Well Girls, I am back after a wonderful weekend in Shoreditch for the Amnesty International Conference. This is a yearly event which brings together all the University Amnesty societies to get informed, discuss campaigns and share ideas on how to raise awareness for them.
We rose bright and early Saturday morning for 9 am registration at Amnesty headquarters and headed to the first plenary of the day: Women’s Rights in Afghanistan. We heard from a number of guest speakers including Manizha Naderi, the executive director of Women for Afghan Women, which under her leadership have opened 9 family guidance clinics, 8 women’s shelters, 4 halfway houses and 4 childrens support centres. The particular aim of these is to prevent domestic violence. One of the most shocking statistics she presented to us was that prior to the civil war an amazing 40% of women were doctors,50% civil servants, 70% teachers; whereas now, for instance, a shocking 1 % of women remain as police officers.
Over the weekend we also heard plenaries on Syria, Northern Ireland, and one which I’m ashamed to say I knew nothing about: Sri Lanka. At this talk we were shown a section from the film ‘No Fire Zone’ directed by Callum McRae, which revealed footage of targeted attacks on civilians in Sri Lanka in which over 40,000 civilians were murdered. As if this atrocity was not enough, the Sri Lankan government may be granted chairmanship of the Commonwealth for the next two years. Just to bring this closer to home, this decision includes the likes of our very own David Cameron. On the panel for this plenary was Sandhya Eknaligoda, whose journalist and political cartoonist husband Prageeth, who was known to be opposed to the Sri Lankan government, disappeared. He has been missing since 24th January 2010, two days before the presidential elections, and Sandhya and her family have yet to receive any information on his whereabouts. In true Scriptoeris style, I headed to the streets to learn more about the campaign. I witnessed protesters dressed as grim reapers, William Hague and President Rajapaksa, which subsequently grabbed the attention of ITV and Channel 4 news as a result!
Sunday consisted firstly of the elections for the new STAN (Student Action Network) committee, where each nominee was given one minute to tell us why we should vote for them. Next was the part I was most excited for; the workshops. I was fortunate to take a place for Still Human, Still Here: Treatment of Refugees in the UK.
Every year in the UK there are:
- 22,000 applications for asylum
- 6,000 of them are granted (5%)
- Refugees are given £36.62 to live on a week, after fuel etc. is paid for
- Refugees can only apply for jobs one year after gaining asylum, and only in areas where there is a shortage of skill
That £32.62 equals a mere £5 per day: whilst you might think you can survive on that, just think that a lot of these people are coming from warmer climates, the first thing they will have to buy is warm clothing, which is not cheap. This already means they’ll have next to nothing to spend on food and toiletries. A heated topic then was raised ; the stigma attached to labels such as immigrant or refugee. As our lecturer put it: If you abandon the language refugee/ asylum/ immigrant, then people will be far more positive. Most people are responding to the media and not to a real problem their facing. We came to the conclusion that the only way to tackle the negative undertone is to physically show the population of the UK that refugees are are real people, forced out of their own homes and it is our task, as human beings, to help them.
You can read about them all on www.amnesty.org.uk , and you can watch the Chanel 4 news clip to get a real idea of our protest and what we were asking for here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ya6SZZb3PQ
Have a look out at your own university for a screening of No Fire Zone, as each society was given a copy as a way to raise awareness for Sri Lanka’s human rights abuses.
This weekend just goes to show how motivating it can be to meet people as passionate as you: I’m a true example of this, as it has motivated me to run for the position on my Amnesty society council next week.
Wish me luck ladies!