Winter 2005 Amnesty International Magazine

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amnesty Winter 2005

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HUMAN CARGO

The Ruthless Crime of Trafficking

BRUTALITY IN BLUE Police Abuse of Gays and Transgender People

DEFENDER OF THE SIERRA Environmental Activist Felipe Arreaga on Freedom

Protecting Human Rights Worldwide

The Magazine of Amnesty International USA

amnestyusa.org

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Doing your holiday shopping with Amnesty supports our life-saving work.

Shop like you’re on a mission, because you are!

SH O P A M N E S TY F O R T H E H O L ID AYS TO ORDER VISIT www.amnestyusa.org/store OR CALL 1.800.862.0411

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contents Amnesty International Amnesty International USA 5 Penn Plaza New York, NY 10001 P-212-633-4200

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The Backlash Against Torture; Pakistani Detainee Freed; Author Joy Berry Supports AI Work; Annual General Meeting Preview.

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For standing up to corrupt landowning bosses and international logging interests in Mexico’s southern state of Guerrero, activist Felipe Arreaga was framed for murder and thrown in prison. Now free, Arreaga faces a precarious future as a man marked for revenge.

Editorial Associates Ranjani Ramaswamy Jason Opeña Disterhoff

Creative Direction SW!TCH Studio

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Thanks to: Alex Arriaga Trine Christensen Vienna Colucci Kate Driscoll Maureen Greenwood Ariel Herrera Ed Jackson Zeke Johnson Sian Jones Gerald LeMelle Jumana Musa Sandra Perez Michael O’Reilly Kevin Reid Jeremy Rich Karen Robinson Karen Schneider Laura Spann Beth Ann Toupin Rachel Ward Max White Diego Zavala

Streets of Despair Ruthless criminal syndicates prey on the world’s most vulnerable women and children, trafficking them across borders and forcing them into lives of servitude. Women trafficked into the sex trade suffer terribly in this modernday slavery.

Art Director Amy Lamp Designers Jaclyn Threadgill Romeo Van Buiten Erin Loukili Jim Nissen

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Defender of the Sierra

Managing Editor Jungwon Kim

Proofreaders Kelly Andrade Carin Zissis

Amnesty International Winter 2005 • Volume 31, no. 4

World View

Address changes: Attn: AIUSA Member Services aimember@aiusa.org Editor Gwen Fitzgerald

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Brutality in Blue Groundbreaking research by Amnesty International USA shows a dangerous pattern of police brutality toward gays and transgender people. Activists are pressing for change and seeing some hopeful signs.

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Action Alert Join Amnesty’s Holiday Card Action; Help free political prisoners in Papua, Indonesia; End juvenile life without parole in the USA; Stop illegal arms shipments in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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Arts and Culture Richard Holbrooke; Margot Adler; Chanel Govreau

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Columns Rick Halperin, AIUSA Board Chair; Member Services Q & A

Cover photo: Mexican environmental defender and former prisoner of conscience Felipe Arreaga. © Kirsten Nijhof

22 AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, Winter 2005, VOL. XXXI, NO. 4. Amnesty International (USPS #016307), a quarterly magazine sent for a subscription of $1 from each member’s dues, is published

by Amnesty International USA, 5 Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10001. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Amnesty International, Attn: Member Services, 5 Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10001.

Printed in USA by Consolidated Color Press. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY and additional mailing offices.

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»USA

The Backlash Against Torture

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Pat Westwater-Jong

egislators answered the nation’s revulsion to the use of torture in the “war on terror” on Oct. 5, when the U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly to stop the practice. In a bipartisan act of defiance against a threatened White House veto, the U.S. Senate voted 90 to 9 to pass Senator John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) torture ban amendment to the Department of Defense appropriations bill.

In a measure of how far the U.S.-led “war on terror” has eroded the legal strictures of conflict, the key provisions in the amendment require the United States to obey its own laws and practice: the first requires all U.S. military personnel to abide by the Army’s Field Manual on

Interrogations and the second reiterates the U.S. ban on torture and on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment (the language of the Geneva Conventions). The amendment received strong backing from retired military officers and interrogation officials. Amnesty International USA was moving on several fronts to ensure that key provisions of the bill would survive conference committee, in which legislators from the House and Senate hammer out differences between their respective versions of the appropriations bill.

“It is critical for us to step up lobbying for the amendment without any change or loopholes that may allow any U.S. agency or facility to condone or practice torture,” said Jumana Musa, AIUSA’s Advocacy Director for Domestic Human Rights and International Justice.

MIKE BROWN/EPA/SIPA

WORLD VIEW

An abandoned guard tower overlooking Camp XRay, the U.S. detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, that was closed after the United States built Camp Delta.

In late September delegations of AIUSA activists across the country lobbied their senators and representatives to vote for the torture ban and establish an independent commission to investigate all torture allegations. More than 200 delegations participated in the week of lobbying, including large numbers of first-time activists and many rural delegations. The lobbying followed a wave of Denounce Torture rallies across the country.

Prisoners in U.S. custody in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have become so desperate that more than 200 out of the total 500 began a hunger strike in August to protest their treatment, according to non-governmental organizations. By mid-October U.S. military doctors began force-feeding 21 prisoners through their noses, even though international guidelines forbid force-feeding during a hunger strike. amnestyusa.org/3505

Four AIUSA activists meet with Rep. Marty Meehan (D-Mass.), at right, to discuss allegations of torture in U.S. detention facilities.

Ranjani Ramaswamy

Field Report Building Community “A community is a group of people who see the power in being united,” says Ana Moraga, a former Amnesty International USA intern. She uses intimate knowledge of community building to propel the cause of human rights forward.

Moraga discovered the world of non-governmental organizations in high school. Her work with local activist groups produced powerful experiences that fueled her interest in human rights.

Ana Moraga As AIUSA’s Latino Outreach Coordinator in the Western Regional Office, Moraga was pivotal to the success of the “Justicia en Juarez” campaign. She collaborated with Latino organizations and rock band Jaguares to boost awareness of the murders of women in Juarez, Mexico, and introduced the campaign to Spanishlanguage media. Her work resulted in 1,500 new AIUSA members and 10,000 letters to promote justice in Juarez.

Moraga, 22, is applying her formidable organizing expertise to the fight for women’s human rights in Guatemala, where more than

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1,600 women have been murdered since 2001.

She believes education is the long-term solution to the Guatemalan femicide and is currently working with Loyola Marymount University classmate Tania Torres to launch a literacy program in Guatemala City called Leer es Poder (To Read is to Have Power). The program seeks to provide Guatemalan women with opportunities to lift themselves out of poverty.

Moraga, who was born in Guatemala during the most brutal years of the civil war, explains her calling simply: “I felt like a hypocrite standing idly by. I needed to return and do something because so many people here are blind to the suffering.”

AIUSA’s Regional Field Organizer Sandra Perez praised Moraga for her compassion: “Ana’s dedication to social justice is an inspiration to me and to everyone who has the opportunity to meet her. She embodies Amnesty’s vision.”

Laura Spann

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WORLD VIEW Artists in Action

»PAKISTAN

Success Story Out of Limbo

powerHouse kids

From Mine and Yours.

Rights from the Start

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he acclaimed children’s author Joy Berry has partnered with AIUSA’s Human Rights Education Program to create Mine and Yours: Human Rights for Kids Project, which includes a book, CD, DVD, teachers guide and calendar to teach kids about human rights and explain the responsibilities that come with them. Students and teachers from P.S. 1, an elementary school in the Bronx, N.Y., were scheduled to join the author, AIUSA Executive Director William F. Schulz and actress Jennifer Connelly to unveil the partnership in New York City on Nov. 16; Connelly donated 700 copies of the Mine and Yours book to public elementary schools across the city.

“Human rights is a subject that is at the heart of my work,” says Berry, who pioneered self-help literature for children.

“How can children help themselves if they don’t have a basis on which to build?

Human rights empower kids to assume responsibility for their own lives.”

Mine and Yours provides young learners with “a comprehensive approach to human rights,” says Karen Robinson, Director of AIUSA’s Human Rights Education Program, one that can be used at home as well as in the classroom.

The book is available at amnestyusa.org/education/ Jason Opeña Disterhoft

ne midnight in February 2002, while his wife and children slept, Moazzam Begg answered a knock on the door of his Islamabad apartment.

Armed men forced him to his knees, hooded and shackled him, and drove away with him in the trunk of the car.

He wouldn’t see his family again for almost three years.

A British-Pakistani dual citizen, former law student and bookstore owner, Begg said that he and his family went to Afghanistan in the summer of 2001 to help with educational and economic development. After the 9/11 attacks, the Beggs escaped the expected retaliation by evacuating to Pakistan, where Moazzam was seized by the U.S. military.

The United States designated Begg an “unlawful combatant” and held him at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

There, he says, guards hog-tied and beat him and hanged him from the ceiling with handcuffs. After a year, he was transferred to solitary confinement in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In July 2003, President Bush declared Begg subject to trial by a military commission empowered to hand out death sentences with no possibility of appeal.

AIUSA’s Urgent Action Network quickly mobilized broad activist pressure on Begg’s behalf. Amnesty’s concern for the case ran deep: the UAN issued seven follow-up actions over the next year and a half, an almost unprece-

Marie-Anne Ventoura

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Moazzam Begg at the 2005 Amnesty International UK Annual General Meeting.

dented step. Those alerts generated tens of thousands of appeals from around the world.

A November 2004 Combatant Status Review Tribunal maintained Begg’s standing as an “unlawful combatant” but still failed to accuse him of a crime. Two months later, he was sent back to the United Kingdom, taken into police custody, questioned briefly and released. During his nearly three years in detention, no charge was ever made.

Now home with his family, Begg works to raise awareness of conditions in Guantánamo and Bagram. Earlier this year, he addressed Amnesty International UK’s Annual General Meeting, thanking Amnesty for its efforts on his behalf. As for campaigning, he told AI members, “I think you’re the best people to do it.”

Jason Opeña Disterhoft

Sound Bite “The USA Patriot Act was destined to foster abuses, as it weakened the system of checks and balances on law enforcement while setting aside due process safeguards under the law.”

—Jumana Musa, AIUSA Advocacy Director for Domestic Human Rights and International Justice, Inter Press Service, Sept. 21

“I carried this ‘black book’ (that’s the color of the cover) around for a good part of the summer, reading it in jibs and jabs. In a way, it’s an almanac of the dark side.

Report 2005 catalogues the forces that govern and impact millions of people.”

—Karen Norvig Berry, coordinator of AI group 347, referring to AI’s Annual Report on human rights, Allentown Morning Call, Sept. 27

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WORLD VIEW »USA

»USA

AGM 2006

Violence Against Women Act

Let Your Voice Be Heard in Portland, Oregon

The House of Representatives and the Senate passed the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), bringing it one step closer to being reauthorized. At press time the two chambers had yet to reconcile the differences in their respective bills in conference committee before bringing it back for final approval. Since VAWA was enacted in 1994, states have passed more than 660 laws to combat domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and stalking. The National Domestic Violence Hotline has handled more than 1 million calls.

Reauthorization of VAWA is a central goal of Amnesty International USA’s Stop Violence Against Women campaign, which gathered more than 94,000 signatures in an online petition in support of the act and created a powerful record of victims’ and activists’ personal testimonies (700women.org).

Ranjani Ramaswamy

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n a world marked by escalating violence and fear, powerful states are bypassing international institutions and reviving the use of torture. In this climate, it is important for our voices to unite in defense of justice, fairness, freedom and truth.

Amnesty International USA members will have an opportunity to let their voices be heard in Portland, Ore., at the 2006 Annual General Meeting (AGM), from April 28 to 30. The AGM is AIUSA’s national conference for all members.

This year’s theme is “Make Some Noise for Human Rights at High Volume!” Activities will include panel discussions, testimonies from human rights defenders and workshops. Members can participate in networking sessions, attend working parties and vote on AIUSA resolutions.

Known for its long-standing tradition of human rights activism, Portland has also been proclaimed North America’s “Best Big City” for its unmatched natural beauty and bustling local scene.

Visit amnestyusa.org for the lineup of dynamic speakers. Register before Jan. 31 for a significantly lower registration fee. amnestyusa.org/events/agm/ Laura Spann

In Memoriam: Sheri O’Dell

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heri O’Dell (1943 — 2001) Amnesty International USA marks the passing of Sheri O’Dell, a renowned feminist leader and important contributor to AIUSA’s membership and fundraising efforts. Ms. O’Dell passed away on Sept. 24 after a long and distinguished career marked by her dedication to human rights, women’s rights and civil liberties.

Prior to working with AIUSA’s Development Department as a writer and strategist for public interest firm CMS, O’Dell served as vice-president of the National Organization for Women (NOW). She organized the 1989 March for Women’s Lives that brought more than 700,000 people to the nation’s capital and was instrumental in the drive to block Robert Bork’s 1987 nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.

O’Dell’s friends and colleagues remember her for the passion and urgency she brought to her advocacy work.

Truth to Power

AI members and staff urge policymakers at all levels to protect human rights. Recent developments: Staff and volunteers from AIUSA’s Business and Human Rights Program met in early September with U.S. Export-Import Bank and International Finance Corporation representatives to demand that legal contracts for the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline Project be amended to protect human rights.

AIUSA co-sponsored a September Capitol Hill screening of Lord of War, a film about the devastating impact of the global small arms trade. The event drew 130 people, including eight U.S. Representatives from both sides of the aisle. The audience listened while AIUSA Director of Government Relations Alexandra Arriaga and Advocacy Director for the Americas Eric Olson, five Congressmen, the film’s writer and director Andrew Niccol and actors Ethan Hawke and Eamonn Walker addressed the light weapons business and voiced support for AI’s Control Arms campaign.

Alvaro Larrain

Between March and August, a nationwide team of volunteers led

by AIUSA activist Eve Lotter, working closely with Refugee Program staff, supplied detention center libraries around the country with Amnesty International reports and other human rights resources, ensuring that detained asylum-seekers have access to materials vital to pursuing their claims.

AIUSA activist Jonathan Silverman speaks with a Somali detainee at Buffalo Federal Detention Facility in Batavia, New York.

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WORLD VIEW »MEXICO ADVERTISEMENT

AI Global Policy Meeting Addresses Key Issues

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he International Council Meeting (ICM) is Amnesty International’s highest policy-making body, where hundreds of volunteers and staff from around the world meet to debate and decide issues crucial to the international movement. At the August 2005 meeting in Mexico, two issues dominated the debate.

While AI generally takes no position on specific military interventions except to demand respect for human rights, the ICM determined that, in exceptional circumstances, AI can either call for military intervention to end widespread and grave human rights abuses or oppose the use of military intervention when it is particularly likely to lead to increased human rights abuses. AI is strengthening its work on conflict-prevention and conflict-resolution.

Delegates also agreed that AI will develop a comprehensive set of policies that affirm the organization’s commitment to defending and promoting sexual and reproductive rights, including the right of access to information and health services. AI will initiate international consultation so that the International Executive Committee (AI’s international board) can make policy related to the decriminalization of abortion; access to quality services to treat complications from abortion; and legal, safe and accessible abortion in cases of rape, sexual assault, incest and risk to a woman’s life. As part of this consultation, members will be asked to consider whether the 2007 ICM could make policy on other abortion-related issues.

The ICM considered other human rights policy issues and decided to call for studies on: disproportionate punishments; the relationship between economic development, forced displacement and human rights abuses; and company investments in countries whose governments commit massive human rights violations.

In addition, delegates decided to place renewed emphasis on long-term campaigning for prisoners of conscience and human rights defenders.

The full texts of all the ICM decisions can be found at amnestyusa.org/members/icm/2005.

THE SPIRITUAL GLOBAL NETWORK Today we can discern a growing global network of people who are becoming an increasingly potent force for transformation in human affairs. They are inclusive, not separative; they seem to be in touch with the “soul of humanity,” urging “a conspiracy of love,” as did paleontologist-priest Teilhard de Chardin. People aligned with this higher consciousness inevitably become transmitters of a wider vision, dedicated to the well being of humanity. They are linked together by an attitude of mind and heart rather than by outer organization.

A view of the deeper spiritual significance of this integrating group, including practical evidence of their work today, is offered in Building and Bridging: The New Group of World Servers, available free from:

School for Esoteric Studies 275 S. French Broad Avenue Dept. A Asheville, NC 28801-3951 www.esotericstudies.net

Summer Prog ram of the Academ y on Human Rights and Humanitar ian Law Three Intensive Weeks in Washington, D.C.

Classes about Regional Human

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• 15 classes in English and Spanish with more than 120 contact hours • Law school credit or Certificate of Attendance • Eligible participants include lawyers, human rights professionals and law students from all over the world • Features workshops, specialized conferences, distinguished lecture series, visits to international organizations and NGO fair • Professors include: Phillip Alston, Rebecca Cook, Baltasar Garzón Real, Robert Goldman, Claudio Grossman, Elisa Massimino and many more For more information, contact us at: Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law American University Washington College of Law Co-Directors Claudia Martin and Diego Rodríguez-Pinzón Phone: (202) 274-4070 • Fax: (202)274-4198 E-mail: hracademy@wcl.american.edu Apply on-line: www.wcl.american.edu/humright/hracademy

winter 2005

amnesty international 07

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PROFILE

DEFE of the

Felipe Arreaga is stirring a vat of pork rinds as he sips beer and jokes with his family.

After 10 months in a cramped prison cell, he wears his freedom well, like the new cowboy hat on his head. But come nightfall Arreaga will retreat indoors and stay put. He knows his enemies are powerful and has heard rumors of the revenge they still seek.

Arreaga, a farmer who looks younger than his 56 years, is a central figure in a long-running and violent struggle between peasants who live off the land and powerful logging companies that raze the pines from the hills of the southern Pacific state of Guerrero. Before his arrest, the activist led local farmers in a valiant fight against powerful caciques, land-owning bosses with political connections. Arreaga and his fellow activists eventually turned their Peasant Environmentalist Organization of the Sierra de Petatlán y Coyuca de Catalán (OCESP) into a formidable obstacle to loggers who were accustomed to getting their way.

His activism marked him for retribution, a frightening prospect in this poor, rural and lawless state. In November 2004 a local cacique named Bernardo Bautista pinned the 1998 murder of his son, Abel, on Arreaga.

During a trial plagued by irregularities, Arreaga—who had not been convicted of any crime—was imprisoned in Zihuatanejo, a steamy coastal city. There he shared a tiny cell, meant for six men, with 14 others.

“We were locked up at 6 p.m. and left shoulder to shoulder in that cell until six in the morning,” says Arreaga, trembling as he

recalls his prison experience. “I only ate meat twice while I was there; the rest of the time it was tortillas with salt. I’d never been caged up like that. It was such a horrible place.”

As his trial dragged on, Arreaga’s opponents slung mud at him and his activist network. They said the activists were growing marijuana and poppies and opposed logging in order to keep their illegal crops hidden. Some farmers do supplement the miniscule profits from their corn and bean fields with illicit crops, but Arreaga appeals to common sense.

“If I were growing drugs, do you think I’d be thrown in jail?” he asks. “It’s precisely those who are mixed up in that business who are protected here. I’ve had no part in that game.”

Arreaga was finally acquitted of murder on Sept. 15, after a state judge ruled that the charges were bunk, and released. Many here believe the court responded to the national and international attention Arreaga’s case had generated. Since 2003 lawyers from the Tlachinollan Human Rights Center of the Mountain, headquartered in Guerrero, worked closely with groups such as Amnesty International and the Sierra Club to build support for his release. The groups mounted grassroots letter-writing campaigns targeting Mexican officials and drew national and international media attention to Arreaga’s case.

Amnesty International considered Arreaga to be a prisoner of conscience and issued three urgent actions on his behalf this year.

“As hard as this has been, in terms of lives and suffering, the international community

Monica Campbell is a freelance journalist based in Mexico City. She contributes regularly to The Christian Science Monitor and the San Francisco Chronicle.

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Monica Campbell

For standing up to corrupt landowning bosses and international logging interests in Mexico’s southern state of Guerrero, activist Felipe Arreaga was framed for murder and thrown in prison. Now free, Arreaga faces a precarious future as a man marked for revenge.

Felipe Arreaga in Guerrero.

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FENDER Sierra Monica Campbell

“We saw how they cut the trees. They left pure stumps. The rain would come and wash away the land. Then the loggers would move to a new patch and start over.”

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Felipe Arreaga in the Zihuatanejo jail.

“All the elements that precipitated Arreaga’s case still exist: the economic pressures, the ability to falsely prosecute, the exploitation of the forests.”

In Guerrero’s Petatlán and Coyuquilla river valleys, the tensions between loggers and small farmers, or campesinos, have deep roots in the nation’s land reform that President Lazaro Cardenas instituted in the 1930s to quell peasant unrest. That reform broke much of Guerrero’s land into communal farm groups known as ejidos. But as the state’s logging industry developed, foreign corporations moved in, profits flowed back to headquarters and a good deal of cash was exchanged for wood rights. In reality caciques and rogue loggers, with their business and political ties, can often bribe or simply out-muscle the small landowners, who struggle to make ends meet.

The conflict intensified in 1998. That’s when Arreaga, the OCESP and his wife, activist Celsa Baldovinos, took on Canada’s Boise Cascade. They say the company pur-

Arreaga with his wife, activist Celsa Baldovinos.

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has its eyes on this situation,” says Diego Zavala, Amnesty International USA’s Mexico country specialist.

The evidence that eventually led to Arreaga’s release exposed a trail of corruption and surreptitious influence. Depositions and forensics reports in the original murder investigation took years to carry out. A key prosecution witness declared that Bautista loyalists had coerced him into implicating Arreaga and others in the murder probe of Bautista’s son.

And the court that convicted Arreaga ignored the testimonies of three witnesses who said that Arreaga was receiving medical attention for back problems in another town when the murder took place.

Monica Campbell

–DIEGO ZAVALA, AIUSA MEXICO COUNTRY SPECIALIST

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chased the pine and hardwood from illegal loggers, with much of the business arranged by Bautista. The company eventually processed the wood at its mill in another part of the state and then made it into cabinets and furniture for sale in the United States.

“We saw how they cut the trees,” says Arreaga. “They left pure stumps. The rain would come and wash away the land. Then the loggers would move to a new patch and start over.” The farmers blamed deforestation for ruining the watershed, leaving behind dried up creeks and rivers. There was little water left for irrigating their crops.

The government brushed off their complaints, so the farmers spurred into action. They blocked roads for a month, burning logs and forming human chains that stopped the daily convoy of hundreds of lumber lorries that descended from the mountains. Weeks after the roadblocks, Abel Bautista was killed for unknown reasons. Tensions flared, and Boise Cascade got jittery. Over the next two years, the company cancelled its contracts and headed out.

“We stopped them,” says Arreaga. “We never asked the government for permission.

There was no use in that. We just went for it, and took on a powerful part of the establishment here that is not used to being challenged.”

The vendettas continued even after much of the logging stopped. In 1998, the military arrested activists Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera and tortured them into confessing to arms dealing and drug–related crimes. Their supporters insisted that they were framed, and Amnesty International adopted them as prisoners of conscience.

President Vicente Fox pardoned them in November 2001, following a national and international human rights campaign, but authorities have not yet cleared Montiel’s and Cabrera’s names.

The clash continues to cause deep suffering. On May 19, gunmen ambushed OCESP cofounder Albertano Peñaloza Domingez and his family near their home in the woods. Two of Peñaloza’s sons, aged 9 and 20, died from shots by a rifle, a .380-caliber pistol and an AK-47.

The crimes remain unsolved. Peñaloza, who once worked for Bautista as a cattle herder, believes his former employer sent the assassins.

Abel Barrera, head of the Tlachinollan Human Rights Center, says his group will continue to pressure the authorities to investigate the deaths of Peñaloza’s sons and protect the families who live in fear of persecution. But, he says, “It hasn’t been possible for the OCESP to take on Peñaloza’s case with force because many of its members are in the same type of situation, risk and danger.”

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Environmentalists here say that the mountains have undergone a deforestation rate five times the national average, already among the world’s worst.

In August, the

Sierra Club gave its prestigious Chico Mendes award to Arreaga for “outstanding environmental heroism.”

Baldovinos and her group, the Organization of Women Environmentalists of the Sierra de Petatlán (OMESP), also received the prize, along with Peñaloza, who is in hiding. “At the end of the day, it’s still a very unsafe place,” says Stephen Mills, director of the Sierra Club’s International Program. “I’m convinced that Guerrero is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be an environmentalist.”

Amnesty International is concerned about where the activists go from here. “We’re glad Felipe is free, but the problem in Guerrero does not end there,” says AIUSA’s Zavala. “All the elements that precipitated Arreaga’s case still exist: the economic pressures, the ability to falsely prosecute, the exploitation of the forests. We’re concerned that this is going to be a merry-go-round, open to more corruption and potential for abuse.”

But some Mexican federal officials are skeptical about the motives of the anti-logging network. “There’s a lot of conflict in that area that can grab the attention of environmental groups,” says Héctor González, assistant attorney general for Profepa, the federal agency charged with protecting Mexico’s natural resources. “But it’s a very complex part of Mexico, with long-standing family rivalries in an area that’s huge and impossible to oversee.”

González believes Arreaga and his alliance of activists comprise a community of bitter have-nots. “You have jealousies over the profits made by the timber industry,” González says. “And then there are those who live near the forests who complain that the industry ruins their water and pollutes.”

Yet scientific evidence backs the claims by local and international environmentalists that Guerrero’s Sierra de Petatlán is shrinking.

Satellite images show that area has lost about 40 percent of the 558,000-acre pine and fir forest since 1992, according to Greenpeace Mexico. Environmentalists here say that the mountains have undergone a deforestation rate five times the national average, already among the world’s worst. “We’re aware of this,” admits González. “But this part of Mexico is so isolated; it’s tough to supervise.

So we must rely on the municipal authorities

to be vigilant. Any solution to this problem will be a slow one.”

Although he never attended school, Arreaga is a self-taught environmentalist, well versed in the local flora and fauna. He reminisces about how the highland forests looked before the deforestation. “I remember when it’d take five people, with their arms stretched out, to go around one tree trunk,” he says.

“They were that huge! It was beautiful. And there was every type of animal, even jaguars.

Then the companies came with their chainsaws and now we have these mini-forests dotting the hills.”

As for Arreaga and Baldovinos, they are staying in a rented house in a small town in the tropical lowlands on the northern Pacific coast of Guerrero, about a two-hour drive from the pine forests. It seems peaceful—children swing in hammocks, patios are flush with greenery, and men clump together in front of the small, brightly painted homes, weaving aqua-colored nylon string into fishing nets.

They hope to return to the Sierra de Petatlán eventually. They envision an enormous nursery with “every imaginable tree and plant,” says Arreaga. Baldovinos has led her group in an ambitious reforestation campaign, as well as efforts to teach organic gardening and pollution control to local families. The OMESP activists who remain in Guerrero— some 60 women in all—pledge to watch for suspicious activity, as they are not convinced that the government will make a real effort to stop illegal logging.

Arreaga is unsure how long he will stay here or where he will go next. For now, concerns about his safety will keep him and Baldovinos, 59, along the coastal area. “My friends in the mountains tell me to stay away, that I’ll face serious reprisals if I return,” he says. “I feel strange, out of place. Everyone asks me what I’m going to do now. I don’t know. I’m just now coming to grips with being out of jail.”

While he is well aware that his enemies are looking for ways to get rid of him, he is resolved to continue doing what he can to protect the forests. “I now believe, more than ever, that my cause in life is to leave something behind for my children and my children’s children,” he says. ai

Take Action Despite Felipe Arreaga’s acquittal, Amnesty International believes the situation in Guerrero state is still dangerous for environmental defenders. Write to the ambassador of Mexico, urging the Mexican government to: Guarantee the safety of Felipe Arreaga, his family and other environmental and human rights activists in Guerrero.

Guarantee compensation to Arreaga for his unjust detention and prosecution; cancel the arrest warrant for 13 other environmental activists who have been arrested in Guerrero.

Conduct an exhaustive and impartial investigation into the Office of the Attorney General’s original investigation into the murder of Abel Bautista Guillen in 1998.

Address the fundamental problems in Guerrero, including illegal logging and the abuse of power by caciques (local political bosses).

APPEALS TO: Ambassador Carlos de Icaza Gonzalez/ Embassy of Mexico/1911 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W./Washington, DC 20006 amnestyusa.org/3503

Online chat with author Monica Campbell on

Dec. 13 from 1-3 p.m. Eastern: amnestyusa.org/countries/mexico

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FEATURE

“Eva,” an Albanian woman who was trafficked to Italy and forced to work as a prostitute. She has been in hiding from her traffickers for over eight months and is now in a shelter for trafficked women near Tirana, the Capital of Albania.

Streets of

DESPAIR

Ruthless criminal syndicates prey on the world’s most vulnerable women and children, trafficking them across borders and forcing them into lives of servitude. Ed Vulliamy examines the impact of this modern-day slavery on women trafficked into the sex trade.

Ed Vulliamy • Photographs by Andrew Testa/Panos

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On the day

her life changed, Majlinda was on the way to help her aunt iron clothes in preparation for her cousin’s wedding in their village in northern Albania. She was a little short of reaching the house when three strange men stopped her.

They grabbed Majlinda, then 13, bundled her into a car, blindfolded, bound and gagged her. When they crossed the border with Greece and reached Corinth, they told her, “Now you are going to work.”

“At first I did not know what they were talking about,” says Majlinda. “They took me to a flat where there were other women and told me, ‘You work here now.’ When I refused, they said they knew my family, and if I made trouble they would kill them. I thought of the possibilities. I was afraid to stay, I was afraid to leave, so I started to work—they forced me to, with violence.”

“There is a chain of people involved in this trade, if you can call it that: the traffickers themselves, transporters, forgers of documents, safe houses, speedboats that take them from Albania to Italy—a great network of commercial interests engaged in the business.”

Beaten and raped into submission by her traffickers, Majlinda began work, confined to a flat from 8 p.m. until 5 a.m., obliged to meet a monetary quota that meant she had to service some 20 johns a night. “Even if I made enough money, they usually found a reason to beat me when the clients had finished for the night,” she says, recalling her ordeal from the temporary safety of a shelter in Albania, where she is hiding from her traffickers. Thin scars mark Majlinda’s forehead, and her eyes stare blankly into the mid-distance. Outside the sun shines, but the room is leaden with her grief.

She was in Greece for a year, until the police started catching up with her captors. “So we came back to Albania and took a speedboat to Italy.” The traffickers sold her in Florence for a price she does not know and forced her to work the streets on the scrappy edges of the city, well hidden from the beauty of its Renaissance center. Every night, Majlinda handed over the proceeds to her traffickers, who would then violate her. “They would get high on drugs—marijuana and cocaine—and come at me. And every night they beat me—even if I made the 1,000 euros [U.S. $1,200] they insisted on, they always found an excuse.” Majlinda’s earnings supported the fast-lane lives of her traffickers, who would “compete with each other for who could buy the flashiest car or the best clothes,” she says.

Majlinda is just one of the hundreds of thousands trapped by a depraved and burgeoning crime: trafficking in young women and children for forced labor. While lurid headlines have made the sex trade one of the more visible industries supplied by this modern-day slavery, traffickers force their victims into servitude as varied as their countries of origin and destination: South Asian boys enslaved as camel jockeys in the

United Arab Emirates; children locked away weaving carpets and saris in India; Mexican immigrants peddling trinkets in the New York City subways; Filipina women working as maids across Asia.

Trafficking of people is one of the most lucrative and fastest-growing criminal enterprises in the world, behind the drug trade and neck and neck with small arms. There is evidence that criminal syndicates are switching from drugs to human trafficking, finding it easier to transport people than cocaine or heroin. Moreover, while drugs can only be sold once, people can be resold again and again.

The scale of the crime is impossible to quantify. The U.S. State Department estimates that these shadowy syndicates move between 600,000 and 800,000 people across borders each year, with profits running into the billions of dollars. Of the hundreds of thousands of victims, a high proportion are children under 18, with the average age decreasing in some regions. In Athens, Greece, some 500 street children—most of Albanian and/or Romani origin and thought to be trafficking victims—went missing between 1998 and 2002 from one staterun children’s shelter alone; Amnesty International believes they were re-trafficked into syndicates that forced them to beg, sell trinkets, or wash car windows.

Policymakers often confuse trafficking with people-smuggling or migration—with disastrous consequences. Smuggling involves a syndicate being paid to take a group of people across borders illegally but willingly, in search of work or asylum. A 2000 U.N. convention defines trafficking as recruiting or transporting people “by means of threat or use of force, or other forms of coercion,” such as abduction, fraud or deception, or “abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability.”

Eastern Europe is a major hub for this merciless commerce, with traffickers and their victims largely coming from the countries where communism collapsed—like Albania, Moldova, Ukraine and Romania. They are nations where

Kimete Sinani (left) with her grandson Bledi at her home in Pogradec, Albania. She is accused of selling her grandson (Bledi's brother) Armandor six years ago to traffickers who took him to Greece.

Ed Vulliamy is a staff reporter for The Guardian in London who won all major British journalism awards for his coverage of the Balkans and conflicts in former Yugoslavia. Andrew Testa is a documentary photographer who has covered the Balkans extensively. He has won two World Press Photo awards, and his work is published internationally. winter 2005

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In Athens, Greece, some 500 street children went missing between 1998 and 2002 from one state-run children’s shelter alone. social structures have imploded, where criminal syndicates control large sections of the economy, and where corruption has replaced communism. The collapsed economies often create a climate in which women’s economic and social rights suffer, thus making them and their children more vulnerable to traffickers.

“All along the line,” says Steve Ashby, director of Save the Children in Albania, “there is a chain of people involved in this trade, if you can call it that: the traffickers themselves, transporters, forgers of documents, safe houses, speedboats that take them from Albania to Italy—a great network of commercial interests engaged in the business.”

Stop Trafficking in Kosovo Since the July 1999 deployment of an international peacekeeping force to Kosovo and the establishment of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission (UNMIK), Kosovo has become a major destination country for women and girls trafficked into the thriving local sex trade. In May 2004 Amnesty International published the report Kosovo (Serbia and Montenegro) “So does it mean we have the rights?”: Protecting the Human Rights of Women and Girls in Forced Prostitution in Kosovo. Progress to combat trafficking has been made in some areas in Kosovo, including the arrests of up to 13 suspected traffickers this year and the indictment of a senior U.N. staff member for knowingly purchasing the sexual services of two trafficking victims. In May U.N. and local authorities introduced the Kosovo Action Plan to Combat Trafficking in Human Beings. While AI considers this to be a positive step, it is concerned about key aspects of the plan.

ACT » Write to authorities in Kosovo urging them to:

• create a separate operating procedure for trafficked minors • address the demand for sexual services by expatriates • ensure the prosecution of men who knowingly procure the services of trafficked women • secure adequate funding for crucial aspects of the plan, including covert police operations, “victim friendly” interview rooms, guidelines and procedures for better victim identification and a comprehensive witness protection program • allocate funds for reparation and redress.

Appeals to: Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary General Søren Jessen-Petersen/UNMIK Headquarters/Pristina, Kosovo. Postage $ .80. amnestyusa.org/3501 and amnestyusa.org/3502

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After Majlinda spent a year in Florence, her captors moved her by car to Amsterdam. She escaped with an Afghan client, but he forced her to work for him instead even though she’d become pregnant with him. She eventually fled with the baby back to Albania, only to be told by her father: “So far as we’re concerned, you are dead.” This rejection is typical of what happens to most trafficked women and girls who have the luck or guile to escape, for the stigma of having worked in the sex industry is indelible among the poor, rural and conservative families from which many victims come.

Majlinda took refuge at a shelter in Albania’s capital, Tirana, but she had to leave her child at a place she will not discuss. After the Afghan came looking for her and his son, she moved to another shelter where she is now staying. “This place is my last chance. But I am terrified he will come. And that I will see the Albanian men before my eyes once more.”

She has every reason to be afraid. Although her four-year enslavement subjected her to unthinkable suffering, she is in grave danger of being caught again. Traffickers, who often work in collusion with police, even hang around police stations waiting to pick up their prey as soon as they are released from custody after being arrested for prostitution. According to Vera Lesko, who runs a shelter for women like Majlinda in southern Albania, “The majority are simply re-trafficked when they return. They have nothing; they are annihilated. I had a woman who had been trafficked and re-trafficked for 10 years.

She did not know how to live in a different way. Something inside her had changed forever.”

There is a glaring problem in calling what happened to Majlinda, or any woman or girl trafficked into the sex trade, “prostitution,” since the word can imply a degree of consent. “In these circumstances, there is absolutely no meaningful consent at all. It is clear that if you knowingly have sex with a woman who has been trafficked, it amounts to rape,” says Sian Jones, Amnesty International’s campaigner/researcher for the Balkans.

Denise Marshall, who runs the Poppy Project in London, Britain’s only shelter for trafficked women, concurs. “If a trafficked woman is forced to see 30 clients a day, so far as I am concerned, that is 30 rapes a day. The impact on the body and on the psyche is the same as rape. It is the same level of violence against that woman.”

Thousands of women are taken to thriving “markets” like Kosovo, where the brothels are full of women and girls trafficked from all over the Balkans and Eastern Europe and sold for up to $3,500. Kosovo’s local sex trade exploded in 1999 with the arrival of the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR), who were mandated by the U.N. to provide security in post-conflict Kosovo. “A small-scale, local market for prostitution was transformed into a large-scale industry based on trafficking,” according to the 2004 AI report “So does it mean that we have the rights?”: Protecting the Human Rights of Women and Girls Trafficked for Forced Prostitution in Kosovo. With the influx of international peace-keeping and police forces, as well as civilian staff and contractors, the international presence in

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A 14-year-old girl walks home in a village in Moldova. Both her parents have left the country to look for work, leaving her alone to fend for herself and look after her 11-year-old brother. An estimated one- third of the population of Moldova have left the country in search of work.

“Majlinda” at a trafficked women’s refuge in the coastal city of Vlore, Albania.

“I became accustomed to being a slave, crying all the time, but always afraid to leave [my captor], because he knew my family, he knew my sister. I was alone, I had no one.”

Kosovo initially made up some 80 percent of the clients, although by 2005, the percentage of income and clients from among the international community had sharply declined.

The victims, invariably, come from the vulnerable and subjugated corners of Eastern European society—from desperately poor villages, from isolated mountain regions and from shanty slums. Albania—a land of dire poverty, fierce patriotism, rugged mountains in the north and olive groves in the south—is a typical example. For decades, it was cut off from the rest of Europe.

An estimated 100,000 Albanian women and girls have been trafficked over the past 10 years, according to UNICEF. The fear of abduction by traffickers is so great that the numbers of teenaged girls attending high school in rural areas of Albania has fallen dramatically. In remote regions, some 90 percent of girls no longer receive a high school education, according to Save the Children. “Even here in Tirana, they are afraid,” warns Svetlana Roko, who runs a center for trafficked and at-risk children in the capital.

Some women and girls are simply kidnapped, others lured by promises of work. “It depends,” says Vera Lesko, the woman who runs the shelter in southern Albania. “They could

be promised a modeling career, work in shops, serving in bars and, more recently, they have been enticed by promises of academic scholarships.”

The unwitting migrants soon discover themselves trapped in a private hell of constant physical and psychological suffering. Ana Chirsanov, a psychologist in Chisinau, Moldova, who treats trafficking victims, says, “Most of the girls speak of their desire to die when they return. We had a case of one minor who had jumped from a sixth-floor window...she survived, after six surgical operations.”

When politicians turn their attention to trafficking, they tend to overlook those who create the unceasing demand for trafficked women: unscrupulous employers, factory bosses, and the johns who frequent the brothels that are prisons to trafficked women.

In the United States, the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, first passed in 2000, offers some protection to victims and punishes traffickers. “Amnesty International USA appreciates many of the provisions in the act and other legislation designed to end trafficking,” says Maureen Greenwood, AIUSA Advocacy Director for Europe and Eurasia. winter 2005

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There is a glaring problem in calling what happened to Majlinda, or any woman or girl trafficked into the sex trade, “prostitution,” since the word can imply a degree of consent. long or medium term, it means that the trafficked person is more likely to cooperate with the police.”

Eva, from southern Albania, fell in love with the man who An anti-trafficking poster in Moldova. It reads, “You’re not a commodity!”

“However, the U.S. government still needs to go much further to protect trafficking survivors and to prosecute traffickers. For example, private military contractors who traffic in persons seem to be slipping through a jurisdictional loophole and need to be prosecuted.”

Congress began considering two bills on trafficking earlier this year. In October AIUSA petitioned Congressional leaders to ratify and implement United Nations protocol on trafficking, prosecute traffickers vigorously and extend the statute of limitations for trafficking crimes. The petition also urged Congress to protect trafficking survivors currently in the United States by ensuring that U.S. immigration officers ask foreigners whether they have been trafficked before removal proceedings and inform trafficking survivors that they may be able to stay in the United States under existing laws.

In Europe, Amnesty International partnered with AntiSlavery International and 170 other NGOs from 30 countries to campaign for the Council of Europe to adopt a treaty setting out the highest standards of protection for the rights of trafficked people. In May 2005, the Council of Europe adopted the Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings. “The Convention recognizes that trafficking is a human rights violation, and sets out minimum requirements that states must take to protect and respect the rights of trafficked persons,” says Jill Heine, AI’s Europe and Central Asia Legal Adviser. States that become parties to the Convention are required to implement a range of measures to prevent trafficking, prosecute those responsible and protect victims. Fifteen countries have already taken the first step to become a party to the treaty. AI is now calling on nations, including the United States, to sign and ratify the Convention, which will come into force once 10 governments ratify it.

Especially important, say advocates, are the measures to protect and assist victims. Experience has shown that victims who have received a range of assistance and protection—and who have begun to recover in a secure environment—are often more willing to participate in assisting law enforcement efforts against those responsible for their trafficking. “There is no conflict between protection and prosecution,” says Mike Kaye of Anti-Slavery International. Quite apart from respect for the human rights of a person who has had them destroyed, he says, “Protection of trafficked people has three distinct advantages: it disrupts the trafficking system, because they do not get retrafficked; it favors intelligence, because they are more likely to tell the support agency how they were trafficked; and in the

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took her to Naples, promising a wedding. But on arrival, her fiancé demanded that Eva work for him as a prostitute. “When I protested, he said he would kill my family and that his accomplices back home would do the same thing to my sister,” she says. Eva walked the streets of Naples, along with the other girls enslaved by the syndicate, taking up to 20 clients a night to meet her quota, and, if lucky, avoid a beating. Most nights, however, would end with her being violated and beaten by her trafficker and his henchmen.

“I could see people living their normal lives, shopping, going about their business,” she says. “They had their families and children with them, they had their lives; they had all the things I wanted but could never have. It made my heart cry to see them. I became accustomed to being a slave, crying all the time, but always afraid to leave [my captor], because he knew my family, he knew my sister. I was alone, I had no one.”

Eva’s trafficker was brother to one of Albania’s biggest dealers in drugs and women, who was killed in a car crash.

When her trafficker returned to Tirana for the funeral, Eva escaped and found her brother, who was living in Venice.

Now living in hiding from reprisal, as does her sister—also a trafficking survivor—Eva is clearly the life force of the shelter where she lives. “For the moment, I have what I want. I have my sister with me, I tidy up, I plant flowers, I sew.” Eva urges her fellow victims to cooperate with the authorities and would like to tell those still caught in the hell of enslavement, “Do not be afraid to do what is right. Go to the police. Testify against those who exploit you, for they deserve to be punished.” ai All names of trafficked women and children in this article have been changed for their own safety. Amnesty International does not publish photographs showing the faces of sex trafficking victims.

A boy in a youth center in a Moldovan village from which most adults have left in search of work.

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New York Daily News/Joseph Ambrosini

FEATURE

BRUTALITY

Homophobia can wear a badge and carry a gun, according to a new Amnesty International report on police brutality against lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders. The research shows how stonewalling perpetuates the problem.

By Walter Armstrong

IN

The crowd attempts to stop police in the infamous 1969 Stonewall Inn nightclub raid in New York City. The routine police raid sparked a spontaneous rebellion and helped ignite the gay rights movement.

Blue

In 1997, after a suicide attempt, Edward Thompson finally had “the talk” with his wife. He told her that the man she married felt that inside she was a woman. And he would rather die than go on living in a male body.

His wife took it hard. She kicked him out of the house he’d built and launched a take-no-prisoners divorce suit. He also faced hostility in the community as he explained his breakup and began his physical transformation to a woman. Friends who were judges, lawyers and police officers—pillars of the Lehigh Valley, Pa., community where they lived—turned on him. A court ruled that he was “a potential danger” to his 10year-old daughter and barred almost all contact. He lost his job managing a major construction site. “I went from living in a half-million-dollar house to living out of my truck,” says the 49-year-old transgender activist and painter, whose first name now is Rachel.

On Christmas Eve 1998 Thompson—who had by then been living full-time as a woman—was driving to see her daughter for the first time in a year. Her 18-year-old son from a previous marriage came along. The three were planning to spend the holiday together.

Then a police officer pulled her over. “I was on hormones and wearing—by court order—a suit and tie, so I looked like an effeminate gay guy,” Thompson says. “The cop started right in with vicious comments. ‘Hey faggot, is that your boyfriend?’ he asked. I told him it was my son. ‘Looks like a f—-in’ queer to me,’ he said.”

Seeing that Thompson’s auto registration had just expired, the officer ordered her out and the truck impounded. “But the officer’s abuse threw me into shock. I couldn’t move,” Thompson says. “The cop grabbed me and dragged me out. I was having a breakdown. He laughed, hurled insults and kicked me as I lay on the street sobbing. My son, the brave kid, argued with him that I needed to go to the hospital.” Instead, the police officer simply stared as a dazed Thompson rushed into incoming traffic.

Twenty minutes later she made her second suicide attempt, jumping off a bridge into frigid water. “I was heartsick. I knew I’d never see my daughter again,” she says. “But the cop was what sent me over the edge. Just because I looked different in a way that pressed his buttons, he was having fun treating me like a piece of human garbage.”

Walter Armstrong, the former editor in chief of POZ, the nation’s leading AIDS magazine, is now a freelance editor and writer.

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Every day in gay America brings disturbing variations on Thompson’s experience. Amnesty International’s groundbreaking report, Stonewalled: Police Abuse and Misconduct Against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender [LGBT] People in the U.S., provides the evidence, based on exhaustive research, including more than 170 interviews with survivors and advocates, surveys of dozens of police departments and investigations of police policies and training in four major cities. The report found that verbal abuse and harassment are routine. So are a range of discriminatory practices, from selective enforcement of the law, such as profiling gay men as public-sex offenders and transgender women as prostitutes, to selective non-enforcement during investigations of hate crimes and domestic violence.

When officers police by prejudice, permitting gender stereotypes to dictate decisions, punishment often falls on victims rather than criminals. In one Amnesty International (AI) account of a domestic dispute between lesbians, the officers arrested the woman who looked more masculine, even though she had placed the 911 call; in another, officers advised the woman who looked more feminine, “You need a real man.”

Although statistics are scarce, most experts agree that, as with anti-gay bias crimes in general, reported cases of police LGBT mistreatment are only the tip of the iceberg.

Confrontations sparked by an officer’s homophobic slur can escalate into outright physical or sexual violence. After being attacked on the street, a young gay man told AI, he flagged down two officers on patrol; they responded with taunts, then handcuffed him, pushed him into their car and sprayed Mace in his face when he demanded to know why he was being arrested. And the violence comes in different forms.

A Native-American transgender woman told AI, “The police Robert Boevingloh.

Rachel Thompson, who was physically assaulted by police officers in 1998 and again in 2000. Her gender reassignment surgery has reduced her risk as a mark for violence.

are not here to serve; they are here to get served.… Every night I’m taken into an alley and given the choice between having sex or going to jail.”

That transgender individuals, particularly women and young people, bear the disproportionate brunt of police brutality against LGBT people is among the AI report’s key conclusions. The AI report also found that within the LGBT community, people of color, youth, the homeless and immigrants are at greater risk of police abuse. AIUSA Executive Director Dr. William F. Schulz commented at the Sept. 22 Stonewalled press conference in New York City, “Transgender individuals, people of color and the young suffer disproportionately, especially when poverty leaves them vulnerable to homelessness and exploitation and less likely to draw public outcry or official scrutiny. It is a sorry state of affairs when the police misuse their power to inflict suffering rather than prevent it.”

The problem of

Dilip Vishwanat

police brutality isn’t new. Ever since the 1991 Rodney King beating, racial profiling has triggered national headlines, debate and investigations. Yet police abuse of people in the LGBT community remains largely under the radar.

The fact that many people still hold homophobic attitudes and behaviors offers one explanation. It wasn’t until 1999, for example, that Gallup’s annual poll found that 50 percent of Americans “consider[ed] homosexuality an acceptable lifestyle.” Equally telling, Gallup polled Americans one month after the Supreme Court’s 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision decriminalizing sodomy and discovered that, for the first time in a decade, acceptance of homosexuality had fallen significantly. A police badge, of course, confers no inoculation against homophobia. In 2004, in the first study of police homophobia, psychologists at Sam Houston State University sampled 152 Texas officers and found that a majority held anti-gay attitudes.

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It’s not uncommon, as the Stonewalled report shows, for LGBT survivors to report a hate crime only to have the police trivialize, misidentify or ignore their complaint altogether.

When the alleged perpetrator is a policeman, this stonewalling may, given the prevailing “code of silence” in police culture, morph into cover-ups, including retaliation against not only the victim but against any outspoken officer who crosses the “thin blue line.” In this fall’s media coverage of the AI report, for example, Chicago’s Sgt. Jose Rios was typical of police officers who downplayed the findings. “I know there are gay officers in every district, and I have heard not one complaint about mistreating of the LGBT community,” Rios, himself a liaison to that community, told The Chicago Sun Times. Stonewalling, in turn, reinforces LGBT suspicions of the police and discourages victims from seeking justice—a problem compounded by some people’s sensitivities about being outed as gay. This phenomenon is illustrated by the fact that despite Rios’ disavowal, the Stonewalled researchers recorded several testimonials from Chicago-area victims of harassment. In endless-cycle fashion, this collusion of silence enables law enforcement to dismiss the entire issue with its “few bad apples” refrain.

To break the cycle, survivors must break their silence. “The biggest problem…of wrongfully charged defendants,” according to Andrew Thomas, a San Antonio attorney, “is that 95 percent are so embarrassed by the charge…they are afraid to fight.”

Robert Boevingloh, a gay 61-year-old disabled Viet Nam veteran with HIV, wasn’t afraid. Arrested in spring 2000, in St. Louis, in what some police dub “bag a fag” (entrapment exercises in “gay cruising” spots), Boevingloh says, “I refused to plead guilty to ‘lewd and lascivious’ because I have this thing about fairness. I felt so violated—even my own sister didn’t believe I was innocent.”

Boevingloh went to trial without a lawyer “because I thought it was an open-and-shut case—talk about naïve!” In court, he says, his arresting officer—the undercover officer to whom Boevingloh had merely said, “What a glorious day!”— testified that Boevingloh made sexual advances, grabbed his crotch and then went into the bushes and lay down.

Boevingloh was found guilty and sentenced to two years probation. “During my sentencing, the judge announced to the courtroom, ‘Since you have AIDS, you’d better be careful because if you have sex with anyone, you can go to jail for 10 years.’ Everybody gasped at me. I never felt so vulnerable,” the former vet says.

Boevingloh endured his probation in a state of dread, finally moving to a different city. “Before all this, I had only good feelings about cops. My own brother was a police officer killed in the line of duty,” he says. “But now? If this is the justice system in America, it’s broken.”

Yet advocates believe that what’s broken can be fixed.

Just as there are many police officers who take no part in antigay abuse, there are some who break ranks to publicly acknowledge the practice—the crucial first step toward addressing the problem. Sgt. Brett Parson, of the Washington, D.C., Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit, told The Washington Blade, “Countless people…have told me about experiences just like the ones Amnesty uncovered in their report. It runs the

David Berkwitz/Polaris

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Transgender activist Mariah Lopez speaks at the AIUSA press conference for the Stonewalled report, with AIUSA Executive Director Bill Schulz and Sargeant Brett Parson.

gamut—from the very worst physical abuse to…intentionally demeaning language.” Parson was first in line to sign Amnesty’s “Pledge for Professionalism,” which asks police officials to affirm “their commitment to combat discrimination and violence against LGBT people.” The San Antonio ExpressNews reported that while the city’s Chief of Police Albert Ortiz criticized AI’s report for over-emphasizing unsubstantiated accounts by survivors, he backed its recommendations and signed the pledge.

The week in September that saw the release of the Stonewalled report was marked by three significant developments. An openly gay police officer was named a finalist for the Los Angeles Police Department’s top job. The Atlanta police department fired an officer for anti-gay verbal abuse, and the department implemented new policies on treating LGBT people with respect. And the U.S. House of Representatives passed the first bill to expand federal hatecrimes laws to protect “gay or transgender” people.

While hardly a perfect storm, these advances may remind everyone who cares about social justice to keep their eyes on the prize. “For many, it is easier to give in than to struggle.

Sometimes you feel so damaged, you don’t realize you are worth the fight,” says Maria Lopez, a young Latina transgender activist falsely arrested for solicitation. “But we are all worth the fight. Change can happen. The launch of this report will help—if we join forces to insist [that] police protect all human beings.” ai

Take Action AIUSA’s OUTfront Program works to protect the human rights of LGBT people around the world. Following the release of Stonewalled, activists are pressing police departments to sign AIUSA’s Pledge for Professionalism. They are also seeking an investigation into the case of Kelly McAllister, a transgender woman who allegedly was mistreated by Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department deputies and allegedly raped by an inmate while held in jail. To protect the rights of LGBT individuals, see amnestyusa.org/outfront or call OUTfront staff at 212-807-8400.

Learn more: Online chat with Sgt. Brett Parson of the Washington, D.C., Police Department, OUTfront national field organizer Ariel Herrera and other experts on Dec. 15 from 1-2 p.m.

Eastern: amnestyusa.org/outfront.

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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

M

AI

urhabazi 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!”

Free Papuan Protestors

F

or 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

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

20 amnesty international

»INDONESIA

ELSHAM

Holiday Card Action: Send a Simple Message of Hope

winter 2005

» 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.

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ACTION ALERT »USA

crime which was committed by someone else without my knowledge or without me being present?”

End Juvenile Life Without Parole In the first national analysis of life without parole sentences for children, Amnesty International dult time for adult crime” might be a proseand Human Rights Watch discovered that there are cutor’s snappy catchphrase to describe life presently 2,225 people in the United States senwithout parole for juveniles. But it effectively ignores tenced to life in prison without parole for crimes what even the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly recthey committed as children. Contrary to popular ognized—that children are less culpable than adults belief, most of these children do not have long rap for the crimes they commit. If that is true, then chilsheets of vicious crimes; an estimated 59 percent dren must be held accountable for their crimes in a Stacey T., who is serving received the sentence for their first-ever conviction. manner that reflects their special capacity for rehabil- life without parole in There are also marked racial disparities. Black itation. But courts across the United States have been Pennsylvania. youth are 10 times more likely to receive life withprosecuting children—who are too young to vote, get out parole sentences than white youth. married or drink alcohol legally—as adults and meting out the The United States stands alone with Somalia as the only extreme punishment of life without parole. countries that have not ratified the Convention on the Rights In Pennsylvania, for example, a 10th grade boy named of the Child, which explicitly prohibits life imprisonment withStacey T. got life without parole for a second-degree murder out the possibility of release for children under 18. At least 132 conviction. His crime was participating in a robbery scheme in countries forbid life without parole for juvenile offenders in which two adults (one was Stacey’s cousin) used Stacey to lure domestic law or practice. Only four countries have juvenile the victim and then killed him after taking Stacey home. Stacey, offenders serving life without parole, with only a dozen cases who had no juvenile record and went straight to adult court, in total outside the United States. amnestyusa.org/3508 says, “Is it fair that I spend the rest of my life in prison for a © 2005 Private

“A

ACT 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

»DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

Stop Illegal Arms Shipments

P

eace 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

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.

Getty Images

» Write to your governor (nga.org) and urge him/her to: support

ACT » 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

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

winter 2005

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ARTS & CULTURE Richard Holbrooke Reads Pictures Without Borders: Bosnia Revisited

Steve Horn

chronicle of how it happened, and, despite the horror, should encourage people to engage internationally when great injustice is being done.

A book like this could also be written now about that other hellhole of the 1990s, Rwanda. I hope someday such a book will also be possible for Darfur, Chechnya, Afghanistan and other places where international assistance, led by the United States, can make a real difference.

E

xactly 10 years after the Dayton peace agreement ended the war in Bosnia, Steve Horn has produced a photography book that tells the story better than words can. He shows the painful, hateful, irrational descent into hell of people who, whatever their alleged differences, had lived together in relative peace. Equally important, he chronicles their slow recovery.

We have a long way to go before Bosnia is a “normal” country. But American leadership and international assistance, primarily from the European Union, has ended this war. It will not resume. This book is an indispensable

M

Richard Holbrooke was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 1999 to 2001 and chief negotiator of the Dayton Peace Accords.

Chanel Govreau Listens to Sage Francis

A

t a time when much of hip-hop profits off of homophobic nursery rhymes, drug infatuation and the glorification of domestic violence, artist Sage Francis is a breath of fresh opinion.

Yet his music is more than just mindful hip-hop. With intellectual poetry and beats as intriguing and eclectic as his vocabulary, Sage spits what we’ve all

been yearning to say but are too tonguetied and baffled to verbalize.

The 2001 Makeshift Patriot is essential listening—Sage at his most politically driven. Written only a month after 9/11, the song vividly describes racial profiling and looming threats to our civil liberties.

A Healthy Distrust, released in February, is an aural feast for human rights activists, with references to the diamond trade, the death penalty and the war in Iraq.

As you listen, don’t resist the urge to fall apart.

Chanel Govreau is a high school AI coordinator, artist and costume designer.

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winter 2005

Margot Adler Reads Disappeared: A Journalist Silenced ost American journalists never face the fear and danger that was Irma Flaquer’s daily experience. This courageous journalist and activist wrote powerful stories and columns during the turbulent 1970s and 1980s, when government-sponsored death squads roamed Guatemala— freely able to torture, murder and “disappear” any reformer, activist, government critic, journalist or defender of the poor.

June Erlick’s gripping book brings Irma Flaquer to life—her powerful and often emotional columns, her sense of style and her often unconventional actions.

Near the end of her life, before she was presumably abducted and killed, repression in Guatemala was so severe that Flaquer could not even leave her house. And yet she continued to act and write. It is a lesson many journalists could heed today. June Erlick has not only produced an incredible investigative work, she has written a very special book for anyone who believes we must act from a deep place of courage.

Margot Adler is the host of National Public Radio’s Justice Talking and a correspondent for NPR’s All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Weekend Edition. Her most recent book is Heretic’s Heart: A Journey Through Spirit and Revolution.

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COLUMNS

Equal Human Dignity I

always remember and reflect on the driving force for my own human rights work: my mother. Early in life, this great woman told me on numerous occasions, “There is no such thing as a lesser person.” That simple mantra has guided me since I was a child volunteer and continues to steer me both in my professional work as a human rights educator and as a volunteer leader with AIUSA. My motivation for human rights activities stems from this belief—that all people have equal human dignity. It seems both logical and natural that people should do good and find no reason not to do good.

And this is the beauty of Amnesty International. Our mission—and our members who make the vision a reality— have at our core the belief in the power of one individual to work to help others who, through no fault of their own, face unimaginable maltreatment and horrors. Amnesty International members know that if we want a world without torture, injustice, terror, conflict, executions and victims of all sorts—we have an obligation to be aware and act.

Merely wishing for an end to these terrible global problems

Rick Halperin, Chair, AIUSA Board of Directors

will not ensure justice. It takes devotion to cause, constancy of purpose and commitment of the heart.

Thousands of you have just returned from AIUSA Regional Conferences in Atlanta, Boston, Cincinnati, Philadelphia and San Francisco. That level of devotion to this movement is admirable—and I hope those gatherings will rejuvenate you to persevere in this vital work. The next fabulous AGM is being finalized, and I urge you to attend this inspiring conference.

As we approach the end of the year, I ask all of us to reassess how we can best support the human rights movement—with actions great or small. There is no failure in the human rights movement, except to turn away and to do nothing. There is no guilt is participating at any level—from writing a letter, a check or a resolution to sending an e-mail, wearing a T-shirt or hosting a forum. The greatest achievement of Amnesty International members is their ability to learn about the horrors we combat and to turn to the work, rather than turning away. Your willingness to engage in this hard work of making the world a better place defines you. And for that, I sincerely thank you.

Member Services The following questions and answers deal with common concerns of AIUSA members.

Contact Member Services: Amnesty International, 5 Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10001. Phone: (800) 792-6637/ (212) 807-8400. Fax: (212) 627-1451/e-mail: aimember@aiusa.org (Please include full name and address in all correspondence). www.amnestyusa.org

Q: I’d like a record of my donations for the year for tax purposes. Will this automatically be mailed to me?

A: We routinely send acknowledgments for any donation over $10.00, but we do not send year-end gift summaries unless we receive a specific request. Monthly donors (including those with automatic debit who have requested just one statement per year) may use their January statements, which reflect the past 12 months’ gifts.

Q: Last month, I received a box of holiday greeting cards.

Can you stop sending them?

A: Contact Member Services. We will code your record so you will not receive these inexpensive promotional items.

Occasionally, Amnesty includes such items as calendars, address labels or greeting cards (which are produced at low cost) in our mailings. We have found them to be popular with members. Let us know if you do not want them.

Q: How can I give Amnesty memberships as holiday gifts?

A: Click “Donate” at our website to send gift memberships or honorary gifts. Or mail us your donation, including names and addresses for both you and the recipient. Or phone Kim Ruffin directly at (800) 792-6637, Ext 284. We will send an acknowledgment of your donation. For more gift ideas, browse our online store. amnestyusa.org/store/index.html Q: How do I make a year-end gift of stock to Amnesty?

A: Contact Nadine Celestin directly at (212) 633-4242 or ncelesti@aiusa.org, or our broker, Jack Buckman, at (732) 530-0303. Keep in mind that stock gifts take several days to complete. Please make your gift donation as early as possible to ensure transfer by Dec. 31, 2005.

Your bank or broker can expedite the transaction by making a wire transfer (via DTC). There is no need to send the certificate itself. fall 2005

amnesty international 23

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