Lovendringer og løslatelser

Dear Friends,

As you know, the Stop Torture campaign is now closing, marking the conclusion of more than two years of successful campaigning across the Amnesty movement. I would like to share a few highlights with you.

The Stop Torture campaign called for the establishment and implementation of effective safeguards against torture as key step on the path to eradicating torture altogether. Where safeguards are effectively implemented, reports of torture fall dramatically.

Through our work on Stop Torture, we have exposed governments who torture. We have insisted that lawyers are present during interrogations, that doctors are on hand to examine detainees, that confessions obtained by torture can’t be used as evidence in courts, and that detainees are allowed to see their families. And we have insisted that anyone who is involved in torture is brought to justice.

Since the launch of the campaign, more than two million people worldwide have joined our call to governments to stop torturing and give survivors justice, achieving remarkable successes and impacting people’s lives as well as laws and practices. In Mexico, in August 2015, the Federal Attorney General’s Office approved a National Protocol for the Investigation of Torture, which was also approved by all state-level Attorneys General. Amnesty International was part of the group of NGOs and experts who were consulted for this Protocol. Many of our suggestions were taken on board. In November last year the Mexican government also consulted with internal and external stakeholders, including Amnesty International, in order to prepare the draft bill of the General Anti-Torture Law that is now under review by the Congress.

The campaign in Morocco and Western Sahara showed impact from its launch. The then-UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, took up the issue of torture that we had raised with the launch of the campaign. Immediately after she met the King, the Minister of Justice and Liberties issued a set of memoranda to police and gendarmerie stations, prosecutors and judges, and prisons, outlining the need to adequately investigate allegations of torture and other ill-treatment.

Nigerian law makers passed the Anti-Torture Bill (now pending review), which was one of the major advocacy calls of the campaign in Nigeria.

The Philippines’ Senate opened an inquiry into Amnesty International’s report, Above the law: Police torture in the Philippines, on the day of its launch. Since then, two Senate inquiries have taken place to respond to the evidence included in the report regarding widespread torture in the Philippine National Police.

Milestones were also achieved in 2015 in Togo, where torture was criminalised, and Mongolia, which ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT), and more recently from Canada, which committed to sign the Protocol.

In the last two years alone, we’ve supported many torture survivors to get justice. People like Ángel Colón, who was tortured and wrongly imprisoned in Mexico for six years. Tens of thousands of us demanded his release. When it finally came he told us: “My message to all those who are against torture is: ‘Don’t drop your guard. A new horizon is dawning’.”

People like Moses Akatugba, who was released after spending 10 years in prison in Nigeria. “I am overwhelmed. Amnesty activists are my heroes” he said. People like Mahmoud Hussein – a young Egyptian tortured after attending a protest. “Because of your solidarity, I am free now” he declared last month. “And I dream of a nation without torture.”

We collected over 400,000 signatures for a torture survivor and two activists who reported torture in Morocco and Western Sahara.

In the Philippines, the first police officer was convicted under the Anti-Torture Act, after thousands of us spoke out with his victim, Jerryme Corre.

Over 140,000 of us have called for the release of journalist Muhammad Bekzhanov, imprisoned for 16 years in Uzbekistan. Whereas once he asked God to “let him die. The torture was so unrelenting”, today his family tells us: “It is such a big boost, when people write, when people talk about him. He knows he is not forgotten – for him it is a breath of life.” More than a million actions from human rights activists across the world, including Amnesty supporters, stopped the flogging of blogger Raif Badawi in Saudi Arabia, while the international pressure halted the execution of Saman Naseem in Iran, whose death sentenced was later quashed.

We are many in the Amnesty movement. And we stood up and will continue to fight against the use of torture worldwide. Thank you for the part you have played in achieving such an impact. Together through our global campaign we have achieved great things already, although of course our work on these issues will continue.

I look forward to more positive human rights impact on our forthcoming campaigns on Refugees and Migrants later this year and Human Rights Defenders in March 2017.

Warm wishes,

Salil Shetty