Freedom Week

Written By: - Date published: 6:28 pm, July 30th, 2008 - 9 comments
Categories: activism, human rights, youtube - Tags: , ,

Amnesty International does some great campaigning and human rights work around the globe and this week is Freedom Week, their annual fundraising and awareness drive.

Most people will be familiar with Amnesty’s work, especially with the spotlight they’ve helped to shine on China’s appalling human rights record in the leadup to the Olympics. What’s often forgotten is the work Amnesty does in highlighting abuses in countries that never make it to the 6 o’clock news.

But they can’t do any of this without money, and that means people like you and me donating. There are a few ways you can do this. You can donate $20 immediately by calling 0900 AMNESTY, donate online by clicking here, or you can join by clicking here.

We spend a lot of time arguing across partisan lines here at The Standard, but I think this is a cause that everyone can support.

9 comments on “Freedom Week ”

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  1. rave 1
    30 July 2008 at 8:17 pm

    The Human Rights brigade are today’s missionaries. China can deal with its own problems of social development. It doesnt need hypocritical preaching from Westerners who hold the record for genocide and ecocide which included the opium wars.

    China has fought a war of independence, tried to develop in isolation of the world economy, and is only now industrialising at a pace and on a scale never seen before.

    Each year Chinese workers and farmers make thousands of demonstrations and strikes for better conditions and basic rights without the patronising advice of Western moralists.

    I would say compared with the post-9-11 West dominated by the US, in 20 years time China has the potential to be a model of socialist democracy.

    Even now the US and its ‘allies’ are committing genocide in Iraq and taking away elementary civil rights in the so-called ‘war on terror’. Unless we take responsibility for defending these basic rights, well short of twenty years time we will be living in fascist states.

  2. Tane 2
    30 July 2008 at 9:45 pm

    Rave. No one is against Chinese workers and farmers having strikes and demonstrations. The objection of Amnesty and its supporters is to the Chinese dictatorship’s treatment of these people.

    As you yourself point out, objection to the Chinese regime comes from within China as well. So does support for Amnesty. Amnesty is also very critical of the human rights practices of the US and other Western countries – as an organisation it pulls no punches and grants no favours to any country.

    You’re supposed to be a socialist, right? Tell me, what ever happened to international solidarity? You can’t seriously believe that criticising a foreign regime is the same as criticising the people it oppresses.

  3. Blar 3
    30 July 2008 at 10:26 pm

    I lost faith in Amnesty International when it claimed John Howard’s Government had a human rights record similar to that of the regimes of Robert Mugabe and Omar al-Bashir.

  4. James Kearney 4
    30 July 2008 at 10:31 pm

    Blar- I doubt you ever had much faith in them to start with, but in any case, do you have a link?

  5. Blar 5
    30 July 2008 at 10:53 pm

    Go find the report yourself you tard – I’m not a private research unit.

  6. rave 6
    30 July 2008 at 11:45 pm

    International solidarity with Chinese workers and farmers struggles against the regime is the way to advance to socialism, not Western moralists preaching hypocritically at the regime when their own Western governments are the biggest causes and beneficiaries of historic oppression in China.

    So-called human rights are the democratic rights of capitalist society, not some universal set of principles. Now that China is finally overcoming its colonial history and is catching up economically with the West, I expect its workers and farmers will be in the position to win their democratic rights by kicking out the capitalists.

    When I see Amnesty lining up on picket lines and fighting for socialist democracy instead of appealing to the ‘international community’ to pressure the Chinese regime to adopt Western democracy, then I’ll support it.

  7. Daveo 7
    31 July 2008 at 9:15 am

    I think the fact Amnesty pisses off the fringe left and the fringe right is an indication they’re doing the right thing.

  8. Phil 8
    31 July 2008 at 9:50 am

    Daveo steps up to the plate, knocks that clean out of the park!

    Two thumbs-up to you.

  9. Bill 9
    31 July 2008 at 10:14 am

    What AI did was divorce human rights from political context. They treat it as an aberration independent of political realities. Show me a political analysis from AI.

    People were disappeared in Argentina for example because there were bad people disappearing people, not because of a political system that needed their disappearance to survive.

    As for worker’s rights in China, as mentioned on an old thread , a big obstacle to their rights are the western corporations who threaten to move elsewhere if workers get rights.

    What’s AI got to say about that? Nothing. Why? Because they treat human rights abuses in a vacuum.

    The result is that AI will be highlighting abuses on a case by case basis ‘for ever’…they combat the effect, not the cause.