Amnesty International USA

Of the four Kuwaitis incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for more than 7 years, three remain there. The government of Kuwait has long been pressing the U.S. government for the prisoners' return. Each of these cases was assigned to an Amnesty group in the United States, and those groups have been urging the U.S. government to either release the men or charge them with a crime and try them in Federal civilian court.

On May 14, 2009, Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy, 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. Suu Kyi was subsequently put on trial for breaching the terms of her house arrest, and was sentenced to an additional 18 months under house arrest.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

Amnesty International concerned that Khaled al-‘Omair and Mohammed al-‘Otaibi are detained and at risk of torture for attempting to hold a peaceful demonstration

Natalia Estemirova, one of the leading human rights defenders who worked in the North Caucasus region, was abducted in Grozny, Chechnya on July 15th on her way to work. She was dragged into a car by several men and driven off in an unknown direction. According to witnesses, Natalia Estemirova managed to shout out that she was being abducted. Her body was found several hours later in the neighboring Republic of Ingushetia with gunshot wounds to the head and chest.

Real health care reform could help bring the U.S. government closer to fulfilling the human right to health care. Yet Congress, and particularly the Senate, continues to treat health care as a market commodity, rather than a public good. The Senate must stop pandering to the insurance industry and instead provide a Medicare-like public plan that is accessible to everyone.

Urge the Nicaraguan government to repeal the criminalization of access to abortion services, even where continuation of a pregnancy endangers a woman's or girl's life or health, or where the pregnancy is a result of rape.

Although Peru is a middle-income country, its maternal mortality rate is the second worst in South America. Low-income, rural, and indigenous women are most at risk. Peru has been a focus of the human-right-to-maternal-health community, and President Alan Garcia has promised better equity in maternal health funding. But he has yet to fulfill that promise.

Across the United States, thousands of people, including U.S. citizens, immigrants and asylum seekers, languish needlessly in detention facilities every day without even the right to a hearing to determine whether their detention is necessary. While detained, they are often held in poor conditions with limited access to family, medical care, or attorneys.

President Obama and a number of members of Congress have resisted full accountability for torture, and have endorsed indefinite detention and unfair military commissions. There is an alternative: call on President Obama and Congress to respect human rights.

Urge the Obama Administration to actively support reintroduction and passage by Congress, this fall, of the International Violence Against Women Act (I-VAWA).

Call on the Chadian government to immediately cease all forced evictions and ensure that the rights of victims of forced evictions are respected

Troy Davis has been scheduled for execution three times without ever having a hearing on evidence that he may be innocent. On August 17, the US Supreme Court finally granted him that hearing. While this is welcome news, we must continue to let Georgia authorities know that we support full justice for Troy Davis. Sign the petition today!

The Governor of Ohio has reprieved three prisoners who were facing execution this year, to give prison authorities more time to establish a “back-up” lethal injection protocol following a recent failed execution. Six executions are scheduled for the first 6 months of 2010. The governor has said he will issue further reprieves if he deems it necessary. Call on Governor Strickland to esstablish a moratorium on ALL executions in Ohio.

Since 2006, at least 14 media workers have been killed in Sri Lanka, with no one held accountable for these murders. Call on the Sri Lankan government to ensure Dileesha Abeysundera’s safety and to investigate the intimidation attempted against her and other Sri Lankan journalists and media workers.

Jenni Williams and Magodonga Mahlangu continue to live under the threat of trial and imprisonment since their arrest on charges of disturbing the peace on October 16, 2008. On that day, hundreds of WOZA members demonstrated in Bulawayo in support of the government declaring a national emergency and distributing food aid to the nation's hungry citizens.

250,000 people displaced by the fighting in Sri Lanka are held by the government in de facto detention camps. They cannot leave the camps, which are overcrowded and lack basic sanitation facilities.

Urge President Obama and the US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry to continue to press the Afghan government into upholding its’ commitment to the Afghan Constitution and the international treaties and conventions it has signed, including The Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

Academic and dual Iran-U.S. national Kian Tajbakhsh was arrested at his home in Tehran on 9 July. Kian Tajbakhsh, a 47-year-old social scientist who taught urban policy at the New School University in New York and who previously consulted for George Soros' Open Society Institute, was arrested on the night of 9 July by agents of the Security Police.

On October 27 2006, US video journalist Brad Will was shot and killed in Oaxaca City, southern Mexico as he filmed a clash between members of a local protest movement (Asamblea Popular del Pueblo de Oaxaca, APPO) and supporters and officials of the local governing party.

John Allen Muhammad is due to be executed in Virginia on November 10. He was convicted in 2003 of capital murder in relation to a series of shootings in and around the Washington DC area in 2002. His lawyers are seeking clemency on the grounds that he suffers from severe mental illness.

Artist and community activist, Marlon Magwaza, was harassed and threatened by ZANU-PF youths after he organized a community cultural event that had prior clearance from the police. The event was conducted to promote peace and tolerance. He was shoved by the police before being taken to the police station where he was detained for about seven hours. The arrest took place after ZANU-PF youths alleged a participant at the event had 'insulted' President Mugabe.