Country specialists

When Olympic bronze-medal winning diver Tom Daley made 'that' announcement to his 2.4 million Twitter followers, it made headlines in the national press for days. Sadly, he received a fair number of homophobic comments , but the vast...

Johan Teterissa is a primary school teacher serving a 15-year sentence for leading a peaceful protest in 2007 in Indonesia. He was arrested along with 21 other activists during a government organised event in Ambon, the capital of...

In the early hours of 14 November, three armed men forced their way into the offices of Pro-Búsqueda, an organisation dedicated to locating children who ‘disappeared’ during El Salvador’s civil war. Three staff members were held...

I recently gave a talk to our Mid-Gloucestershire group on the widespread use of political prison camps in North Korea. After the talk, one of the questions stuck with me: could we put pressure on the Chinese government to use their...

For the Rangel family, 10 November will always be a day of sorrow. On that day four years ago, Héctor Rangel Ortiz phoned his family from a hotel in Monclova, Coahuila, to say that the municipal police had stopped him and his two...

Filep Karma is serving 15 years in prison after participating in an annual ceremony in Abepura in 2004, at which a Papuan independence flag was raised. The Morning Star flag is banned by the authorities as a symbol of Papuan...

Last week I had the good fortune of meeting and introducing a remarkable woman in her late sixties or early seventies. She has spent 8 years of her life imprisoned in one of the darkest, most secretive prisons in the world today. But...

Death threats on the telephone, followed by an attack by armed gunmen and the murder of another trade unionist in Guatemala. A scene that could have come straight from Guatemala City in the 70s or 80s, during the peak of the Guatemalan...

Recently I woke to the words of a truly horrific news item reaching my ears from my bedside radio - news that the lives of 20,000 of my fellow human beings are currently unaccounted for, feared dead. Twenty thousand people I regard as...

Carlos Reyes-Manzo is a photojournalist who was 'disappeared', detained and tortured by the Pinochet regime. This is his story. In 1973 I was a member of the Socialist party's national council and worked as a photojournalist and for...

When someone you love “disappears” it leaves a deep, searing scar. There’s no closure. No grave to place flowers on. Just pain and uncertainty, with an unquenchable thirst for justice. María Guzman describes it as torture. Her life...

'Disappeared'. It was in Latin America that this word first took on its new and cruel meaning. The "disappeared" have not vanished into thin air: many have been killed. Others will almost certainly never see their family again, held by...

“ It wasn't what he said exactly that changed my worldview. It was the example he was setting with his life. How his words in general showed that he was a stellar American. There was no question in my mind that my government was...

In April 2013 the Indian Supreme Court put the decision about whether or not a bauxite mine could be built in Orissa back in the hands of the local village councils. Here one of our Country Coordinators for South Asia provides an...

I had the privilege of attending the Indigenous day celebrations in Dhaka on 9 th August 2011. It was a wonderful colourful event. I saw the clothes and dances of the peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts that I was familiar with and...

The Dongria Khondh indigenous community of Orissa, in eastern India is still in danger of losing their ancestral land and the mountain that is sacred to them in spite of the Indian Supreme Court ruling in April. The ruling gave village...

“ Indigenous peoples are guardians of nature” said Ban Ki Moon. On 12 th June Amnesty published “Pushed to the Edge”, which details the human rights issues in the Chittagong Hill Tracts region (CHT) of South East Bangladesh that I...

Turkey has a Police Day – it’s April 10 th , founding date of its police force in 1845 during the Ottoman empire. Events and parades have the aim, according to the Turkish National Police, of bringing the police “closer to all citizens...

29 years ago today Carlos Cuevas, a 24 year old Guatemalan student and activist disappeared. Almost 30 years on, Carlos’ sister, Ana Lucia Cuevas continues her search for justice for the abduction of her brother. On 15 th May 1984, as...

The issue of abortion rights was a controversial subject for some at Amnesty. But many of those who opted out of campaigning in this area have been touched by the story of Beatriz in El Salvador. This is a case which takes the argument...