Amnesty International Group 22 Pasadena/Caltech News Volume XIV Number 7, July 2006 UPCOMING EVENTS Thursday, June 27, 7:30 PM. Monthly Meeting Caltech Y is located off San Pasqual between Hill and Holliston, south side. You will see two curving walls forming a gate to a path-- our building is just beyond. Help us plan future actions on Sudan, the War on Terror, death penalty and more. Tuesday, August 8, 7:30 PM. Letter-writing Meeting at the Athenaeum. Corner of California & Hill. The cafeteria area is closed in summer so look for us outside on the lawn if weather permits, or in the lounge close to the entryway. This informal gathering is a great way for newcomers to get acquainted with Amnesty! Sunday, August 20, 6:30 PM. Rights Readers Human Rights Book Discussion Group. Vroman's Book Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena. This month we read Naomi Hirahara's Summer of the Big Bachi (More below.) COORDINATOR'S CORNER Hi everyone. Hope you are enjoying the summer and trying to stay cool in the (early) summer heat. We have managed to avoid running the air/con except as a last resort when we absolutely can't stand it by placing fans in every room, keeping the blinds down, and most of the lights off except what is necessary. Is there any relief in sight?! Maybe there's some truth to global warming! Seriously, we have seen and highly recommend Al Gore's movie on this topic. Group 22 has been busy lately. June 25, at All Saints Church, members Martha TerMaat, Lucas Kamp, Paula Tavrow, Joyce Wolf, Robert and I volunteered at another "Camp Darfur" on the church lawn after services. There were several tents, one for each genocide of the 20th century (Armenian, Nazi, Bosnia, Rwanda, and now Darfur). Each tent had maps on the opening flap, plus a printed history of the genocide and events leading up to it. The Bosnian tent had a young woman from Bosnia and featured an impressive Bosnian crafts and costume display. We helped "sell" solar cookers at the Darfur tent. All Saints along with a group called Jewish World Watch, was soliciting donations to buy these cookers for Darfurian women in refugee camps in Chad. The purpose of the cookers is to allow the women to cook inside the camp without having to go outside to look for firewood, which is very hazardous. Each family is supposed to get 2 cookers, one for rice and other starches and another for vegetables or sauce. For more info, go to http://www.jewishworldwatch.org. The women are also being trained on how to assemble the cookers, so they can sell them and thus provide income for their families. Camp Darfur also came to Altadena on July 23 complete with a visit from Congressman Adam Schiff! Amnesty has started a new Darfur action campaign called "100 Days of Action on Darfur" which began June 26 with Arms and Security. Currently, the focus is on International Justice. Did you know that not a single person who has carried out, ordered, or condoned even the most egregious of the crimes committed in Darfur has been brought to justice? It's time to bring war criminals in Darfur to justice through the International Criminal Court (the ICC). Take action to call on Sudan's government to cooperate with the ICC's investigation, and on the African Union and the US Government to do all that they can to support the ICC's work. A sample letter follows this column (from the website, http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/sudan/index.do), which can be sent to either your member of Congress or Secretary of State Rice. Upcoming topics in the 100 Days of Action for Darfur are Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (August 14), and Stopping Violence against Women and Girls (Sept 12). On July 9th, Hector Aristizabal, a Columbian peace activist who lives in Pasadena who has participated in many Group 22 activities, (including the Doo Dah Parade!) performed his one man play "Nightwind" at All Saints Church. For those of us who hadn't yet seen this play, it was a powerful and moving experience --part therapy session (with audience participation afterwards!) and call to action. It is the story of Hectors torture (and his brother's death) --they were both student activists in Medellin in the 80's-under the hands of the Colombian military. We recommend you see it if you get a chance! Take care, Kathy aigp22@caltech.edu SUDAN Support International Criminal Court The Honorable (First name, Last name) United States Senate or House of Representatives Washington, DC 20510 for the Senate or 20515 for the House Dear Senator _________ or Representative _________: I am profoundly concerned about the egregious crimes committed against the people of Darfur. I believe that the International Criminal Court (ICC) is an important instrument to protect human rights in Sudan, as well as deter future crimes in the region. I appreciate the U.S. administration's willingness to assist the ICC in carrying out its work in Darfur, and I urge even closer cooperation with the Court in the future. Please do everything in your power to keep pressure on the Government of Sudan to cooperate with the ICC investigation. Thank you very much. Sincerely, Your NAME and ADDRESS LETTER COUNT Summer Postcard Action 31 Eritrea POC 14 Total: 45 To add your letters to the total contact lwkamp@sbcglobal.net RIGHTS READERS Human Rights Book Discussion Group Vroman's Bookstore 695 E. Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena Sunday, August 20, 6:30 PM Keep up with Rights Readers at http://rightsreaders.blogspot.com Summer of the Big Bachi by Naomi Hirahara In the foothills of Pasadena, Mas Arai is just another Japanese-American gardener, his lawnmower blades clean and sharp, his truck carefully tuned. But while Mas keeps lawns neatly trimmed, his own life has gone to seed. His wife is dead. And his livelihood is falling into the hands of the men he once hired by the day. For Mas, a life of sin is catching up to him. And now bachi, the spirit of retribution, is knocking on his door. It begins when a stranger comes around, asking questions about a nurseryman who once lived in Hiroshima, a man known as Joji Haneda. By the end of the summer, Joji will be dead and Mas's own life will be in danger. For while Mas was building a life on the edge of the American dream, he has kept powerful secrets: about three friends long ago, about two lives entwined, and about what really happened when the bomb fell on Hiroshima in August 1945. A spellbinding mystery played out from war-torn Japan to the rich tidewaters of L.A.'s multicultural landscape, this stunning debut novel weaves a powerful tale of family, loyalty, and the price of both survival and forgiveness. PRISONER OF CONSCIENCE Introducing Eritrean Estifanos Seyoum Two months ago Group 22 adopted a Prisoner of Conscience (POC) from Eritrea. (Eritrea is in East Africa between Ethiopia and the Red Sea.) Our POC's name is Estifanos Seyoum. We don't have a photo and we don't know his age, although an unconfirmed Wikipedia stub says he was born in 1947. We do know that he was a Brigadier General and former head of the Inland Revenue Service. Estifanos Seyoum was arrested on September 18, 2001, along with other members of the "Group of 15" (G15 for short). These 15 senior members of the National Assembly had all signed open letters criticizing the policies of President Issayas and calling for open debate of Eritrea's problems. The Eritrean government said that the G15 detainees committed treason, but they have never been officially charged. They have been held incommunicado, without access to their families or lawyers or international humanitarian organizations, and the location of their place of detention is secret. A number of other AI Local Groups have recently been assigned cases of G15 detainees and other Eritrean POCs. We look forward to cooperative actions with these AI groups, in particular Group 19 from Palo Alto, whose members are taking a leading role in the cases of the imprisoned Eritrean journalists. Having adopted Estifanos Seyoum as our POC, our group is now committed to ongoing action in his behalf. Please join us this month in writing to President Issayas. You can copy the letter below or use it as a guide in composing your own. Remember, overseas postage is 84 cents! His Excellency Issayas Afewerki Office of the President P O Box 257 Asmara Eritrea Your Excellency, I am writing to you about ESTIFANOS SEYOUM, formerly a Brigadier General and head of the Inland Revenue Service until August 2001. He was arrested on 18 September 2001. His current whereabouts and condition of health are unknown. Amnesty International considers Estifanos Seyoum to be a Prisoner of Conscience, since he has neither used nor advocated violence in the peaceful expression of his political opinions. I respectfully remind you that the Constitution of Eritrea guarantees that "no person shall be deprived of liberty without due process of law" (Article 15-2) and that "no person may be arrested or detained save pursuant to due process of law" (Article 17-1). I urge you to ensure that in accord with internationally accepted standards of human rights and with Eritrea's own Constitution, Estifanos Seyoum is informed of the reason for his arrest and of the charges against him. I further urge that he have access to his family and lawyers and any necessary medical treatment. Incommunicado detention increases the risk of prisoners being denied the basic rights and protection of Eritrean and international law. Therefore I ask that you make public the location where Estifanos Seyoum is detained. I also urge you to ensure that representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross or other international humanitarian organizations are allowed access to him. Thank you very much for your consideration of this important matter. Sincerely, [YOUR NAME AND ADDRESS] ISRAEL/Lebanon Support for Protection of Civilians Please note that there is an additional action on the current crisis at amnesty-usa.org targeting the leaders of Israel, Lebanon and Hezbollah. A sample letter on the protection of civilians directed towards our Congressional leaders follows: The Honorable Dianne Feinstein United States Senate 331 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510-0001 The Honorable Barbara Boxer United States Senate 112 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510-0505 The Honorable Adam Schiff United States House of Representatives 326 Cannon House Office Building Washington, DC 20515- Dear Senator Feinstein/Boxer/Rep. Schiff: I am writing to ask that you urge the Bush administration to help broker an agreement that ends the violence and presses all parties to cease attacks on civilians in Israel, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip and to ensure that all parties to the conflict observe international law. Amnesty International USA sent a letter to Secretary Condoleezza Rice outlining its human rights concerns. In its letter, Amnesty informed Secretary Rice that its members throughout the world have been writing to all parties to the conflict urging them to take all possible measures to cease attacks on civilians, civilian enclaves, and civilian infrastructure and to immediately stop indiscriminate and/or disproportionate force which are blatant breaches of international humanitarian law and amount to war crimes. Amnesty International has opposed Hezbollah and Hamas' launching of indiscriminate attacks in civilian areas of Israel that have led to the killing of civilians. Amnesty has also opposed Israel's attacks in civilian areas and on civilian infrastructure that have led to civilian deaths and raised concerns about the need to respect the principle of proportionality. The United States is in a unique position to exert influence on the various parties to the conflict to ensure that they cease immediately from carrying out further attacks against civilians or civilian infrastructure and adhere fully to their obligations under international humanitarian law. Amnesty has expressed its concerns to the relevant parties on a range of violations including the capture of Israeli soldiers in Gaza and Lebanon, the excessive and disproportionate use of lethal force, the targeting of civilians and the destruction of civilian infrastructure. Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians have been forced to flee their homes, but many wanting to leave cannot do so because roads and bridges around the areas have been destroyed by Israeli air strikes and remaining alternative routes are not safe as they are also exposed to air strikes. Many Israelis have also fled or been forced to stay in bomb shelters. A solution based on respect for the human rights of all people in the region must be found. I am concerned over the transfer of arms that are being used to commit human rights violations. Amnesty International has pressed all relevant parties to this conflict to cease the transfer of weapons that are being used against civilians and to press for appropriate measures to ensure civilians are not attacked using such weapons. In addressing Secretary Rice, Amnesty International asks the Bush administration to urge the Israeli government to ensure that U.S-made weapons are not used against civilians and to adhere to international law and U.S. restrictions on weapon use. In this light, the decision by the Administration to transfer precison guided missles to Israel in the middle of the conflict, without obtaining any guarantee that they will be used in conformity with international law, leads to a risk of further civilian casualties. I also ask you to support Amnesty International's call for the United Nations Security Council to authorize and deploy an immediate U.N. fact-finding mission to Lebanon, Israel and Gaza to investigate past attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure, and other breaches of international humanitarian law. In addition, Amnesty International is calling for a U.N. mission to Lebanon and Israel that would make concrete recommendations for measures to spare future civilian lives. Please act to bring a permanent end to the violence that has claimed so many civilian lives in the region and join Amnesty International and the international chorus of voices calling for the Bush administration to help broker an agreement that ends the violence and protects civilians from further attacks. Sincerely, Your NAME and ADDRESS CORPORATE ACTION NETWORK Support New Anti-Censorship Legislation Sample Letter: The Honorable Adam Schiff United States House of Representatives 326 Cannon House Office Building Washington, DC 20515- Dear Representative Schiff: I urge you to support the Global Online Freedom Act of 2006, without any amendments that would hinder its ability to prevent U.S. Internet technology companies from cooperating with repressive regimes attempting to limit freedom of expression and access to information. As it now stands, this legislation would help ensure that the Internet remains an open forum for free expression in every part of the world, and help American companies resist pressure from authoritarian governments to compromise their principles. Specifically, I ask you to protect the key provisions of the Act, which prohibit US companies from locating personally identifiable information in a country that represses freedom of expression and providing repressive governments with personally identifiable information of users (except for legitimate law enforcement purposes). Internet companies have an invaluable role to play in the realization of freedom of expression and information. This bill helps them to fulfill that role by requiring them to tell the U.S. government what terms they are using to filter, limit or affect search results based on a request or policy of a repressive government, and the content they are removing or blocking. This is essential if we are to combat restrictions on freedom of expression for people around the world. Sincerely, Your NAME and ADDRESS DEATH PENALTY Clemency for Montana "Volunteer" David Dawson is scheduled to be executed in Montana on 11 August 2006. He was sentenced to death in April 1987 for the murder of Monica and David Rodstein and their 11-year-old son Andrew at a motel in Billings, Montana, in 1986. If the execution goes ahead, it would be the first judicial killing in the state of Montana for more than eight years. David Dawson, who has been on death row for nearly two decades, has given up appeals against his conviction and death sentence. State and federal courts have found David Dawson competent to waive his appeals and have granted his request to dismiss his lawyers. The lawyers challenged Dawson's efforts to waive his appeals and fire them, arguing that his decision-making has been influenced by the harsh conditions on Montana's death row and the suicides of two other condemned inmates who hanged themselves in their cells in July 2003 and February 2004. David Dawson first moved to waive his appeals in 2004. Efforts are underway to attempt to stop the execution based on legal challenges to the constitutionality of the state's lethal injection process. BACKGROUND INFORMATION. There have been 1,032 executions in the USA since judicial killing resumed there in 1977. Montana accounts for two of these executions, which were carried out in May 1995 and February 1998. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, some 125 countries are abolitionist in law or practice. More than 20 countries have abolished the death penalty since Montana last executed a prisoner. About one in 10 of the people executed in the USA since 1977 have been so-called "volunteers", prisoners who had dropped their appeals and "consented" to execution. Any number of factors may lead a prisoner not to pursue appeals against his or her death sentence, including mental disorder, physical illness, remorse, bravado, religious belief, the severity of conditions of confinement, including prolonged isolation and lack of physical contact visits, the bleak alternative of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, pessimism about appeal prospects, a quest for notoriety, or simply a desire to gain a semblance of control over a situation in which the prisoner is otherwise powerless. Rational or irrational, a decision taken by someone who is under threat of death at the hands of others cannot be consensual. What is more, it cannot disguise the fact that the state is involved in a premeditated killing - part of a culture of violence, not a solution to it. Whether or not prisoners who "ask" to be executed are deluding themselves about the level of control they have gained over their fate - after all, they are merely assisting their government in what it has set out to do anyway - the state is guilty of a far greater deception. It is peddling its own illusion of control: that, by killing a selection of those it convicts of murder, it can offer a constructive contribution to efforts to defeat violent crime. In reality, the state is taking to refined, calculated heights what it seeks to condemn - the deliberate taking of human life. While such executions are sometimes referred to as a form of state-assisted suicide, ''prisoner-assisted homicide'' would be a more accurate label. For if a death row inmate seeks to commit actual suicide, the state will make every effort to prevent it. The phenomenon of prisoners "volunteering" for execution contributes to the lottery of the death penalty. To put it another way, given the rate of reversible error found in capital cases, if the approximately 120 "volunteers" executed since 1977 had pursued their appeals, there is a significant possibility that a number of them would have had their death sentences overturned to prison terms by the appeal courts. As well as opposing the death penalty unconditionally in all cases, Amnesty International also has serious concerns about the conditions on death rows in the USA. The organization has recently raised this issue with the United Nations Committee Against Torture and the UN Human Rights Committee. In Montana, death row inmates spend most of their lives alone in their cells. The exercise area to which they have access for five hours a week is reportedly an enclosed cage surrounded by concrete walls, with the only outside view straight up (to the sky). David Dawson has spent nearly 20 years in such conditions. RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible: - expressing sympathy for relatives and friends of Monica, David and Andrew Rodstein, explaining that you are not seeking to excuse this crime or downplay the suffering caused; - welcoming the fact that there has not been a execution in Montana in more than eight years, and opposing the execution of David Dawson; - calling on the Governor to stop this execution and to grant clemency to David Dawson; - calling on the Governor to support a moratorium on executions in Montana. APPEALS TO: Governor Brian A. Schweitzer Office of the Governor Montana State Capitol Bldg. P.O. Box 200801 Helena MT 59620-0801, USA Email, via website: http://governor.mt.gov/contact/comment.asp. IRAN Sample Letter for Prisoner of Conscience His Excellency Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi Head of the Judiciary Ministry of Justice Park-e Shahr Tehran, ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN Your Excellency: I am deeply concerned for the safety of Arzhang Davoodi, an author, poet and director of the Parto-e Hekmat Cultural Education Centre in Tehran who is currently serving a 15-year sentence at Bandar Abbas prison. Arzhang Davoodi was arrested in October 2003 after helping to make "Forbidden Iran," a television documentary that criticized Iranian authorities. Detained without formal charges for a year, Arzhang Davoodi was asked to sign a pre-written confession at least three times. Mr. Davoodi was also kept in solitary confinement at a detention facility where he was severely tortured, resulting in injuries that included a broken shoulder blade, partial deafness, a broken jaw and broken teeth. Arzhang Davoodi has acquired severe health problems due to the torture, but has been denied access to medical treatment. According to Amnesty International, Arzhang Davoodi is a prisoner of conscience, imprisoned solely for peacefully expressing his beliefs. His imprisonment in connection with the production of a television documentary appears to be a clear violation of his right to freedom of expression, a right guaranteed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is a party. I urge you to immediately and unconditionally release Arzhang Davoodi. I call on you to thoroughly investigate the allegations of his torture and make available the necessary medical treatment. I thank you for your attention to this serious matter. Sincerely, copy to: Iranian Interests Section 2209 Wisconsin Avenue N.W. Washington, D.C. 20007