News from the Youth Leadership weekend.....

Wow my first amnesty week!
Where to start?
Well after arather long-winded journey we finally managed to make it to Donegal, Bundoran (Please don’t ask me where it is, after trying to get several people to explain the geography of the area I still have no idea!), when we got to our restaurant, we met our southern allies.

Although during the first meal we didn’t get much talking done with them, as we were all far too hungry to bother ourselves with being social.
But the first evening was spent happily, doing ice-breakers and just generally getting to know the people we were going to spend the next two days with!

We were woken up bright and early on the Saturday morning (well it was only 8 o’clock, so it felt bright and early for a statuary morning!),we all had breakfast at the ad venture centre next door to our accommodation,which involved several hundred thousand pieces of toast, and as far as I couldtell a lot of butter and jam!

But we were al thrown into our first activity of themorning, which was a role play exercise involving eight of us being certaincharacters you might have in social situations (or in this case an amnesty weekend).

Then we had quite a few hours of a drama workshop, I think Iheard a few complaints later of ‘If I ever have to shake an other persons andor ask them their favourite colour it will be the last thing I’ll ever do!’ butnone the less, our representations of the death penalty, domestic violence andwrongly treated prisoners got everyone hot under the collar.,

We all settleddown to a lunch of soup before finding out more about campaigns and watchingseveral videos, which showed us (and inspired me) of the campaigns which hadbeen run by young people like ourselves and in their amnesty groups.

Our evening was spent watching the DVD ‘Perspholis’ and just generally having good ‘Banter’ and ‘Craic”
Most of us were evening more tired on the Sunday morning as they were on the Saturday, as the staff found out, but our shouting that more coffee and toast was need before we were going to leave the breakfast table!

Dan’s photographs of earlier campaigns gave us all inspiration for our next challenge, which was to design placards for a campaignfor womens rights in Iran. I don’t think the people of Bundoran had really seenany thing like it before but as we marched steadily onwards with all the girls(and boys!) in tradition hijab head wear, with our banners and placards, we waked along the beach, trying to look as grim and impressed as possible but most of us failed at that!)

And so our weekend came to a nice close. I had made newfriends, got loads of advice on how I was going to start up an amnesty group at school and had had a really good weekend1 Thank-you!

News From the Youth Leadership Weekend- Rebecca and V'cenza

We’ve really enjoyed our weekend on Saturday we took part in a drama workshop were we learnt about forum theatre, this helped us find new ways to come up with solutions to major problems.

We learnt new ideas on how to campaign effectively, and get others involved.
On Sunday we took part in out own Amnesty demonstration, campaigning for womens’ rights in Iran, we thought this was the most enjoyable part of the weekend an also the most inspirational. We learnt a lot about theses issues on Saturday night as we watched a short animated film based on Iran.

We really enjoyed meeting new people from all over Ireland, who share our ideas surrounding Human rights. In learning all these new methods on how to campaign it has really inspired us to go back to Newcastle and put them to work as the weekend has really opened our eyes to the reality of people being deprived of their fundamental Human Rights.


Rebecca and V'cenza- Amnesty International weekend

News From the Youth Leadership Weekend - Shannon

My name is Shannon and I am from the Drumragh Intergraded College Amnesty International group. I have really enjoyed the experience of the weekend and I would love to do it again sometime. My favourite thing about the weekend was probably directing the shaping of the candle out of people holding candles. This was a really fun experience and I learnt a lot of management skills form this.


I have met a lot of very interesting and smart people on this weekend and hope to see them in the future. I can take a lot of information back to my amnesty group in school now and hopefully organise a lot more campaigns.

Thank you for the experience J.

News from the Youth Leadership weekend - Sonia

......Hello my name is Sonia and I am on an amnesty Youth group weekend in Donegal, I am really enjoying my time I have spent here so far.

We arrived here on Friday night at 8 o'clock and were very tired because of all the travelling we had done that day.
Even though everyone was exhausted they were all still very talkative and friendly, I came here with my friend Shannon because we were chosen to represent our school which is Drumragh integrated college in Omagh , because there was just the two of us we were nervous abut feeling left out from everyone else but we soon made friends with everyone because of the ice breaker exercises we did on the Friday night.

Today which is the Saturday was very exciting because Kate and Mark from Balor Arts Centre in Donegal came in to do some drama exercises which involved the issues which we learn about in our amnesty groups such as violence against women, the death penalty and Guantanamo Bay, it was very useful and effective a it showed us different possible actions we could take to help some of these problems.

I am enjoying myself and I hope to get different ideas from other Amnesty youth groups of what I cold bring back to my group and hopefully build up a link with other schools and youth groups from both the North and South of Ireland.

XsoniaX

Massive victory for human rights

Amnesty International Ireland today welcomed reports of a new approach adopted by the Irish Government on the issue of extraordinary renditions. These reports indicate that the Government intends to review and strengthen legislation governing the search and inspection of suspected rendition flights.

Amnesty International Ireland Executive Director Colm O’Gorman said:
“This is a welcome victory for human rights in Ireland. Years of lobbying and campaigning by Amnesty members and other human rights activists across the country appear to have finally paid off.

“We are happy to be in a position to commend our Government for showing political and moral leadership on this issue.

“The kind of gross human rights violations that are the result of extraordinary rendition or the so-called ‘war on terror’ are only possible in a world where states stay silent when they ought to challenge such violations

“In June of this year when we published our report on renditions in Europe we acknowledged that the Irish Government has been a strident critic of the US extraordinary rendition programme and other aspects of its so-called ‘war on terror’.

“We called for this rhetoric to be matched by action and it appears the Irish Government has finally heeded that call and ended its reliance on entirely discredited diplomatic assurances.

“Thousands of people all over Ireland have marched, protested and lobbied politicians to this end. Amnesty members and other activists have maintained a constant presence at Shannon Airport monitoring the activity of suspected rendition flights. Most recently we saw the momentum of the campaign continue to build with local authorities around Ireland, including Shannon and Limerick, declaring their areas to be rendition free zones.

”In particular Mr O’Gorman welcomed the establishment of a Cabinet Committee on Aspects of International Human Rights, which will be central to implementing the new approach.

“It is essential that a body like this at Cabinet level will drive the review of legislation, ensuring that civil and police authorities have the necessary power and resources to search and inspect suspected rendition flights,” continued Mr O’Gorman.

“We believe the outcome of this review must be made public and call on the Government to announce a time-frame for its completion.

“The new approach must not deal solely with the search and inspection of aircraft, however. It must also review how Ireland identifies aircraft that may be involved in illegal activity, i.e. the nature of information demanded of foreign aircraft by aviation authorities, particularly those possibly masquerading as civilian planes.

“This information is essential if the right aircraft are to be inspected and the Government is to move from demanding the Irish public to produce evidence of suspicious aircraft.

“Also, search and inspection can only address flights that actually land on Irish territory and in no way addresses the issue of planes suspected of involvement in renditions using Irish airspace. Amnesty International will continue to engage with government to ensure that Ireland fulfils its obligations under international human rights law.”

Find out more about Amnesty International Ireland’s campaign to counter terror with justice

Read our June 2008 report, State of Denial: Europe’s role in renditions and secret detention