With a booklet of stamps and stacks of paper and pens, a small group of locals gathered around one of the Municipal Library’s wooden tables for Jasper Amnesty International’s first letter writing session, Aug. 4.
While the local program is just getting on its legs, it is aiming to meet every second Thursday from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. to write letters appealing to government officials who have the power to stop human rights violations.
According to Amnesty International, a non-government organization that campaigns to end human rights abuses, there are more than 100,000 letter-writing groups around the world.
“The letters are always polite and basically say that you’re concerned. The idea is that the weight of these letters will be felt because you have all these people from all over the world sending these letters to officials—we’re hoping that it’s intimidating,” said the group’s organizer Ailsa Ross. “It’s a really simple process that anyone can do.”
The group’s first meeting focused on three “urgent actions”—the term used by Amnesty International for each letter worthy case.
Sitting quietly in the library, Ross and two others got to work penning letters to South Korea, Pakistan and Ukraine. The first urgent action was regarding a peaceful protester who has been in a coma for months due to police brutality in South Korea, the second, is about a human rights campaigner who is allegedly being secretly detained in Pakistan, and the third looked at a former Ukrainian riot police officer who is also allegedly being secretly detained.
“For people being detained we’re asking officials to comply with the laws of their country and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to let their family know what’s going on,” Ross said. “The letters aren’t very long and you can make them as personal as you want or not.”
Amnesty International’s Canadian coordinator selects each urgent action. Ross is sent a list before each meeting.
“Amnesty International only really focuses on major violations—they take a look at some of the most drastic situations that really need attention,” Ross said.
Ross has only been in Jasper for a few weeks, but said she felt inspired to start the group after reminiscing about her days at Scotland’s University of Edinburgh, where every Friday large groups of students flocked to a cafe to take part in the local Amnesty International writing group.
“It was never anarchist or aggressive or anything like that—it was just all different types of people chatting and coming together because we don’t want people tortured or detained,” Ross said. “I’m going to be in Jasper for a few years and I wanted to do something in the community.
“Just by walking around and seeing all the posters for different things you can tell Jasper is a community of people that are really involved so I thought this might interest people.”
According to Amnesty International, Canadian writing groups wrote letters for 290 urgent actions last year.
“I guess in some cases it really does work,” said Ross, adding that the organization regularly posts urgent action success stories on its website. “It obviously doesn’t work all the time, but it’s just one simple thing we can do to try to help people out of these bad situations.”
Jasper Amnesty International’s writing group meets at the Municipal Library every second Thursday at 6 p.m. For more information check out the Jasper Amnesty International Facebook page.
Kayla Byrne
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