October 2024 Update

Here is an update on our October meeting. 

We successfully had a Hong Kong speaker, Paul Wong, provide a very informative talk on the grave situation for migrant workers in Hong Kong, particularly those from the Philippines and Thailand, who often have no rights, are brought to work under false pretences and are forced to work long hours, for poor pay and wholly unregulated.  The government of Hong Kong consistently fails to respond to any action to assist/protect them.

In addition to this, we warmly welcomed 4 Hong Kongers now living in the UK who also provided their updates in terms of the state of human rights in Hong Kong.  Members from both Runnymede and Haywards Heath also joined us.  

We have had a response from the Hong Kong CEO's secretary in connection with Jimmy Lai's detention.  A lot of what we do in our group is write letters.  It may feel like a small action, but the more of us that write letters the more the governments realise that the world is watching and we are aware of the unlawful actions that they perform.

We also managed to successfully raise almost £200 at our Street Collection on 21 September.  It was a dry day and thanks to the tabards that Monica obtained from Central offices, we had a healthy set of donations throughout the day, plus Lynda also has a SumUp card which also assisted in raising our contributions by over £40.

Next month we are meeting on Monday, 4 November.  Monica has organised an Amnesty International speaker to talk about Pakistan and we are hoping to have some local Pakistan representatives also join us too. 

We will be holding a Write4Rights stall, outside Waitrose in Goldsworth Park, on Saturday, 7 December and are looking for people to come and help us. We dont ask for money but rather signatures for the named individuals to whom we send cards.  The times we have available are:

10:00 - 11:30, 11:30 - 13:00, 13:00 - 14:30, 14:30 - 16:00.

Please let us know your availability.

Thanks to Monica for putting together a super update for our Woking Amnesty website which describes the history of our group (which has been going for over 40 years!).  Thanks Adam for posting it!  https://www.amnesty.org.uk/groups/woking/about

Thanks for all your support.  It means a lot that we can keep this group going.