May 2007

Transcript:

Hello and welcome to the Amnesty International Podcast for May 2007. To find out more please visit www.amnesty.org

This month, we look at a selection of issues covered in the organisation's Annual Report.

34 days of war last summer in Lebanon and northern Israel killed more than 1000 people and fear drove one and a quarter million from their homes – looking for a security that was lost among the bullets, bombs and rockets.

The parks and open spaces of Beirut filled up with the displaced.

We don't want anything other than peace. Look at this child. There's no bread or milk. Bread is so expensive now. Isn't that a crime? We don't want war. We don't want trouble.

Fear has led two and a half million people to flee their homes in Darfur, two hundred thousand are dead and far from stopping, the conflict is now spreading to Chad and the Central African Republic.

Azza Ibrahim is living at a site at Goz Beida for internally displaced Chadians. She is 32 and has one daughter. Her husband disappeared about a year ago when he left their village to search for cattle the Janjaweed had stolen from the family. He hasn't been seen since.

They've killed all our men and left us helpless. The men used to feed us but now there's no one to help us at all. They used knives to cut the men's throats and guns to shoot down defenceless people. Now we can’t even find food to eat in our own country. (in Arabic)

Activists around the world have been calling on the Sudanese government to immediately accept deployment of international peacekeepers to protect civilians in the troubled region of Darfur. Despite these calls, reports continue of killing, rape and looting - and internationally, those who might change things, do nothing.

An ocean away and families are still being separated as the detention centre at Guantánamo Bay is now more than five years old. Still there is no access to justice for those detained, just military commissions with flawed procedures that fail to deliver fair trials.

The unlawful practice of exporting suspected terrorists to secret detention centres, often in countries known to use torture was exposed –- the US government admitting to its program of "extraordinary renditions" and European governments admitting being involved.

In 2003, Yemeni national Muhammed Bashmilah was detained during a brief trip to Jordan and handed over to the US. He was held in secret US custody for 18 months, completely isolated and cut off from his family. He was never told him why he had been arrested or charged him with any crime.

And then they covered my eyes and ears with a band aid and covered it all with a sticking plaster. At that moment, I already could not feel anything anymore because they hit every part of my body. But my mind was thinking. And I just felt or thought that God must have spared me from feeling the pain and suffering. That was one thing. The other thing is, that, I was wondering how my mama and wife were doing now. Then they dragged us onto a plane.

However, in some of the world's most troubled places, despite threats and opposition, courageous individuals are working for human rights, from Colombia to Sri Lanka. Increasingly, people are joining together to make clear their demands -

Here in Nigeria, Felix Morka is working with local residents to stop the government forcibly evicting people and destroying their homes.

My problem with the government is that, see if you cannot help me make my house better, don't destroy the one I made by myself. That's the principle. That's why we continue to fight the government when they try to demolish the community.

There's also been progress made in delivering justice. The International Criminal Court has indicted the leaders of the Lords Resistance Army in Uganda and the former Liberian President Charles Taylor's trial is due to start shortly. In fact the International Criminal Court's first prosecution will be of those accused of recruiting child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Where more than two years after the government launched a country-wide programme to release and reintegrate child soldiers into civilian life, at least 11,000 children are still with armed groups or unaccounted for. The majority of girls taken by armed groups remain either abandoned or misidentified as "dependants" of adult fighters.

This former child soldier told Amnesty International Researchers what her life had been like.

They smoked and took a lot of drugs. It is because of these drugs that they turned to the young girls and removed their clothes. They would have even sexual acts among themselves and with the girls. We were all there watching. If you laughed or said anything they would kill you. We all had to undress even our mothers had to undress in front of their children. If you refused they would kill you. Even the girls as young as 10 years had babies.

In the light of all that has happened in the last year, Amnesty International believes that it is only through a respect for human rights that conditions can be improved. Irene Khan is the organisation's Secretary General.

The erosion of human rights can only be arrested if there is a stronger sense of global solidarity; if there is an end to this politics of fear; a sense that there is real value in human rights; that the world, a fractured world, can be brought together around global values of human rights, around the universality of human rights and the indivisibility of human rights.

Thank you for listening for more information on any of these issues please visit our website at www.amnesty.org

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