Amnesty International USA

Troy Davis faces execution for the murder of Police Officer Mark MacPhail in Georgia, despite a strong claim of innocence. 7 out of 9 witnesses have recanted or contradicted their testimony, no murder weapon was found and no physical evidence links Davis to the crime. The Georgia Board of Pardon and Paroles has voted to deny clemency, yet Governor Perdue can still exercise leadership to ensure that clemency is granted to Troy Davis.

Amnesty International is calling on the Department of Homeland Security to make U.S. immigration detention standards enforceable, and to use alternatives to detention in a meaningful way. If the government chooses to detain an immigrant, that person must be held in conditions that meet both domestic and international standards, and before a person is detained, all available alternatives to detention must be considered in each individual case.

Amnesty International is concerned that Chinese Internet service providing companies, including Baidu, Sina and Sohu, are complying with Chinese government requests and demands to censor content online and otherwise repress the rights to freedom of expression and privacy. Call on these companies to ensure the Internet fulfills its potential to empower and educate and to create global communities.

In February 2007, Egyptian blogger Karim Amer was sentenced to four years' imprisonment for the "crime" of publishing on the internet material critical of Islam and President Mubarak.

Student and journalist Perwiz Kambakhsh's death sentence in January 2008 was overturned but replaced with a 20-year prison term. He was convicted for blasphemy under a law which provides for a sentence of no more than five years of imprisonment.

For over four decades, Indigenous communities have witnessed multinational oil companies cut through their ancestral lands in search of the country's vast petroleum resources. According to the report "Amazon Crude", Texaco alone was responsible for dumping 19 billion gallons of toxic wastewater into the region contaminating the drinking water of Ecuador's Amazon communities.

Please take action to help protect the safety of women in Afghanistan.

Chinese human rights activist Hu Jia has been convicted of “inciting subversion of state power” and sentenced to three and a half years inprison. Please write to the Minister of Justice explaining that Amnesty International considers Hu Jia to be a prisoner of conscience and is calling for his immediate and unconditional release.

On September 16, at least 17 Iraqis were killed after personnel of Blackwater Worldwide, a contractor of the U.S. State Department, reportedly shot several rounds from their armored vehicles in Baghdad. This is neither the first time nor an isolated incident of Blackwater personnel using lethal force against Iraqi civilians. Call on Blackwater to take their human rights responsibilities seriously.

Amnesty International recently published a report expressing concern regarding the Burundian authorities' failure to adequately address the problem of sexual violence against women. Take action now and urge Burundian authorities to prevent and investigate rape, and provide justice to the victims.

Over three years ago, the Justice Department (DOJ) required that all cases of detainee abuse by private military and security contractors be handled by one US Attorney’s Office. As of today, that office has declined to prosecute almost all of the cases referred to it, with little explanation. Urge your representatives in Congress to pressure the DOJ to prosecute human rights violations committed by private military and security contractors.

Ebrima B. Manneh was arrested in July 2006 at the offices of the newspaper Daily Observer by plainclothes officers, thought to have been from the National Intelligence Agency (NIA). He has been held in incommunicado detention without charge or trial for over two years. Please call on Gambian authorities to release Ebrima Manneh, a prisoner of conscience.

For peacefully raising a flag at an annual Indonesian ceremony, Filep Karma and Yusak Pakage may spend the next decade or more in prison. Amnesty International considers Filep Karma and Yusak Pakage to be prisoners of conscience who have been detained for the peaceful and legitimate exercise of their right to freedom of expression. Please urge the President of Indonesia to bring about the immediate and unconditional release of Filep Karma and Yusak Pakage.

Iran is one of the only countries in the world that still executes children and child offenders. At least 15 child offenders have been executed in Iran in the last two years. On October 16, 2008, The Government of Iran announced an end to this shameful practice, but on October 18 Iran clarified that this directive would not apply to child offenders sentenced to qesas or retribution. The vast majority of the more than 130 juveniles sentenced to death in Iran still face execution.

In May 2006 over 45 women were arrested without explanation in San Salvador Atenco, Mexico. Many were subjected to physical, psychological and sexual violence by the police officers who arrested them and then held in prison for days before being released on bail.

Troy Davis faces execution for the murder of Police Officer Mark MacPhail in Georgia, despite a strong claim of innocence. 7 out of 9 witnesses have recanted or contradicted their testimony, no murder weapon was found and no physical evidence links Davis to the crime. The Georgia Board of Pardon and Paroles has voted to deny clemency, yet Governor Perdue can still exercise leadership to ensure that clemency is granted to Troy Davis.

Malik Medjnoun and Abdelhakim Chenoui were taken into custody in September 1999, after which they were held in secret, unacknowledged detention, respectively for seven and six months. Both allege that they were tortured during this period of enforced disappearance.

Amnesty International USA, in partnership with the Save Darfur Coalition, is calling on President Barack Obama to turn his promises on Darfur into concrete action. We're collecting one million signatures to deliver to the White House to reinforce the need for Darfur to be a top-priority issue on the Obama administration agenda.

WOZA leaders Jenni Williams and Magodonga Mahlangu are scheduled to stand trial on July 7, for participating in a peaceful protest. Take action now to ensure that the charges are dropped immediately.

The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Darfur. Some organizations and United Nations member states are calling for the UN Security Council to suspend the execution of the arrest warrant. Write to Secretary of State Clinton and UN Ambassador Rice today to urge the U.S. to continue to oppose any calls to bargain justice away.

On March 5th, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent SB 208 to the Kansas Senate for consideration. This bill would abolish the death penalty in Kansas effective July 1, 2009. The full Senate will hear the bill on Monday, March 16th, so please write your Senator today and urge them to vote for death penalty repeal!

On Wednesday, March 18, 2009, Governor Bill Richardson signed into law a bill to repeal the death penalty in New Mexico. With this bill, sponsored by Representative Gail Chasey, New Mexico has now become only the 2nd state in over 30 years to legislatively abolish the death penalty, and brings to 15 the number of states in the U.S. that are now death penalty free! Write to Gov. Richardson and Rep. Chasey today and thank them for their unprecedented leadership.

On January 1, 2008, a UN-African Union peacekeeping force (UNAMID) was deployed to Darfur with the mandate of protecting civilians. Many countries pledged troops and military hardware; but more than a year since its initial deployment, UNAMID remains severely under-resourced and just over 60% deployed. Urge key international actors to fulfill their pledges and do everything in their capacity to ensure that UNAMID can successfully protect the people of Darfur.

Health care is a human right petition.

President Obama has tasked seven powerful members of his administration to review in detail US policy on “war on terror” detentions and interrogations—including Guantanamo and torture—and get back to him quickly with recommendations. These seven people have President Obama’s ear. Demand they recommend what’s right!

In Iraqi Kurdistan there has been an increase in arrests and other action against journalists, who have been detained, beaten and harassed by security agencies. One journalist was murdered in suspicious circumstances.

On May 13th President Obama urged the Sri Lankan government to allow the U.N. into the war zone to provide assistance to the thousands of civilians trapped there. He said that the U.N. and the International Committee of the Red Cross should be given access to the nearly 190,000 civilians who had fled the war zone so that they could get necessary support. Call on President Obama follow up his statement with actions to protect civilians displaced by the violence in Sri Lanka.

On December 20, 2008, police officers in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, allegedly beat a transgender woman, who is an HIV/AIDS activist and sex worker, after she refused to give them her money. They threatened her with death if she reported the incident. An arrest warrant is expected soon in this case. International pressure crucial. Three other transgender women in the area were killed around that same time, and no one has yet been brought to justice for those killings.

60 percent of people living with HIV and AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa are women. In South Africa, women under 25 are 3-4 times more likely to be infected with the virus and have the highest rate of new infections. Women and girls subjected to violence are at greater risk. Many women lack access to the free health care they are legally entitled to. Ask South Africa to reduce HIV and AIDS and address gender based violence.

On March 4, 2009, the government of Sudan expelled and suspended the operations of humanitarian aid organizations that provide the bulk of life-saving aid, including food, water, and medicine to millions of vulnerable people in Darfur and across Sudan. This apparently retaliatory action came soon after a decision by the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Despite strong evidence of the misuse of U.S. weapons against civilians in Gaza, Amnesty International recently revealed that the United States sent a massive new shipment of arms to Israel. The Wehr Elbe, a ship controlled by the U.S. Military Sealift Command, docked and unloaded several thousand tons of arms on March 22 at the Israeli port of Ashdod. Ask State Department officials why the United States would deliver these arms to Israel.

Belarus is the last country in Europe and in the former Soviet Union that still carries out executions. Amnesty International estimates that as many as 400 people may have been executed since Belarus gained its independence in 1991. At least four people were executed and one more sentenced to death in 2008. Sign the appeal to ask President Lukashenka to declare an immediate moratorium on executions.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, has been detained for 13 of the last 19 years, mostly under house arrest. On May 14, 2009, Aung San Suu Kyi and two of her assistants were taken from her home to Insein Prison following an incident in which an American man allegedly swam across a lake to her house and stayed there for two days.

Press investors in Sudan’s oil industry to follow the lead of companies like Morgan Stanley and T. Rowe Price to take a stand for the people of Darfur.

Jamie Leigh Jones was reportedly drugged, gang-raped and imprisoned in a container by fellow KBR co-workers in 2005 while working in Iraq on a U.S. Defense Department contract. Like the Abu Ghraib torture victims who still have not seen justice after more than four years, the abuse Jones says she suffered at the hands of private contractors over two years ago has not seen the light of a criminal trial.

Amnesty International is concerned about the ways Microsoft may be aiding the repression of freedom to information and expression in China. According to recent reports, Microsoft's search engine blocks searches under key words such as "freedom", "democracy", "human rights", "Falun Gong", and "demonstration", among others. Users of Microsoft Spaces are also prohibited from using these and other words on the weblogs they create.

Early in 2006 Google launched a self-censoring Chinese search engine, google.cn, that blocks search results for topics such as human rights, political reform, Tiananmen Square and Falun Gong, among others. Amnesty International is concerned about the ways Google is aiding the repression of freedom to information and expression in China, and the implications this may have for the way the company operates everywhere in the world.

Employees and individual contractors of US government contracted companies are alleged to have abused, tortured and killed people in areas including Iraq and Afghanistan, but not a single one has been brought to justice. Tell Congress to demand accountability of contractors in the "war on terror."

Tell your Representative and Senators and President Obama to expose abuse and hold perpetrators accountable. Momentum for an independent investigation into torture is growing. However, without your help, we may not achieve a strong, independent commission with the force of law that can expose the torture and abuse committed in our name and that can help prevent the U.S. from torturing in the future.

Troy Davis currently has a final appeal before the US Supreme Court. If that is rejected, his case returns to Savannah, Georgia, where a new District Attorney will have some life or death decisions to make. Call on DA Chisolm to do everything in his power to prevent an execution, and urge him to reopen the case against Troy Davis, since most of the witnesses responsible for his conviction have now recanted.

President Obama has recently taken a number of disturbing steps backwards since his announcement to close Guantanamo. During June, Torture Awareness Month, help close the book on torture, unfair trials and illegal detention by urging President Obama to 1) call for an independent commission of inquiry and 2) reject military commissions and indefinate detention.

Recently, reports surfaced that President Obama is drafting an executive order that would authorize a regime of indefinite detention without charge. Indefinite detention without charge is one of the most egregious of all human rights violations and is a hallmark of dictatorships and authoritarian regimes the world over. A handful of White House lawyers are now attempting to erase a bedrock principle of American justice by the stroke of a pen, without even the fig leaf of congressional approval.

Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist, is serving a ten-year prison sentence for sending an email to the U.S. Yahoo! helped put him there. They provided information to the Chinese Government, which led to his unjust imprisonment. Yahoo! needs to hear from people like you and me in droves. And they need to hear from us today. Tell Yahoo! that we won't stand for violating privacy and ask them to use their influence to secure Shi Tao's release.

North Korean authorities have sentenced two U.S. journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, to 12 years imprisonment with hard labor.

Scores of demonstrators from Indigenous communities in the Amazon have been killed and detained,after being forcibly dispersed in the town of Bagua for peaceful protests against a series of legislative decrees issued by the government over the use of land and natural resources in the Amazonian jungle.

Since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner in the June 12 elections in Iran, there have been widespread protests against the contested election results. The Iranian authorities have responded with violence and repression. Reports indicate that large numbers of people were severely beaten by riot police and that several people have been fatally shot Furthermore, over 100 people are reported to have been arrested, including the brother of former President Mohammad Khatami.

According to testimonies,the Tamil Tigers were responsible for using civilians as human shields during the final stages of the armed conflict with the government of Sri Lanka. However, there is evidence that many civilians were killed as a result of shelling. The Sri Lankan military continued to use heavy weapons despite promising previously that it would stop using them.

Help ensure that the human right to health care gets a fair hearing – urge Max Baucus to hold a Senate Finance Committee hearing on single payer!

The Iranian authorities have arrested hundreds of journalists, students, opposition politicians and human rights activists. Among them is prominent human rights lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani, a member of the Center for Defense of Human Rights and a close associate of Iranian Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi. He was arrested on June 16 and has been held in incommunicado detention at an unknown location since then.