Press release me, let me go

Today marks the anniversary of the foundation of the Islamic Republic of Iran 31 years ago, traditionally a day of mass rallies in Tehran and other Iranian cities. Most Iran-watchers have predicted that it will be a flash-point between...

I’ve railed against the secrecy reflex of the UK state before, but today, for once, I’m pleased that knee-jerk secrecy has been set aside in today’s Court of Appeal ruling on the Binyam Mohamed case. The supposedly US relationship...

I thought I was going to meet Clint Eastwood yesterday. I was outside the offices of Vedanta Resources in Berkeley Street, London, at Amnesty’s protest about human rights abuses linked to their refinery in India. Noticing that there...

Never work with children or animals, my mother always used to tell me, and in the main I’ve tended to follow her advice. However, here at Amnesty, we like to stage the odd demonstration and it’s a proven fact that if you want to do...

The arrest of 21-year-old gay rights campaigner in Malawi described by the BBC as ‘gay-poster man’ is just one more step in the targeting of the LGBT community in that southern African country. The reason for Peter Sawali’s arrest...

…. at least according to my fellow Warwickshire man William Shakespeare, it is, and that’s good because there are several theatrical things getting a mention in this post. First off, there’s “Mums” at the Soho Theatre in … er, Soho...

The UK’s Home Affairs Select Committee , made up of MPs, are the latest to put the boot into the UK government’s Control Orders regime. I could hardly have put it better myself: “The legality of the control order regime is in serious...

You’ll have noticed that Iran is once again in the headlines today, with US-Iran tensions reportedly ‘raised’ again after the US sold anti-missile systems to its middle-eastern allies. It’s also the anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini’s...

As the glare of the media spotlight fades from Haiti, the reconstruction and relief effort is only just beginning – and there’s where we need to ensure that women and girls’ rights is not forgotten. In 2008 Amnesty produced a report...

Perhaps we’d better get Noel Edmonds in …. all this talk of deals with the Taleban is starting to take on an air of unreality. Ahead of today’s big Afghanistan conference in London, Gordon Brown and Hamid Karzai have been speaking –...

Ouagadougou – now there’s a capital city you don’t hear much about. It’s a name which you’d be expected to know in a pub quiz – “name the capital of Burkina Faso…!” Well, now you’ve read this, you’ll have the answer. But if you really...

I was unlucky enough to have a summer job when I was around 19 that involved rebuilding part of a sewage works. It wasn’t my worst-ever summer job – that was the meat pie factory – but it wasn’t a barrel of laughs either. While I did...

So here they are at last: The Sri Lankan Presidential Elections. They are all set for tomorrow and previews were plastered all over today’s papers. After decades of conflict that “ended” last year with the comprehensive defeat of the...

As I was saying the other day , Obama’s promise to close Guantánamo within a year falls due, so to speak, today. It hasn’t happened. Instead, in a pale reflection of what was promised, we’ve seen just 46 of 242 prisoners transferred...

It’s not too often that you read or hear about repression and restrictions on free speech in Vietnam, it’s somewhat overshadowed by neighbours like Burma and China, where stories like these are reported more widely. You only have to...

What were you doing exactly one year ago? Can’t remember? Well, chances are that at some time during 20 January 2009 you glanced at the TV news about Barack Obama being inaugurated as 44th president of the USA. (You didn’t! Well, OK...

I went to see James Cameron’s latest blockbuster, Avatar, last week. There were a lot of things I thought about it: overlong (nearly 3 hours!) bit cheesy, not great acting, great effects, gripping and exciting if you left your cynicism...

This time a year ago the world was reeling at the scenes of devastation coming out of Gaza. Now we’re reeling at the scenes of devastation coming out of Haiti. Plus ça change. Except … Gaza was man-made, Haiti was not. Yes, the death...

In a move that will be of doubtless interest to social media followers of the post-election demonstrations in Iran, it’s reported today that Iran’s chief of police has warned opposition supporters against using texts and email to...

A journalist working on the Google story called here yesterday asking us to wrack our brains for other examples of where companies had pulled out of countries because of human rights concerns. The main examples we came up with were...