Open Meeting Summary – November 2020

During the Covid-19 period when physical Open Meetings do not take place a Summary of the items that would have been on the Agenda, together with information and updates is noted below and will be available on the Amnesty Norwich website below. We hope to have a physical meeting in the early New Year subject to Covid guidelines.

Web: www.norwichamnesty.org.uk
Contact Email: info@norwichamnesty.org.uk

Actions and letter writing by the Group

Write for Rights 2020

This years Write for Rights campaign starts in December with a range of cases you can take part in.

We won’t be able to have our usual day in Norwich for people to come and write with us but are hoping to arrange a virtual event.

You can see this years cases and how to take part on our specula Write for Rights page.

North Africa cases

The Norwich group supports the Amnesty North Africa region by working on cases mainly in Egypt, and some recent cases in Tunisia and Morocco. During the lockdown information about cases and sample letters are posted on the Group website,
We receive a monthly newsletter (or Ezine) from the North Africa Regional organiser, Debra Singer, with case information that we can use and in the September E-zine there are 3 Egyptian cases that can be supported:

1 Aser Mohamed – see below in the Children’s Network section

2 Ibrahim Ezz El -Din -a Housing Rights activist see below

3 Case 173 Azza Sollman – a lawyer and Woman Human Rights Defender

Ibrahim Ezz El-Din in prison in Egypt URGENT

We have been writing about Ibrahim for some time
Ibrahim Ezz El-Din’s birthday is on Sunday 15th November 2020. He will be 28. By then he will have been in prison in Egypt for 17months simply for standing up for housing rights.
To mark this occasion, Amnesty are planning a birthday Twitterstorm on Sunday 15th November 2020. This summary may not reach you in time to participate but there will be other opportunities to support Ibrahim.

The aim is to reach the Egyptian authorities with our message to free Ibrahim. We want them to know that we are concerned about him. In addition, we expect this message will reach his lawyers and family and they will tell Ibrahim himself so it will serve as solidarity.

This is a short film about the case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE1WXKEdoLo&feature=share

We are continuing to work on the long term case of Giulio Regeni, a murdered Italian student working in Egypt for a Cambridge University PhD and who was almost certainly killed by the security forces in 2016. Updated information and addresses have been recently sent to the writing group supporting this case. If you wish to join the contact is chair@amnestynorwich.org.uk

Other Individual cases in Egypt that Norwich has supported included an
Urgent Action for detained lawyers Mohamed el-Baqer and Journalist Alaa Abdelfattah
Mohamed el-Baqer is a prisoner of conscience, held solely for his human rights work

Please join us on these ongoing actions Find information on the website or contact info@norwichamnesty.org.uk

Amnesty Children’s Human Rights Network

The Norwich Group supports a variety of actions including an ongoing action for Aser Mahomed who was arrested when 14 years old and given 10 years imprisonment in 2019 following a confession extracted under torture.

Recent message from Debra Singer the Egypt case coordinator

The 20th November is Universal Children’s Day.

Aser Mahomed

Please write to President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi at Office of the President, Al Ittihadia Palace, Cairo, Arab Republic of Egypt
Send a copy of your letter to the Egyptian ambassador to the UK- His excellency Mr Tarek Ahmed Ibrahim Adel, 26 South street, London, W1K 1DW)

Set out the background to Aser’s case and asking him on Universal Children’s Day to quash Aser’s conviction, to immediately release him and to launch an investigation into his enforced disappearance and torture allegations.

Further state that pending his release Aser should be provided with the means to communicate with his family and lawyers and that the authorities should take measures to protect Aser’s health. Aser suffers from a chronic allergy that causes respiratory difficulties which puts him at particular risk of Covid 19 according to the World Health Organisation’s list of vulnerable groups.
Thank you for your ongoing support for Aser.

Amnesty UK Children’s Human Rights Festival November 20th – 22nd

The Festival of Children’s Rights is made up of 3 online sessions, each exploring an issue of what it is like to be a child in the UK today. Register and book through the link below

Friday 20th November at 6pm: Children’s Voting rights
Children are one of the groups with the least political power globally, but decisions that are being made without our say are detrimental to our future. It is essential that all children and young people have the right to vote and participate in democracy if they so wish.
In this session, we will discuss barriers to children participating in the political process, and whether an age limit is intrinsically discriminatory.

Saturday 21st November at 12noon: Tackling Racism in Education
Racism is a serious human rights issue, impacting all areas of our lives, including the classroom. In this session we will be joined by ‘The Black Curriculum’ and ‘Kids of Colour’ to discuss their work and how we can tackle racism in education.

Sunday 22nd November at 12noon: Covid-19 and Children’s Rights
The Covid-19 pandemic has changed all of our lives significantly, however children’s lives have been affected in many ways that were not discussed publicly. Many children have been denied their basic rights throughout the pandemic, such as right to food and shelter, right to education, right to family, right to leisure and right to safety. Despite this, children were not allowed to ask questions during major press conferences. Once again, children were disempowered and not heard.

In this session, children will be able to ask questions about the Covid-19 pandemic and the government’s plans to uphold their rights that they were not given the opportunity to ask throughout the pandemic. MPs from different parties will be answering those questions.

(Adults will be able to participate but not ask questions).

Tickets
Tickets are available for each session individually, so to attend all three, please book tickets for each. The tickets are separated into adults and under 18s to ensure that under 18s are most attendees, please book the appropriate tickets for you.

News from Amnesty UK

We receive a newsletter, for local and student groups’ Amnesty Groups News which has lots of ideas about fundraising and events from groups around the country. We expect to receive the Autumn edition soon but the latest one had some useful links such as;

Amnesty UK Future Strategy 2022-2030

The Amnesty UK Board are developing a draft Strategy for consideration at the 2021 Global AGM The Norwich Committee have received initial consultation papers and will comment. This will lead to further development of the strategy in the New Year. The papers are for Amnesty members only at the moment and contain some quite radical views about the future of the global and UK movement. If Amnesty members wish to have more information please contact chair@amnestynorwich.org.uk

Fundraising and Finance

Christmas Cards

We were selling Amnesty Christmas cards through the Charity Card outlet which this year is in St Peter Mancroft and is open from 20th October (but has now closed until 3rd Dec) until the 12th. The Amnesty Cards have all been sold but they will be on sale in the Amnesty Bookshop on the Unthank Rd which will be open until Christmas

Future Events and Activities

Write for Rights

Our regular support for the annual Amnesty campaign, where we meet and write letters and postcards to governments and Prisoners of Conscience, will be a virtual event this year possibly in conjunction with St Peter Mancroft. Details will follow. This year’s cases that you can write about, and the associated links are in the Norwich amnesty website and the campaign runs until 31st December.

Peace Vigil outside St Peter Mancroft on the first Saturday of each month. The next Vigil is Saturday 6th of December, 12 noon to 1pm. Some Amnesty members attend this monthly silent vigil to raise awareness of global issues around the subject of Peace and organised by the Norwich Quakers and which can be joined without needing to book.

Cambridge Amnesty Zoom meetings

A Zoom meeting arranged by Cambridge Amnesty took place on.12th November and was a talk by Paul Bridges on AI’s Anti-Death Penalty campaign., A longstanding Amnesty concern. For example, Egypt has executed103 people in 2020 so far and 59 since October!
Details of future talks will be provided

We hope that you find this summary useful Please contact us if you need more information or have comments

David Bissonnet
Chair Norwich Amnesty on behalf of the committee

Contact email chair@norwichamnesty.org.uk