Amnesty International Group 22 Pasadena/Caltech News
Volume XXII Number 1, January 2014
UPCOMING EVENTS
Thursday, January 23, 7:30 PM. Monthly
Meeting. We meet at the Caltech Y, Tyson
House, 505 S. Wilson Ave., Pasadena. (This is
just south of the corner with San Pasqual.
Signs will be posted.) We will be planning our
activities for the coming months. Please join
us! Refreshments provided.
Tuesday, February 11, 7:30 PM. Letter
writing meeting at Caltech Athenaeum, corner
of Hill and California in Pasadena. This
informal gathering is a great way for
newcomers to get acquainted with Amnesty
Sunday, February 16, 6:30 PM. Rights
Readers Human Rights Book Discussion
group. This month we read "Farewell, Fred
Voodoo" by Amy Wilentz.
COORDINATOR'S CORNER
Hi All
Happy New Year! Can't believe it's 2014
already...I enjoyed 3 weeks off, seeing my sister
and her BF, who came down from northern
California, catching up on my reading and
exercising, and even having some time left over
to work on some household projects and see a
movie or two!
Here's hoping 2014 is a better year for human
rights.
Con Carino,
Kathy
RIGHTS READERS
Human Rights Book Discussion Group
Keep up with Rights Readers at
http://rightsreaders.blogspot.com
Next Rights Readers meeting:
Sunday, February 16, 6:30 PM
Vroman's Bookstore
695 E. Colorado, Pasadena
Farewell, Fred Voodoo
by Amy Wilentz
Book Review: Farewell Fred Voodoo
A veteran journalist captures the functioning
chaos of Haiti.
New Yorker writer Wilentz has been covering
shattering events in Haiti since the Duvalier
dynasty fell in 1986, culminating in her book The
Rainy Season. Now based in Los Angeles, the
author again felt the fatal pull of the country
after the recent natural-disaster devastation and
returned repeatedly in order to record the
uneven progress in reconstruction and
humanitarian aid as well as interview many of
the so-called (in politically incorrect parlance)
Fred Voodoos, or Everymen on the street, for a
reality check.
Describing herself as "a naive person, and a
romantic," she has grown enormously wary of
the good intentions heaped on the country from
one crisis to another and is frequently cynical
after many years of her "Haitian education."
Since its very inception as the first (and last)
slave revolution in history, Haiti has been
victimized, plunged into poverty, denuded of
resources and patronized by rich white
neighbors bent on a "salvation fantasy" that has
never lifted the country out of poverty. After the
hurricane, suddenly whites appeared
everywhere to help out.
While Wilentz does chronicle some extremely
good work being done--by the indefatigable
infectious-disease specialist Dr. Megan Coffee
and by actor Sean Penn in setting up a workable
refugee camp--much of what the journalist
witnessed remained a familiar profound malaise
and dysfunction. Seeking out her old
acquaintances and former proteges of President
Aristide, the author found drugged-out
zombies, many living in permanent refugee
camps without proper sanitation and little or no
literacy. She learned that nothing is as it seems
in Haiti. Like voodoo ceremonies, society runs
on "artifice and duplicity," and its government
(a kleptocracy) has been organized "to be
porous and incompetent, to allow for
corruption."
An extraordinarily frank cultural study/memoir
that eschews platitudes of both tragedy and
hope.
[From Kirkus Reviews]
Author Biography
Amy Wilentz is the author of Farewell Fred
Voodoo (2013), The Rainy Season: Haiti Since
Duvalier (1989), Martyrs' Crossing (2000), and I
Feel Earthquakes More Often Than They Happen:
Coming to California in the Age of Schwarzenegger
(2006). She is the winner of the Whiting Writers
Award, the PEN Martha Albrand Non-Fiction
Award, and the American Academy of Arts and
Letters Rosenthal Award, and also a 1990
nominee for the National Book Critics Circle
Award. Wilentz has written for The New York
Times, The Los Angeles Times, Time magazine, The
New Republic, Mother Jones, Harper's, Vogue,
CondŽ Nast Traveler, Travel & Leisure, The San
Francisco Chronicle, More, The Village Voice, The
London Review of Books and many other
publications. She is the former Jerusalem
correspondent for The New Yorker and a long-
time contributing editor at The Nation. She
teaches in the Literary Journalism program at
the University of California at Irvine, and lives
in Los Angeles.
PRISONER OF CONSCIENCE
Gao Zhisheng
by Joyce Wolf
Last week on January 16 the U.S. Congress Tom
Lantos Human Rights Commission (TLHRC)
held a hearing titled "Defending Freedoms
Hearing Ð Highlighting the Plight of Prisoners of
Conscience around the World." Geng He, wife
of Group 22's adopted prisoner of conscience
Gao Zhisheng, was a featured witness. The
hearing was chaired by Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA),
who himself adopted Gao Zhisheng's case back
in 2012 and pledged to continue advocating
until China released Gao.
Here are excerpts from http://tlhrc.house.gov
"Background: In December 2012 the Tom Lantos
Human Rights Commission (TLHRC), in
conjunction with the U.S. Commission on
International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and
Amnesty International USA (AIUSA), launched
the Defending Freedoms Project (DFP) with the
aim of supporting human rights and religious
freedom throughout the world with a particular
focus on prisoners of conscience.
The Lantos Commission's first hearing of 2014
will address the plight of prisoners of
conscience, who are currently unjustly detained
by repressive governments around the world.
By highlighting several such cases, the hearing
will explore strategies for securing the release of
prisoners of conscience, the need to shine a
bright light on some lesser known cases, the
historical precedent for effective advocacy
campaigns and the importance of human rights
as a central factor in U.S. foreign policy.
WITNESS LIST: Panel II: Ms. Geng He, Wife of
Imprisoned Chinese Human Rights Lawyer Gao
Zhisheng, Accompanied by Mr. Jared Genser,
Founder, Freedom Now and Pro Bono Counsel
for Gao Zhisheng."
NTDTV interviewed Geng He after the hearing:
"Geng He said, 2014 was a year of hope to her
and her children, as according to the CCP's
announcement in 2011, Gao should return home
during this year. In addition, Geng He hoped
that all media and those people who cared about
Gao's case, kept watching over the supposed
release of Gao in 2014."
http://www.ntd.tv/en/China%20Forbidden%2
0News/20140117/84840-will-gao-zhisheng-
return-home-in-2014-gaos-wife-called-for-
global-attention.html
In other news, the documentary "Transcending
Fear: The Story of Gao Zhisheng" is now
available on DVD. Our copy is on order. You
can also watch it online for $1.99.
http://transcendingfearfilm.com
January 31 marks the start of the Year of the
Horse according to the Chinese calendar. So let's
send New Year greetings to Gao Zhisheng in
remote Shaya Prison.
Gao Zhisheng
Shaya Prison
P.O. Box 15, Sub-box 16
Shaya County, Aksu Prefecture
Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, 842208
People's Republic of China
SECURITY WITH HUMAN
RIGHTS
by Robert Adams
"A Person Under Surveillance is No Longer
Free": Why We Care About Obama's Speech
Today
By Naureen Shah, Advocacy Advisor at Amnesty
International USA
January 17, 2014
Who does U.S. surveillance impact? Millions of
people around the world, including activists,
scholars, artists and journalists. Not only can the
U.S. government keep their emails, phone calls
and other activities under watch, but it can share
that information with other governments Ð
including governments that target and retaliate
against anyone they view as a political dissenter.
The result: a climate of fear, where people worry
that their emails or phone calls could endanger
themselves or anyone with whom they
communicate.
Journalists
Journalists like Naomi Klein interview political
activists around the world for articles that
expose repressive governments and
corporations.
"Some of my sources will decline to share
information with me if they believe their
communications are being monitored by the
United States," Klein wrote in a 2008
affidavit for the lawsuit Amnesty v. Clapper,
which challenged U.S. surveillance law.
Klein said some of her sources feared that by
communicating with her, they risked retaliation
by the U.S. government -- denials of visas or
placement on a "watch list."
More often, Klein said, these political activists
feared "that the United State will share
information about them...and that their own
governments will retaliate as a result."
Protesters
Protesters and activists around the world are
vulnerable to U.S. spying on the content of their
emails and Internet activity. That's because U.S.
law -- under section 702 of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act -- permits
surveillance "to acquire foreign intelligence
information" of people reasonably believed to
be outside the United States.
But the law does not require the government to
demonstrate that surveillance targets are foreign
agents, engaged in criminal activity, or
connected even remotely with a designated
"terrorist organization" or "terrorist."
Surveillance need only be for the purpose of
gathering "foreign intelligence information," a
term that's so broadly defined that it can include
any information that relates to U.S. "foreign
affairs." That could include emails about
peaceful protests outside international meetings,
human rights conferences, or activists' meetings
on just about any issue with a connection to U.S.
foreign policy.
Artists
Mass surveillance like the kind authorized
under current U.S. law creates a climate of fear,
where creative thinking and expression are
stunted.
As Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei put it: "When
human beings are scared and feel everything is
exposed to the government, we will censor
ourselves from free thinking. That's dangerous
for human development."
Ai Wei Wei was arrested in China in 2011 and
detained without charge, but later released.
"Privacy is a basic human right, one of the very
core values. There is no guarantee that China,
the U.S. or any other government will not use
the information falsely or wrongly," he
recently wrote.
Writers
Surveillance undermines freedom of expression
by making people afraid to speak out or share
their ideas Ð including writers and authors. A
recent PEN America study found that 85% of its
members who responded to the survey feared
government surveillance. Nearly a quarter had
deliberately avoided certain topics in phone or
email conversations, and another 9 percent had
seriously considered it.
As an open letter signed by Nobel laureates
Orhan Pamuk, J.M. Coetze, and hundreds of
other authors put it: "A person under
surveillance is no longer free."
Worshipers
Everyone has the right to associate freely Ð and
without arbitrary government snooping.
But the U.S. government can use section 215 of
the USA PATRIOT ACT to collect phone records
of religious, political and activist organizations
and their members Ð to learn who they are
talking to, when and for how long. Collection of
this "metadata" can create a chilling effect. As
Rev. Rick Hoyt of the First Unitarian Church of
Los Angeles, who joined a lawsuit, put it: "Our
church members and our neighbors who come
to us for help should not fear that their
participation in the church might have
consequences for themselves or their families.
This spying makes people afraid to belong to
our church community."
You
If your emails, online chats or Skype calls
mention a person or topic of "foreign
intelligence" interest Ð say, Pussy Riot's
release or Pope Francis Ð they may be surveilled
even if the U.S. government doesn't believe you
yourself have any "intelligence" value. That's
because section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act permits surveillance of emails
and other communications about a target Ð not
just those to or from a target. So if you aren't a
U.S. citizen or permanent resident Ð and even if
you are Ð you are susceptible to surveillance
based on your beliefs and interests. And we are
still talking about spying without any notice, let
alone a day in court to challenge these invasions
of your right to privacy.
Mass surveillance threatens human rights and
human dignity Ð that's why we need President
Obama to put human rights at the center of
surveillance reform.
DEATH PENALTY NEWS
By Stevi Carroll
Justice or Revenge?
Michael Lee Wilson
January 9, 2014, Michael Lee Wilson said, "I feel
my whole body burning" as he was executed
with the drug pentobarbital. Since 2011, the
Danish pharmaceutical company Lundbeck has
refused to sell pentobarbital for use in US
executions. This has caused authorities in states
that execute to go to compounding pharmacies
that will create the drug for executions. These
pharmacies produce unregulated drugs that
have less rigorous testing and may contain
contaminants that cause significant pain. Jerry
Massie, the Oklahoma Department of
Corrections spokesperson did not comment on
the source of the pentobarbital used to kill Mr.
Wilson.
Dennis McGuire
Now that the manufacturers of the drugs
authorities in our penal system use to execute
human beings will not sell the drugs to the State
governments that execute, new drug
combinations must be used. January 16, 2014,
officials in Ohio put into practice a combination
of the sedative midazolam and the painkiller
hydromorphone. The eighth amendment of the
US Bill of Rights tells us that agents of our
government cannot inflict cruel and unusual
punishments. These words are part of why
those people in our country who support the
death penalty and the officials they elect have
fine tuned executions from the first execution on
American soil of Captain George Kendall by
firing squad in 1608, before we were the United
States, to hangings to Sing-Sing's Old Sparky
and his buddy electric chairs first used in 1890 to
the gas chamber beginning in the 1920s. Lethal
injection was adopted as a more humane
alternative thus assuring no cruel and unusual
punishment.
Dennis McGuire's execution on January 16th in
Ohio calls this into question. Depending on the
news source, Mr. McGuire's death took from 15
to 26 minutes. During that time, "McGuire was
still for almost five minutes, then emitted a loud
snort, as if snoring, and continued to make that
sound over the next several minutes. He also
soundlessly opened and shut his mouth several
times as his stomach rose and fell. ...A coughing
sound was Dennis McGuire's last apparent
movement, at 10:43 a.m." (Washington Post
1.16.14) This article goes on to say that
"Attorneys for the state persuaded a judge that the
Constitution does not entitle condemned prisoners to
die painlessly, so long as the punishment is not
cruel."
Dennis McGuire's adult children who were
present at their father's execution are filing a
suit in federal court. What they saw were 19
minutes during which their father convulsed
and appeared to gasp for air. His son said, "I
watched his stomach heave, I watched him sit
up against the straps on the gurney. I watched
him try to breathe but it appeared to me he was
suffocating." His daughter said, "He was
gasping for air and his head kept coming up and
he kept making horrible noises."
The lawsuit Mr. McGuire's family will file
sometime during the week of January 20th could
influence the death penalty in Ohio and
throughout our nation.
Learn More About The Death Penalty
Laura Dimon published 'Chilling Testimony Of
Death Row Executioners Casts Dark Shadow
Over Entire System' on the website PolicyMic
January 15, 2014. The article includes Texas's
lack of public defenders for capital cases, a
murder victim's mother's appeal to spare the
killer, a chaplain's account of the distress the
condemned feel after they are strapped to the
gurney, and the toll on prison employees who
take part in executions.
To read the article, go to
http://www.policymic.com/articles/78235/chil
ling-testimony-of-death-row-executioners-casts-
dark-shadow-over-entire-system.
2013: Fewer Executions
Prosecutors seem to be relying less on the death
penalty and executions are fewer. While 39
executions nationwide may seem to me to be 39
too many, 2013 is only the second time in 19
years that the numbers been lower than 40.
Texas led the pack with 16; Florida was a distant
second with seven. Seven more states filled out
the 39: Oklahoma-six; Ohio-three; Arizona and
Missouri-two each; and Alabama, Georgia, and
Virginia-one each.
Maryland became the 18th state to abolish the
death penalty and was the sixth state to do so in
the past six years. A 2013 study shows that
only 2% of counties in the country are
responsible for the majority of death penalty
cases. These include: The top ten counties
among the two percent of counties responsible
for more than half of the nation's death row
population are: Los Angeles County, CA; Harris
County, TX; Philadelphia County, PA; Maricopa
County, AZ; Riverside County, CA; Clark
County, NV; Orange County, CA; Duval
County, FL; Alameda County, CA; and San
Diego County, CA.
The top ten counties among the two percent of
counties responsible for over half of the
executions since 1976 are: Harris County, TX;
Dallas County, TX; Oklahoma County, OK;
Tarrant County, TX; Bexar County, TX;
Montgomery County, TX; Tulsa County, OK;
Jefferson County, TX; St. Louis County, MO; and
Brazos County, TX. Just four counties in Texas
(out of 254) account for almost half of all
executions in the state. Three counties in
California produce more than half of the state's
death row - the largest in the country.
(http://deathpenaltyinfo.org/twopercent)
Hope may be on the horizon, but we in
California have work to do.
Daniel Villegas
After nearly two decades in prison, Daniel
Villegas has been exonerated. As a 16 year old,
Mr. Villegas was arrested and charged in a
drive-by shooting. While he was in custody, he
was told that if he didn't confess, "he would be
raped in prison and given the death penalty."
That would be quite an offer for a 16-year-old
high school dropout.
Mr. Villegas's supporters included people
involved in ÔThe Innocence Project," an
advocacy organization from Northwest
University Law School. Although Mr. Villegas
is out of prison, the prosecuting attorneys will,
within a week of his release in mid January,
decide whether or not the case should go back to
trial.
Upon his release, Mr. Villegas went to Pius X
Catholic Church to celebrate and give thanks.
Even as he is deciding what to do with the rest
of his life, for now he is thankful. "Now I can
just wake up when I wake up and I don't got to
wake up at three in the morning for breakfast."
Mr. Villegas is 37 years old.
Stays of Execution
December
3 Askari Muhammad* Florida
17 Cecil Davis Washington
January
15 Rigoberto Avila Texas
15 Billy Ray Irick Tennessee
16 Edgardo Cubas Texas
(Foreign National Honduras)
22 Edgar Tamayo Texas
(Foreign National Mexico)
Executions
December
3 Jerry Martin** Texas
1-drug pentobarbital
December
10 Ronald Lott Oklahoma
3-drug w/ pentobarbital
11 Allen Nicklasson Missouri
1-drug pentobarbital
17 Johnny Dale Black Oklahoma
3-drug w/ pentobarbital
January
7 Askari Muhammand* Florida
3-drug w/ midazolam hydrochloride
9 Michael Wilson Oklahoma
3-drug w/ pentobarbital
16 Dennis McGuire Ohio
2-drug midazolam & hydromorphone
** volunteer- an inmate who waived ordinary
appeals that remained at the time of his
execution.
DECEMBER
WRITE-A-THON LETTER COUNT
POC 9
Write-a-Thon Cases 113
JANUARY
GROUP 22 MONTHLY LETTER COUNT
POC 8
UAs 24
Total 32
To add your letters to the total contact
lwkamp@gmail.com.
Amnesty International Group 22
The Caltech Y
Mail Code C1-128
Pasadena, CA 91125
www.its.caltech.edu/~aigp22/
http://rightsreaders.blogspot.com
Amnesty International's mission is to undertake research and action focused on preventing and ending grave abuses of the
rights to physical and mental integrity, freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination, within the
context of its work to promote all human rights.