The Amnesty International Student conference this year saw a vibrant swarm of students coming from as far as Aberystwyth and Dublin, forming a creative melting pot and enthusiastic soundboard for discussion and action on human rights issues as wide ranging as forced evictions in Nigeria, censorship in Burma and the ongoing ‘closure’ of Guantanamo Bay. The weekend kicked off with tea and coffee on Friday afternoon, a continuing theme of the weekend’s packed agenda, followed by a plenary titled ‘What human rights mean to me’, attended by journalists Johan Hari (johanhari.com), Maziar Bahari and Deborah Haynes. All three spoke of the personal responsibility for reporting human rights abuses in the media, and the difficulties of being a journalist in areas such as the Congo, where picking out an individual story is harrowingly tough when there is suffering all around.
Each of the speakers gave incredibly personal and honest accounts of difficult situations they’d been in over representing human rights abuses, and Johan Hari in particular gave a very rousing talk about how protest can bring about change. He related this to the transformation of Gay Pride over the last 50 years, from something that was violently condemned to something which is now widely celebrated, to demonstrate the huge changes that can take place over a lifetime. They gave the following advice for those aiming to go into journalism: experiment, practise, read and write as much as you can about the things you know and are passionate about, and never give up! It was an encouraging start to a weekend, and provoked much discussion over the delicious vegan dinner provided afterwards at Village Underground.
Saturday morning began with a cooked breakfast, flapjacks and the ever present tea and coffee, necessitated by the dark circles under the eyes of those delegates who had spent the night at the ‘5 Star’ sports hall crash pad. The first plenary of the day was on Unlawful detention – Guantanamo and beyond, attended by Gareth Pierce, Andy Worthington (andyworthington.co.uk) and Covadonga De La Campa Alonso. The focus was mainly on the unlawful detention of Shaker Aamer, the only British citizen still in Guantanamo serving an ongoing, indefinite sentence of 9 years so far, who claims that British personnel have been a party to his torture whilst in Guantanamo. This seems to explain the British government’s continuing aversion of pressure applied to them by Amnesty International and Shaker’s lawyer Gareth, to support his plea for a fair trial and removal from Guantanamo. It was horrifying to hear the level of complicity of the British government in detaining Shaker Aamer, especially hearing directly from his lawyer who knows the terrible truths of his lifetime in Guantanamo. Almost all 250 delegates filled in postcards to the government regarding
Shaker Aamer’s case, you can read more and take action here.
After a tea break to gather our thoughts, we went straight into the first workshop of the weekend. With topics ranging from ‘How to lobby your MPs’ to ‘Killing the killers to show that killing is wrong’ I wanted to split myself at least 3 ways, but I opted for ‘Disturbing public tranquility’ by Dan Jones, a retired yet fully active activist well known at Amnesty Headquarters for his eccentricity and creative talents, producing paper mache sculptures and human sized letters for various actions. He showed us a number of technical methods of making banners, giant heads and cardboard diggers, before setting us off making a banner for that evenings planned action on forced evictions.
After a rushed lunch we plunged on into a second workshop, I attended one based around the Forced Evictions campaign, which has strategic aims in place to help governments in Nigeria and Kenya plan for how to deal with evictions in a legal manner which includes giving notice, providing alternative housing and carrying out the eviction in a peaceful manner. Later in the day this was also the focus of a plenary, in which Naomi Barasa of AI Kenya told us that her whole life she has feared the bulldozer more than the tank, because she has seen so much destruction, violence and loss at the hands of these machines, which roll in and obliterate people’s homes, their entire lives, without warning. For those who are living in slums, in destitution, their shelter is all they can be sure of, and even this is not safe.
More information on this campaign can be found here !
This flowed into an action which you may have taken part in on facebook, a virtual vigil put together by a group of students over the course of Friday night and during the two workshop sessions, with the title ‘What would you take?’ It was neatly designed to put people in the position of being forcibly evicted from their home, how they would feel, and utilised facebook in an inventive way, by asking people to put as their facebook status what they would take if they only had 3 hours to pack. The group also made a video which can be viewed here.
This showed the power of media in creative campaigning, with over 1000 students standing with us in spirit through facebook, as we led a candlelit procession to a samba beat, singing ‘We shall not be moved’ in Swahili.
A short film was made of this to offer a message of solidarity to those in Kenya and Nigeria campaigning against forced eviction, watch this space!
We warmed up over another surprising array of vegan delicacies and were treated to a performance from the Ambassadors of Morocco after the annual raise off award ceremony.
Sunday continued with more plenaries and STAN committee elections which I was unable to make, however it was an incredibly uplifting, moving and energising couple of days which has refreshed my enthusiasm for fighting against human rights abuses, and provided information, ideas and energy for future campaigns.
Leah Edwards
Campaign Lead, SOAS AI Society
