A personal anecdote. It’s 1984 and I’m walking in the city centre of Sheffield on a Saturday afternoon, having just been browsing in Virgin Records looking at stuff I couldn't afford to buy because I’m on the dole. When …. wham! A man...

The decision taken by Jack Straw to change the law to now be able to prosecute those living in the UK and suspected of committing war crimes and acts of genocide as far back as 1991, has caused quite a stir in British media. Yesterday...

That master of dramatic political interventions David Davis has been at it again. This time he’s been standing up in the House of Commons denouncing the way that British intelligence officials have allegedly sent British nationals for...

It’s unusual to have so many international news stories dominate the news agenda. Ongoing Uighur protests in China, President Obama making a speech in Russia and more discussion about MJ’s memorial are the hot subjects at the moment...

The plight of the Uighurs – the much-persecuted, muslim ethnic majority in China’s distant north-western region of Xinjiang – was brought to the public’s attention this morning, and all for the wrong reasons. Getting reliable info from...

The question of how free people really are to express themselves and their sexual orientation in particular is a complex one. In the UK at least it seems like a very long time ago that it was actually against the law to be gay although...

In one of these strange bits of journalistic shorthand, the “Middle East” is often used as a way of referring to the Israel-Palestine situation. To me this has always seemed slightly bizarre. OK, I get the part-for-the-whole metonymy...

Perhaps unaware of the significance of the date, on 1 April Chechnya’s Kremlin-approved president Ramzan Kadyrov announced that after 15 years of conflict and human rights abuse, things in this Russian republic had returned to “normal”...

Do you drive? Do you fill up at Shell? Do you own shares in Shell? Does your pension fund invest in Shell? Do you know about the British government’s policy towards companies like Shell which are based in the UK but operate overseas...

Blood diamonds are forever At amnesty we think some campaigns are going to be easier than others. When the people suffering human rights abuses are in a far-flung place with little connection to Britain, when the reason they are at...

What is a cat worth? Thought I’d ask not because I’m interested in selling a couple of dozen moggies or because I especially like furry felines (though I do), but because of this cryptic quote from the Hamas deputy leader, Moussa abu...

The BBC’s report about how 27 former detainees of the US military detention centre at Bagram in Afghanistan say they were abused doesn’t do a lot more than put more flesh on the bones of what we already knew. Journalists and...

Despite more pessimistic reports, it looks as though Morgan Tsvangirai’s other meetings during his tour to the US and Europe have so far been successful. His discussions with US President Obama and our PM Brown have certainly proved...

Tomorrow we’ll be announcing Amnesty’s programme for this year’s Edinburgh Festival, and once again it’s looking pretty exciting – particularly for me as I get to go up to Edinburgh for two weeks to help promote it. The Amnesty Stand...

Amnesty’s head Irene Khan has just returned from Zimbabwe where she held a series of meetings with senior government figures, including Vice President Joice Mujuru, the Defence Minister and the Home Office Ministers. Although Irene...

I few years ago I had some hate mail from Combat 18, the neo-Nazi splinter group with historical links to the National Front and the BNP. Apparently C18 is a tiny organisation beloved of would-be bovver boys who really did absorb that...

(with thanks to @Taylor_Seb for the Gil Scott Heron pun!) I couldn’t tell you the number of times I’ve been told that Twitter has ‘come of age’, (certainly not in 140 characters) but I can’t resist saying it about the current situation...

I doubt I wasn’t the only one shocked (pardon the pun!) by the footage revealed by Trent FM of a man in Nottingham being Tasered for a second time while already on the ground and surrounded by four police officers. According to the...

What's going on in Iran? The results in the election have surprised commentators the world over. Mousavi supporters in Iran are naturally disappointed (to the point of saying the election’s been “stolen”) and the likes of Hillary...

Amnesty International's Secretary-General Irene Khan concludes her high-level mission to Kenya today with the launch of a new report outlining the rights abuses faced by those living in Kenya's slums and informal settlements. The...