Action Alert

ACTION ALERT The following actions give you an opportunity to get directly involved with Amnesty International's ongoing work. Please write appeals on these cases within a month of receiving this magazine. All letters should be courteous and accurately specify the facts of each case. Under no circumstances should you write to any prisoner mentioned. For our most current actions and to sign up for email action alerts, visit the Online Action Center. You can make a difference. takeaction.amnestyusa.org

»GLOBAL Holiday Card Action: Send a Simple Message of Hope

Murhabazi Namegabe was reading to a group of children in a hostel in the Walungu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, when uniformed soldiers swaggered in and demanded money. A Kalashnikov pointed in the face was not unusual in a country where a decade-long war has killed more than 3 million people, but this time the soldiers were distracted. They walked around in a daze, recalls Namegabe, gently touching the hundreds of colorful postcards and festive envelopes spread around the room—a display of supportive correspondence from Amnesty International members. They started reading the letters, testing their broken English, and ordered Namegabe to read a few aloud. “Who wrote these letters?” they asked him, “And why?”

For Namegabe, director of a group that helps former child soldiers, it was the perfect opportunity to talk about the group’s work. The children participating in the reading revealed to the uniformed men that they were former child soldiers and described how Namegabe’s group had helped them. At the end of the impromptu workshop, the soldiers promised to bring in more child soldiers for demobilization and social rehabilitation.

The letters and postcards, close to one thousand, are messages of hope from Amnesty members to those struggling through dark times. Namegabe says the messages are precious to the children and that it gives them great joy that others around the world care. “Thanks, thanks, thanks, mingi, very much,” says Namegabe in an emotional letter to Amnesty International. “Aksanti saana (many thanks) to men, women and the youth of AI for advancing the cause of human rights across the entire world!”

ACT You can send a message of hope through Amnesty’s Holiday Card Action. Find the latest featured cases on amnestyusa.org/action/holiday, and send general caring messages of goodwill. Do not mention Amnesty International or use Amnesty cards. Please send a copy of any reply you may receive to the National Casework Office/Amnesty International USA/730 Peachtree Street, N.E., Suite 1060/ Atlanta, GA 30308. casework@aiusa.org »

»INDONESIA Free Papuan Protestors

For the simple act of raising a flag, Filep Karma and Yusak Pakage could be locked away in prison for years to come. Karma, a former civil servant in his mid-40s, and Pakage, a 26-year-old student, joined some 200 protestors in a peaceful commemoration of Papuan Independence Day on Dec. 1, 2004.

The protestors raised the Morning Star flag, a symbol of Papuan independence, as hundreds more bystanders watched along the edge of the fields outside Abepura in Papua province. Indonesian police immediately advanced upon the crowd, fired shots that injured at least four and pummeled people with batons. The police arrested Karma at the scene,

Filep Karma on trial.

as well as 20 people who went to the police station to protest his arrest. Authorities eventually released all but one— Pakage, who is now imprisoned with Karma.

The court sentenced Karma to 15 years and Pakage to 10 years on charges of treason. While Amnesty International does not take a position on the political status of any province in Indonesia, AI believes the right to freedom of expression includes the right to peacefully advocate independence. Karma and Pakage are among some 75 people Indonesian authorities have arrested since 1998 for participating in pro-Papuan independence activities. The political climate in Papua province is such that simply attending a meeting at which people discuss the political status of Papua is dangerous. amnestyusa.org/3507

ACT Send politely worded letters to the President of Indonesia, urging him to bring about the immediate and unconditional release of Filep Karma and Yusak Pakage. Appeals to: Mr. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono/President of Indonesia/care of Ambassador Soemadi D.M. Brotodiningrat/Embassy of Indonesia/2020 Massachusetts Avenue N.W./Washington, DC 20036. »

“A dult time for adult crime” might be a prosecutor’s snappy catchphrase to describe life without parole for juveniles. But it effectively ignores what even the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized—that children are less culpable than adults for the crimes they commit. If that is true, then children must be held accountable for their crimes in a manner that reflects their special capacity for rehabilitation. But courts across the United States have been prosecuting children—who are too young to vote, get married or drink alcohol legally—as adults and meting out the extreme punishment of life without parole.

In Pennsylvania, for example, a 10th grade boy named Stacey T. got life without parole for a second-degree murder conviction. His crime was participating in a robbery scheme in which two adults (one was Stacey’s cousin) used Stacey to lure the victim and then killed him after taking Stacey home. Stacey, who had no juvenile record and went straight to adult court, says, “Is it fair that I spend the rest of my life in prison for a crime which was committed by someone else without my knowledge or without me being present?” In the first national analysis of life without parole sentences for children, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch discovered that there are presently 2,225 people in the United States sentenced to life in prison without parole for crimes they committed as children. Contrary to popular belief, most of these children do not have long rap sheets of vicious crimes; an estimated 59 percent received the sentence for their first-ever conviction. There are also marked racial disparities. Black youth are 10 times more likely to receive life without parole sentences than white youth.

The United States stands alone with Somalia as the only countries that have not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which explicitly prohibits life imprisonment without the possibility of release for children under 18. At least 132 countries forbid life without parole for juvenile offenders in domestic law or practice. Only four countries have juvenile offenders serving life without parole, with only a dozen cases in total outside the United States. amnestyusa.org/3508 »USA End Juvenile Life Without Parole

Stacey T., who is serving life without parole in Pennsylvania. © 2005 Private

ACT Write to your governor (nga.org) and urge him/her to: support and enact state legislation that eliminates the sentence of life without parole for children under age 18; review clemency applications of all child offenders sentenced to life »

without parole and commute their sentences to terms of years or give clemency until the sentence is abolished; and gather and publish annual statistics on youth in the adult criminal justice system. amnestyusa.org/countries/usa/clwop

Peace agreements and a strict United Nations arms embargo have failed to stop the flourishing arms market in the African Great Lakes region. Armed groups continue to use weapons to kill, maim, rape and torture civilians in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Rwanda and Uganda have both been giving clandestine aid to armed groups in eastern DRC by delivering arms to Congolese warlords. In 2004 the U.N. Security Council appointed a group of experts to investigate breaches of the mandatory embargo it instituted in July 2003.

The U.N. group issued two critical reports citing evidence “indicating that Rwanda and Uganda had provided State-authorized arms transfers to the DRC and that their troops had been directly involved in supporting dissident forces.” Among those who have procured weapons are militias roaming Ituri province in the east and an armed group in South Kivu province that killed more than 60 people and raped 100 women and girls. Although the Security Council strengthened and extended the embargo to almost all of DRC on April 18, former rebels and armed militias still roam the lawless east, threatening regional stability and prospects for peaceful elections, which are scheduled for Spring 2006.

Amnesty International is also deeply concerned that Uganda will launch an invasion of eastern DRC. Members of the Ugandan anti-government Lord’s »DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO Stop Illegal Arms Shipments Resistance Army (LRA) have fled into northeastern DRC, and the Ugandan government has threatened to send troops into Congo to attack the LRA, a move that could dramatically worsen the already tense situation. amnestyusa.org/3506

Militias in Ituri province, where a wave of killings between ethnic groups has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

Urge the leaders of Uganda and Rwanda to respect the U.N. arms embargo and stop trafficking arms to abusive groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Appeals to: Mr. Paul Kagame/President, Republic of ACT »

Rwanda/PO Box 15/Kigali, Rwanda; and to Mr. Yoweri Museveni/President of Uganda, Parliament Buildings/PO Box 7168/Kampala, Uganda. Postage: $ 0.80