11th December 2009

I recently wrote a card to a Prisoner of Conscience as part of Amnesty International’s annual Greetings Card Campaign. The support coincides with Human Rights Day, which was on 10th December: 61 years after the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

I met Chas Raws, Chairman of Amnesty’s Wirral Group, in Heswall’s Quaker Meeting House. The Wirral Group’s agenda of campaigning and advocacy is focused on terrorism and security, the treatment of asylum seekers, the abolition of the death penalty and violence against women.

The Wirral Group’s Prisoner of Conscience is still Qin Yongmin, a Chinese dissident imprisoned for the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of political expression but there has been no further news of him since his imprisonment in 1998 to serve a twelve year sentence.

Amnesty's Wirral branch organises for greetings cards to be sent to a Prisoner each year. I take part as often as I can and am pleased to be able to do so again this December. Not only does the initiative highlight the good work that the group does, but also the general issues of freedom, justice and peace across the world.