Emailing to stop torture

 

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Posted on 18 Oct 2000 at 16:05

Amnesty International, the human rights organisation, is extending its campaign of letter writing to the Web.

Amnesty hopes that people will register to be part of a new alert network.

The idea is that participants will be alerted to log onto Amnesty's Web site and sign email messages. These will be addressed to high-ranking officials responsible for people Amnesty believes are in immediate danger.

This might seem to be just another form of ineffective spamming, but the organisation claims that it is the attention paid to individual cases - in whatever form - that can make a difference to the treatment of prisoners.

You can take part in the campaign via the special Amnesty site, www.stoptorture.org.

As part of today's launch for this campaign, Amnesty will also release a 136-page report to spotlight the state of torture worldwide. It has received reports of "torture and ill-treatment inflicted by state agents" in over 150 countries since 1997. In more than 70, torture or ill-treatment by state officials was widespread and in over 80 countries people reportedly died as a result.

Author: Alun Williams