Amnesty International Group 22 Pasadena/Caltech News
Volume XXII Number 7, July 2014
UPCOMING EVENTS
SUMMER BREAK: No Monthly Meeting
Thursday July 24 or Thursday August 28.
Tuesday, August 12, 7:30 PM. Letter writing
meeting at Caltech Athenaeum, corner of Hill
and California in Pasadena. In the summer we
meet outdoors at the "Rath al Fresco," on the
lawn behind the building. This informal
gathering is a great way for newcomers to get
acquainted with Amnesty
Sunday, August 17, 6:30 PM. Rights
Readers Human Rights Book Discussion
group. For August we read a mystery, "Death
and the Penguin" by Ukrainian author Andrei
Kurkov.
COORDINATOR'S CORNER
Hello everyone,
[Kathy is on vacation. She'll return to writing
her column next month.]
Stevi and Alexi started a new project for Group
22 to do some local community outreach for
Amnesty. Alexi set up a table at the Pasadena
Farmers Market on Saturday, July 12. She
reported that it was a positive experience.
Group 22 will be permitted to table two
Saturdays per month, and Alexi is organizing a
schedule for volunteers to set up and staff our
table. Email us at aigp22@caltech.edu if you
would like to help or would just like more info.
Hope you are all having a wonderful summer!
Best regards,
Stevi and Joyce
RIGHTS READERS
Human Rights Book Discussion Group
Keep up with Rights Readers at
http://rightsreaders.blogspot.com
Next Rights Readers meeting:
Sunday, August 17, 6:30 PM
Vroman's Bookstore
695 E. Colorado, Pasadena
Book Review
A penguin so adds to a funeral
Andrei Kurkov watches with increasing gloom as
post-Soviet Ukraine comes to resemble the chaotic
world of Death and the Penguin
Review by Amelia Gentleman
The Observer, Saturday 7 April 2001
Death and the Penguin
Andrei Kurkov
translated by George Bird
Andrei Kurkov is dismayed to see how the
portrait of post-Soviet Ukraine created for his
political satire Death and the Penguin has come
so close to reality. As a writer, he had a moment
of satisfaction when he began to see how neatly
life was imitating art, but it was a fleeting
sensation, quickly overwhelmed by a sense of
gloom.
Contract killings, executed journalists,
rampaging political corruption and an
environment of profound moral chaos fuel the
plot of Kurkov's novel, creating a humourously
bleak picture of Ukrainian life. The absurdities
of the lifestyles enjoyed by the new mafiosi and
the criminal elite are evoked with the cheerful
narrative simplicity of a children's fable. But a
glance at the news emerging daily from Ukraine
gives a sour edge to the comedy.
The novel's publication in Britain comes as
political crisis continues to unfold in Kiev - a
thickening scandal, fermenting on contract
killings, an executed journalist and political
corruption. The chaos surrounding the
beheaded opposition journalist Georgy
Gongadze and continuing speculation over the
possible involvement of President Leonid
Kuchma in his death make the extraordinary
events of the novel seem unremarkable. Kurkov
was encouraged by his Russian publishers to
boost sales by classing his work as a detective-
thriller, but its events are too surreal to unwind
according to standard thriller rules.
The novel's hero, Viktor Zolotaryov, is a
frustrated writer whose short stories are too
short and too sensation-free to be published.
When a newspaper editor offers him a new job
as star obituarist, paying $300 a month to write
'snappy, pithy, way-out' pieces, he agrees. His
brief is to select powerful figures from
Ukrainian high society and prepare mournful
articles in readiness for the possibility that they
might suddenly die. Initially, Viktor craves
recognition and is despondent that none of his
articles ever gets into print ('Not only had none
of them died, but not one had so much as fallen
ill,' he observes).
But then the unexpected death of a senior
politician after falling from a sixth-floor window
('Was cleaning it for some reason, although
apparently it wasn't his. And at night,' the
sinister newspaper editor comments) triggers a
clan war of killings and Viktor's obituaries are
suddenly in demand. It is only later, when he
discovers that his pieces are neatly filed in the
editor's office - marked with dates for imminent
publication although their subjects remain alive
- that he becomes uncomfortable about his role
in the eruption of violence unsettling the city.
The obituarist assumes a pragmatic approach to
the uneasy morality of his work - accepting the
money and getting on with it. This approach is
one which Kurkov believes many Ukrainians
have been forced to adopt, and his book is free
of any censure for the way characters behave.
'People have got used to the corruption. People
here are flexible and they accept the new rules
and don't dwell on moral questions. They just
watch what everyone else is doing and try to
find their own ways of deceiving others to make
money for themselves to survive,' he says.
Viktor's blossoming career is watched with
melancholic disapproval by the gloomy figure of
his pet penguin, Misha, adopted a few months
earlier from the impoverished city zoo. In the
cynical atmosphere of post-communist Kiev, the
penguin is the only being which inspires in
Viktor real affection, a devotion which drives
him to organise a heart transplant for his ailing
pet, purchasing, at great expense, the heart of a
four-year-old child.
Kiev is a city of constant power cuts, a place
where dollar bribes must be handed out before
ambulance men can be persuaded to ferry dying
men to hospital, and where hospital staff have
no medicines to ease patients' pain, let alone
cure them. This is a place where once-
distinguished scientists do not have enough
money to buy potatoes; it is also a place where
criminals will pay $1,000 a time to hire penguins
to add class to their glitzy funeral parades.
Kurkov's description of the gangster
underworld is strengthened by first-hand
experience. 'Some of my friends in publishing
were killed and one of my film producers was
murdered shortly after the film was finished.
Moments like these let you know what kind of
society you are living in,' he says.
The silent, sad penguin is the key to
understanding the novel as a portrayal of post-
Soviet chaos, says Kurkov. 'The penguin is a
collective animal who is at a loss when he is
alone. In the Antarctic, they live in huge groups
and all their movements are programmed in
their brains so that they follow one another.
When you take one away from the others he is
lost.
'This is what happened to the Soviet people who
were collective animals - used to being helped
by one another. With the collapse of the Soviet
Union suddenly they found themselves alone,
no longer felt protected by their neighbours, in a
completely unfamiliar situation where they
couldn't understand the new rules of life.'
Kurkov retains a sliver of optimism. 'I still have
hope, otherwise I would emigrate,' he says. But
even though he remains in Kiev, his readership
is growing much faster in the West than at
home. 'People here don't read much now.
People are very poor - they can't afford to buy so
many books.'
(c) 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its
affiliated companies. All rights reserved.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/apr/08/
fiction.reviews/print
Author Biography
Author: Andrey Kurkov
Andrey Kurkov was born in St Petersburg in
1961. Having graduated from the Kiev Foreign
Languages Institute, he worked for some time as
a journalist, did his military service as a prison
warder in Odessa, then became a writer of
screenplays and author of critically acclaimed
and popular novels, including the bestselling
Death and the Penguin. Kurkov has long been a
respected commentator on Ukraine for the
world's media, notably in the UK, France,
Germany and the States.
http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/authors/andrey-
kurkov
PRISONER OF CONSCIENCE
Gao Zhisheng
by Joyce Wolf
It looks as though Gao Zhisheng might actually
be released on the scheduled date of August 7!
Radio Free Asia interviewed Gao's wife Geng
He (who now lives in the U.S.) on July 3, and
she reported that Gao's relatives in China had
spoken with prison officials. Here is a quote
from the English translation of the interview
posted on
http://www.chinaaid.org/2014/07/rfa-will-
gao-zhisheng-be-truly-free.html.
Geng He said, "I talked to his older brother on
the phone last night. He said that he finally got
through to Shaya Prison by phone and asked,
'When can you allow us to visit Gao
Zhisheng?' The person answering the call said,
'No need to come to visit him. He will be
released on Aug. 7 after finishing his time in
prison.'
"His older brother said, 'But we still need to
pick him up from prison.' The person said,
'The prison will need to communicate with
Beijing about the specifics of his release. You
just wait for further notice at home.' That's all
we've heard so far."
So it appears that Gao's release will not be a
straightforward matter. In another interview
with Radio Free Asia on July 8, Geng He said
that Gao's brother and other relatives were
under a lot of pressure from the government.
They have been instructed to wait for further
notice. The brother told an RFA interviewer not
to ask him any questions, because he could not
tell the interviewer anything now.
The above post on the China Aid website
concludes with these words from Pastor Bob Fu:
Bob Fu said, "Given that the overall rule of law
in China has been taking a significant
backslide in the past few months, we are
deeply concerned about attorney Gao's
situation. I believe that tens and thousands of
people throughout the world are hoping for
his freedom and will continue to monitor his
situation as well.
"In August, if the authorities continue to force
him into 'disappearance' or take actions to
limit his freedom, it will cause an angry
response from the whole world.
"Recently, some influential non-profit
organizations in Britain and some foreign
media approached me about this case, and
they are all very concerned about attorney
Gao's pending release in August. I shared with
them what I'd heard from Gao's family,
including Shaya Prison's response that they
would 'need to take orders from Beijing' and
their forbidding of Gao's family to pick him up
from the prison upon his release.
"Many people across the globe care about
attorney Gao. I have attended meetings in
more than a dozen of different regions in
America this year, big or small, and every time
when I spoke at a meeting, many American
people in the audience would ask, 'How is
brother Gao doing?' 'How is attorney Gao
doing?' They are all anticipating his release."
Group 22 is certainly eagerly anticipating Gao's
release! Please join us in the sustained effort on
his behalf. Go to the Group 22 page for Gao
Zhisheng, choose one or more of the suggested
officials to write to, and follow the guidelines.
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~aigp22/GaoPOC
/GaoZhisheng.html, or just type 'amnesty
caltech gao' into your browser's search box.
Thank you!
SNOWDEN REPORTER GLENN
GREENWALD SPEAKS IN L.A.
by Laura G. Brown
Glenn Greenwald began his recent Los Angeles
speech by saying that in May of 2013, he met an
anonymous informant (who turned out to be
Edward Snowden) in Hong Kong to see proof of
NSA abuses. Was it really just over a year ago?
It seems so long that we've been worrying about
egregious spying by the NSA. But if it seems
long to us, it must be interminable for Snowden,
who is now living in Russia rather than risk
coming back to spend his life in a cell, said
Greenwald, who won a Pulitzer Prize last year
for reporting Snowden's story. I saw this civil
rights lawyer and author June 19 at the Aratani
Theater talking about what's new in US
surveillance and his book, No Place to Hide.
Most of the crowd was between 10-20 years
younger than me, and I wondered whether
Greenwald's message was lost on them. The 20-
somethings I know seem to think privacy is
some kind of dusty relic belonging to another
era. They share their information continually
through Facebook, texting, and other media so
as not to be uncool or left out. Their attitude
about Big Brother is a shrug of the
shoulders...they might not like their "brother,"
but he's part of the family, so they have to learn
to get along with him.
During his speech, Greenwald took on the
attitude of people who say, "I don't care if the
government is spying on me. I'm not doing
anything wrong, so I have nothing to hide." The
flipside, he pointed out, is that people who
value privacy are somehow suspect. While
people who don't threaten the status quo are
generally left alone, "The measure of a society is
how it treats its dissidents," he said, and in
times of upheaval, such as in Mubarak's Egypt,
dissenters have been targeted and killed.
Meanwhile, he complained about NSA
supporters like Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who said:
"The NSA only collects the type of information
found on a telephone bill." Actually, under
FISA, passed in 2008, agents are allowed to
listen to Americans' phone calls without a
warrant. Greenwald calls this "suspicionless
search" and said its chilling effect leads people
who feel they are being watched to make
behavioral choices they think others will
approve of. "Surveillance breeds a compliant,
easy to control population."
Unfortunately, little has changed since
Snowden's revelations. A few pieces of
"toothless" legislation have been passed while
the NSA's tactics continue unimpeded. The best
impetus for change is that big tech companies
like Yahoo and Google are pushing back against
government spying so they won't lose
customers, an effort that offers real hope,
Greenwald said, because while the US cares
little about individuals, it does pay attention to
Silicon Valley billionaires. (Well, there was one
principled individual who challenged the
surveillance state and succeeded, he recalled -
Edward Snowden.)
Greenwald closed with an idea aimed at the
Generation Xers who are so blasˇ about privacy.
He offered them his email address and asked
them to send him their Facebook and email
passwords, along with the passwords for all the
other sites they use. "You have nothing to hide,
right?" he asked. No one has met his challenge
yet. People must actually care about their
internet security, right?
DEATH PENALTY NEWS
By Stevi Carroll
The Good News Rolls In
Wednesday, July 16, Judge Cormac J. Carney of
United States District Court, ruled on
California's death penalty. He said that a death
sentence in California results in something that
"no rational jury or legislature could ever
impose: life in prison, with the remote
possibility of death." We in California don't
execute quickly enough.
While California law provides an automatic
appeal process for all death sentences, carrying
out these appeals is problematic. Death row
inmates may wait three to five years to be
assigned a lawyer since all of them are indigent
and thus eligible for court-appointed lawyers.
After that, it will take the lawyer as many as
four more years to go through all of the trial
records and to file an appeal. Because the State
Supreme Court hears only 20 to 25 death-
penalty appeals per year, the inmate will wait an
additional two to three years for his or her case
is scheduled for oral arguments. Then another
three to five years can be added for state habeas
corpus petitions for claims, such as ineffective
assistance of counsel. What this creates is a
situation where the punishment does not deter
future crime nor does it serve as retribution.
Former governors George Deukmejian, Pete
Wilson, and Gray Davis have supported an
initiative, Death Penalty Reform and Savings
Act of 2014, to streamline the path to executions.
This would include speeding up the appeals
process. Implementing this would be quite
expensive. Additionally, according to an article
in the New York Times, half of the California
death sentences reviewed by a federal court
were eventually vacated which means the
sentence was invalid. The number of signatures
for the initiative fell short for the 2014, but
supporters of the initiative are planning on
dusting it off for the 2016 ballot. One argument
used is that Proposition 34, the initiative to
change the death penalty to life in prison
without parole, failed. However, that
proposition failed with a vote of 52.8% to 47.2%,
a very narrow margin. We have to see how this
plays out given the recent ruling.
For now, let's celebrate Judge Cormac J.
Carney's decision and know the discussion will
continue.
For a primer on the death penalty, go to
"Everything you need to know about executions
in the United States"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-
nation/wp/2014/05/01/everything-you-need-
to-know-about-executions-in-the-united-states/
Global Executions
Least we become too joyful, a recent study noted
that globally executions rose by 15% in 2013.
China continues to keep its death sentences and
executions hidden behind the veil of 'state
secrets' but is thought by Amnesty International
to be the world's biggest state executioner.
Excluding China, 80% of the executions
worldwide were carried out in Iran, Iraq, and
Saudi Arabia. Executions in Iran and Iraq have
increased to 369 and 169 respectively for 2013
from 314 in Iran in 2012 and 40 in 2011 in Iraq.
Five other countries comprise the execution
posse: Bangladesh, North Korea, Sudan, Yemen,
and the United States. Egypt has been on a
capital punishment spree, sentencing 529
supporters of deposed President Mohamed
Morsi to death.
Amnesty International secretary general Salil
Shetty said, "We urge all governments who still
kill in the name of justice to impose a
moratorium on the death penalty immediately,
with a view to abolishing it." In the United
States, eighteen states and the District of
Columbia have done just that.
Execution Commuted
July
10 Tommy Waldrip Georgia
Stay of execution
July
2 Ronald Phillips Ohio
Executions
July
10 Eddie Davis Florida
Lethal injection 3-drug
w/ midazolam hydrochloride
16 John Middleton Missouri
Lethal injection 1-drug
pentobarbital
GROUP 22 MONTHLY LETTER COUNT
UAs 18
POC 4
Total 22
To add your letters to the total contact
aigp22@caltech.edu
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.