Bucharest

 

 

5.f.1.8

Freedom of  conscience and  religion  defenders

 

Through Urgent Actions, Worldwide Appeals and annual letter-writing campaigns, Amnesty’s members continue to write to POCs, but they are no longer the sole concern of Amnesty. The organisation has broadened its mandate in recent years and today campaigns for women’s sexual and reproductive rights, adequate housing, corporate responsibility, universal jurisdiction for the worst crimes, and the closure of Guantanamo-style detention facilities.

These are big asks. Without worldwide coverage (the organisation has around 50 country offices internationally), Amnesty must depend partly on the work of partner organisations in countries where human rights abuses take place. By supporting these local, often grassroots organisations, Amnesty can multiply its effect in far-flung regions. In order to support those on the ground, who often work in difficult and oppressive circumstances, Amnesty has begun using the UN moniker ‘human rights defenders’ to describe these partners. While many traditional POCs were also human rights defenders, many were not. Some simply found themselves on the wrong side of a state belief system, supporting the wrong political party or attending a banned church. Human rights defenders, on the other hand, actively work for the promotion of human rights, and often find themselves imprisoned or intimidated as a result.

 

Take the case of Mansour Ossanlu. A trade union leader in Iran, Mansoor struggled to build a strong trade union movement in a country with poor protection for workers. As a result, he found himself charged with ‘acts against national security’ and ‘propaganda’ and was sentenced in 2007 to five years imprisonment. Amnesty took on his case using the tried and tested POC model, but framing Mansoor as a human rights defender. The result of this is three-fold; individual supporters still feel the intimacy of writing a letter when they take action on his campaign, with the added incentive that Mansoor is seen as a ‘worthy’ cause due to his human rights work. Meanwhile, Amnesty can use the UN system, including the 1986 UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, to argue for his release.

 

The difficulty of knowing whether the letter-writing campaign ever contributes to the safety or release of human rights defenders is a major obstacle for Amnesty in planning future campaigns. No government is going to admit bowing to pressure from a group with such moral weight as Amnesty. However, many POCs and human rights defenders claim that such action helped them gain freedom, that they felt Amnesty’s intervention to be a major factor in their eventual freedom from imprisonment or from harassment by the authorities. In rare cases, Amnesty will sponsor human rights defenders to leave the country where they face harassment and work temporarily within one of their country section offices.

 

Moreover, by raising the profile of these individuals internationally, such campaigns can help to prevent future assaults on their freedom and rights. One current case involves Nicaraguan nine women whose work includes providing assistance to girls and women who require therapeutic abortion (this includes abortion as a result or rape or incest, and where the women’s life would be a risk if the pregnancy were not terminated). Under Nicaragua’s anti-abortion laws, these nine human rights defenders face legal charges and possible imprisonment. Moreover, the Catholic Church in Nicaragua has pressured the state to press charges in such cases. Amnesty’s approach must therefore involve a three-pronged attack. First, solidarity action is taken to demonstrate that the women’s work has the support of the international community. Secondly, letters are written to the state to demand all charges against the women are dropped, and no future charges are brought. Moreover, this presents an opportunity to call on the government to change the law banning therapeutic abortion. Finally, pressure is exerted against the Catholic Church to prevent them speaking in favour of the law and the criminalisation of human rights defenders.

 

Again, it is difficult to measure the impact of such a campaign. How can Amnesty measure how many letters were written by its supporters? Is it possible to know how many letters arrived, and whether they were read by the relevant person? Some letters may be written in languages for which the government has no translation capacity. Multiple other pressures may affect the actions of the authorities, many of which will be unknown to civil society.

 

What is known, however, is that often, for whatever reason, the strategy works. In 2002 Amnesty took up the case of Amina Lawal, a 30-year-old Nigerian woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery and conceiving a child out of wedlock. Amnesty International members worldwide sent six million letters, emails and faxes on Amina’s behalf. When Amina was acquitted in 2004, she thanked Amnesty delegates for their support in saving her life. But Amina is not a human rights defender. Nor was she a traditional political prisoner, but an attractive young woman with a small baby and a tragic story to tell. Moreover, an unusually high number of letters were written, many more than the few thousand sent for an average Amnesty appeal. Finally, English is the official language in Nigeria, and also the language that Amnesty members are most likely to use when letter-writing. All of these factors may have contributed to the eventual success. The task for Amnesty is to ensure that all cases, whether POCs or human right defenders, elicit the same response from their members and the state authorities alike.

 

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