March 2007

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Transcript:

Hello and welcome to the Amnesty International Podcast for March 2007.

This month, we look at the next steps in the campaign to close Guantánamo Bay. Five years after the detention centre first opened, what can be done to make sure there's not a sixth anniversary? We travel to China to hear about more than 150 million migrant workers, treated as second class citizens and then onto Brazil where Amnesty International is campaigning for security and protection of all Brazilians regardless of their social status.

The first detainees were transferred to the US Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba more than five years ago. From the outset, Amnesty International has campaigned for the detainees to be treated lawfully and humanely. The US authorities have failed to meet this requirement; detainees have been tortured or other ill-treated and denied access to the courts to be able to challenge the lawfulness and conditions of their detention. Now a few detainees are facing trials by military commissions under procedures which fail to meet international standards of fairness. Australian, David Hicks has just become the first detainee to be convicted of any crime.

Irene Khan is the Secretary General of Amnesty International:

Guantánamo prison camp is a symbol of abuse, of abuse by the powerful. A powerful government that has put itself outside the reach of law, it has put several hundred people outside the rule of law. These hundreds of people have spent more than five years, many of them more than five years in prison not knowing how long they will be there, not knowing for what reason they are there. This is clearly abuse of the fundamental human right not to be detained arbitrarily and to be tried fairly.

The 11th January this year marked the fifth anniversary of the first prisoner transfer to Guantánamo Bay. Amnesty International joined other activists worldwide to mark the date with demonstrations in more than 30 countries in support of people like Omar Deghayes who has been in Guantánamo since September 2002. His family has found it difficult to deal with his indefinite captivity and the reports of abuse that have come from the camp. Omar's sister Armani joined the Amnesty International demonstrations outside the US embassy in London where demonstrators in orange boiler suits were held in a mock detention centre:

It was such a sanitised version of what I have read from my brother's accounts and I wish they were treated like that. It is quite horrific to think that in 2007 there are people held and treated like that but they are actually treated worse than that.

The months after the demonstration have seen some developments towards the closure of Guantánamo Bay.

Daniel Gorevan coordinates the campaign at Amnesty International.

Since the anniversary, the calls for the closure of Guantánamo have again heightened internationally, the heads of states around the world have again called for the closure of the camp and also the new UN secretary general has called for the closure of the camp. The growing international pressure has been recognised in the US particularly by the new US congress and the chair persons of some of the committees have said that they are looking at practical ways to close down the facility because it is embarrassing the US government so much so I think that there has been some progress.

Amnesty International's work to put pressure on the US government to close Guantánamo Bay is receiving increasing support. The organisation is now using this support to continue it’s campaigning to have the detention centre closed as well as supporting the families of the detainees.

I think that ordinary people around the world as we saw on the anniversary have a role to play in this they can do simple things like logging onto Amnesty’s website, they can send an email to US authorities or the US embassy in their own country, they can get in touch with their own local government representatives calling on them to call on the US to close down Guantánamo.

Between 150 and 200 million migrant workers have left their homes in the Chinese countryside to come looking for work in the cities. The labourers have to register as temporary residents and as a result are treated as second class citizens. Migrant workers are shut out of the health care system and their children don’t have equal access to free and compulsory education, live in appalling overcrowded conditions and are being exploited at work.

Corinna-Barbara Francis is Amnesty International's researcher on China.

Our first recommendation and demand in a sense from the Chinese government would be to abolish this household registration system. I think subsequent to that if that occurred then naturally in some sense then many other areas of discrimination would probably disappear but specifically we want to see a stop of discrimination in healthcare and the areas of education.

And it is not just the lack of healthcare and free education that causes problems for migrant workers:

We are also very concerned about the conditions at work, migrants face some of the most difficult and dangerous conditions at work. They are often forced to work very long overtime often working up to a month without a day off.

Migrants are owed billions of US dollars of back pay and despite government efforts to resolve the issue they haven’t really implemented effective measures to ensure that workers gets paid on time.

Every year, on average 45,000 people are murdered in Brazil, the majority of these being young, black men killed as a result of gun crime. Amnesty International's recent work in Brazil has focused on understanding the context in which the violence and the human rights violations take place.

Tim Cahill is Amnesty International's researcher on Brazil.

Amnesty International's work has pointed to the fact that public security policy in the country has long been based on discrimination and repression. Far from providing the security that these communities demand policing work has been about containing criminality in poor areas and invading these communities and in one go criminalising all those resident.

During Amnesty International’s visits to shanty towns in Brazil children have explained to the organisation how daily shoot outs between criminal gangs and police officers are affecting them making it difficult for them to attend school and for their parents to go to work.

Often the only experience of the state that these communities have is of police forces who enter in military style violent operations discriminating whole communities and abusing their rights. Amnesty International has heard many descriptions of shootouts between criminal gangs and police forces which prohibit residents from attending school, going to work or even being able to leave their house. This process has been described effectively as a criminalisation of poverty as whole communities gets branded as criminal suspects in one go.

Amnesty International is asking the Brazilian authorities to provide security and protection for all Brazilians to ensure people can live without fear and is stressing the importance of access to education and work to help people escape a cycle of poverty.