards on this issue is extremely damaging to South Korea's international reputation. An economic leader, the country also should lead by example by fully respecting every individual's right to life," said Roseann Rife.

Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases, as a violation of the right to life and the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. The death penalty is irrevocable, and there is always the risk that an innocent person will be executed.

Furthermore, the death penalty is inherently arbitrary and discriminates against those who are poor, marginalized or belong to minority communities.

The Constitutional Court of Korea was established in September 1988 and its functions include deciding on the constitutionality of laws, ruling on competence disputes between governmental entities, adjudicating constitutional complaints filed by individuals, giving final decisions on impeachments, and making judgments on dissolution of political parties.

Evidence Points to Cheney Counsel's Role in Authorizing Torture

(New York and Washington) - New FOIA documents illustrate that key congressional members from both houses were briefed numerous times about the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) interrogation and detention programs, said several prominent human rights groups today. The groups - Amnesty International USA (AIUSA), the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at NYU School of Law - were responding to several documents just received in response to the groups' Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation.

Among other new information, the documents show that:

While Vice President Cheney's role in authorizing waterboarding and other so-called enhanced interrogation techniques has been public, a newly obtained February 4, 2003, CIA memo documents the role of Counsel for the Office of the Vice President (OVP) in analyzing and approving the CIA techniques.

According to CIA meeting records and the same February 4, 2003 memo, it seems that in one of his first acts as chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) discontinued efforts by previous chair Senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.) to implement greater oversight of these programs, thus abdicating the role of Congress in overseeing the CIA rendition, secret detention, and torture programs.

There are significant questions about how clear the CIA was with Congress (including in Hayden's previously classified briefing on April 12, 2007 to the Senate Intelligence Committee) about the timing, nature, and results of the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, including particularly interrogation prior to the OLC August 1, 2002 memo.

Amnesty International said it is concerned at the resurgence of electoral violence and xenophobia in Côte d'Ivoire, as supporters of the country's president call for tens of thousands of "foreigners" to be excluded from the electoral roll.

Opposition parties have denounced calls by supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo to exclude people suspected of being foreign nationals because they bear Muslim family names.

President Gbagbo's supporters meanwhile have condemned what they say are fraudulent attempts to add to the electoral roll over 400,000 people whose nationality has not been verified.

"It is essential to put an end to this xenophobic discourse," said Véronique Aubert, deputy director of Amnesty International's Africa programme. "It is incumbent on the Head of State to clearly indicate that this incitement to hatred, denounced time and time again by the United Nations, will not be tolerated."

The presidential election is to take place this year after being postponed five times since 2005. It is hoped this will put an end to the crisis that began with the September 2002 armed uprising which split the country in two.

The current wave of violence across the country is linked to the disputes over the electoral roll, with thousands of demonstrators taking to the streets.

The security forces have repressed several demonstrations, particularly in the town of Gagnoa (in the centre-west of the country), where at least five demonstrators were shot dead on 19 February.

On 3 February, several thousand protesters took part in marches in the town of Divo, 200km from the economic capital city Abidjan, in an attempt to prevent judges removing them from the electoral roll.

The security forces opened fire on the demonstrators to disperse them, leaving eight wounded, including several with bullet wounds.

Suspicions of fraudulent attempts to add names to the electoral roll, led President Gbagbo to dissolve the Independent Electoral Commission and the government on 12 February.

Some opposition parties then called on their supporters to "oppose the Laurent Gbagbo dictatorship by every means possible". This led to violence and vandalism against premises and goods belonging to the Front Populaire Ivoirien (FPI), Ivorian Popular Front, the Head of State's political party.

"All the ingredients that led to serious human rights violations in the past are present once again," said Véronique Aubert.

"With none of the main Ivorian political actors showing any sign of wanting to avoid a deterioration in the situation, it is incumbent on the international community, especially the United Nations and the mediator in the Ivorian crisis, Blaise Compaoré, president of Burkina Faso, to put pressure on all Ivorian politicians to prioritize respect for human rights."

The crisis that began with the September 2002 armed uprising, resulted in the de facto partition of the country between the south, controlled by supporters of President Gbagbo and the north, in the hands of the Forces Nouvelles (New Forces) the movement that came out of the armed uprising.

Under pressure from the international community, especially the United Nations and its mediator in the Ivorian crisis, Blaise Compaoré, president of Burkina Faso, an Independent Electoral Commission was created and began to prepare the electoral roll.

After he dissolved the Independent Electoral Commission and the government on 12 February, President Gbagbo reappointed his prime minister, Guillaume Soro, general secretary of the Forces Nouvelles, and asked him to form a government.

Prime Minister Soro announced a new government on Tuesday including main opposition parties and said that a new electoral commission would be installed but so far no consensus has been reached on these two issues.

Letter writing actions have moved to a special section of our website.