Country specialists

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...

If you look back through your Facebook wall, have you ever had a moan about the Prime Minister? Criticised your MP? Given your thoughts on religion? Maybe even said you don't believe in a God? What about saying something that could...

On 19 th March a landmark legal case began in Guatemala, the first national trial against a former head of state for the crime of genocide. José Efrain Ríos Montt, the former head of state in Guatemala between 1982 and 1983, and...

Mexico like many countries is plagued by corruption, discrimination against indigenous people and huge income inequality. After all the richest person in the world, Carlos Slim, is Mexican. But Mexico has something else--the drug war...

In 2011 police in Mexico arrested Miriam López, a 30-year-old housewife and mother of four, in her hometown near the United States border. In a barracks, soldiers raped her three times, gave her electric shocks and near-asphyxiation...