Anglo Amnesty group faces busy agenda

Violence against women, human trafficking, the occupied Palestinian territories and China are issues that Group 40, Amnesty International’s English speaking group in Geneva, will focus on this year.

“We have been working on China for nearly 35 years,” said Donald Fillinger, president of the group.

According to Amnesty’s 2009 report on China, individuals who exercised their rights to freedom of expression, assembly and association still risked harassment, house arrest, arbitrary detention, torture and other ill-treatment. Amnesty estimates that a minimum of 7,000 death sentences were handed down and 1,700 executions took place in 12 months.

Group 40 will also concentrate on Palestinian prisoners in administrative detention in northern Israel. Under this procedure, individuals are imprisoned without charge or trial.

“There are additional cruelties,” said Fillinger. “The prisoners are far from the West Bank or Gaza, which means that relatives can rarely visit them. Family members need a permit to go to Israel and travel is expensive.”

Group 40 recently took up the issue of human trafficking (of women and children) in Eastern Europe and has formed links with the International Organisation for Migration, a non-governmental organisation in Geneva.

“We know, for example, that by the time a Ukrainian girl ends up in Rome or Paris, a 150,000-dollar investment has been made in her so no one is going to give her up. It’s big business. The people doing it are powerful, well-organised and ruthless.”

Fillinger said the group will decide on the most effective way to raise awareness.

Group 40 is an offshoot of the first Swiss Amnesty group, which employees of international organisations in Geneva created in 1964. Fillinger, now 80, was a development economist at the International Labour Organisation when he joined and was subsequently asked to form a separate group for English speakers in 1968.

Today, Group 40 is composed of some 40 members, with approximately 12 attending monthly meetings.

Group 40 is the only one of Switzerland’s 90 Amnesty International groups to work in a non-national language. Amnesty’s Swiss section counts 40,000 registered members and 12,000 regular non-member donors. A secretariat in Bern provides support and information on major campaigns.

Four networks are devoted to torture and the abusive use of arms, women’s rights, asylum and migration and justice and poverty. Others focus on the Swiss section’s priority countries. In 2009, these were China, Sudan, Colombia as well as Israel and the occupied territories. Action will this year be extended into surrounding regions.

Manon Schick, spokesperson for the Swiss section of Amnesty, told Swisster: “The priority countries are those where Switzerland is likely to have a bigger impact. When they have a link with Switzerland, lobbying is more effective.”

“In the case of Israel and the occupied territories, Switzerland is involved in peace talks. We also have accords with Colombia.”

Current affairs can shift the emphasis of the section’s action. “Last year, because of the Swiss hostages, we worked more on Libya than Sudan,” she said, “Guantánamo also became a priority.”

Activists organise demonstrations and lobby governments, political bodies, companies and intergovernmental groups.

Action also involves showing solidarity to prisoners by sending letters. Schick told Swisster that the campaign launched in December to support the Swiss hostages in Libya was also “to show the Libyan authorities that there is a strong movement of solidarity”.

“A judicial decision must be made before they can be released. We hope that with all this pressure, the Libyan authorities will be obliged to carry out the trial in the respect of international law.”

Amnesty launches urgent campaigns when an individual is in imminent danger of being tortured or executed. Information is issued online with the addresses of government members and authorities where the public can write in protest.

Schick said nearly 40 per cent of these appeals are successful. “The prisoners are not necessary freed but the authorities let the person have a lawyer or, if necessary, medication.”

Amnesty International is headquartered in London, where the movement was launched in 1961 by British lawyer Peter Benenson. Amnesty originally aimed to protect “prisoners of conscience”, a term coined by Benenson to refer to anyone imprisoned because of their opinion, race, religion, colour or sexual orientation who has not used or advocated violence.

Amnesty has since expanded its scope of activity. Other key areas include the abolition of the death penalty, defence of womens' rights, children, refugees and migrants, the regulation of the global arms trade, and the protection of human dignity. It also works to protect economic, social and cultural rights.

“Everyone has an idea of what human rights are now,” said Fillinger. “When Amnesty International started, nobody knew.”