Blog
By Alex Neve, Secretary General, Amnesty International Canada. Follow Alex on Twitter: @AlexNeveAmnesty How best to describe the rushed hearings the House of Commons’ Public Safety Committee held over the past few weeks examining Bill C-51, the government’s anti-terrorism law reforms? Circus,...
March 31, 2015
Blog
by Alex Neve, Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada. It’s worth repeating, Bill C-51 is important, very important. Rarely does legislation touch so directly on two of the most fundamental imperatives of government: to protect our security and uphold our rights. How crucial therefore...
March 13, 2015
Blog
By Alex Neve, Secretary General, Amnesty International Canada. Follow Alex on Twitter @AlexNeveAmnesty Want to feel more secure? Bill C-51, which is being examined by a Parliamentary committee in three weeks of truncated hearings, offers up criminal offences that infringe free expression,...
March 10, 2015
Blog
By Alex Neve, Secretary General, Amnesty International Canada. Follow Alex on Twitter: @AlexNeveAmnesty There is so much packed into the government’s current national security law reform, it is hard to know where to focus. Bills C-44 and C-51, currently before Parliament, constitute the most...
February 26, 2015
Blog
By Tarek Chatila, Montreal-area activist and writer for Amnesty Canada’s Isr/OT/PA co-group “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” wrote French critic Alphonse Karr in 1849. Turbulent change, he observed, has a counterproductive tendency to reinforce the status quo. A truism...
January 25, 2015
Blog
Don’t Let Down Your Guard: Standing together and speaking out for human rights – Year end message to Amnesty International supporters from Alex Neve, Secretary General, Amnesty International Canada There were so many reminders during 2014 of how deeply important solidarity is in our...
December 17, 2014
Blog
By Jackie Hansen, Major Campaigns and Women’s Rights Campaigner There appears to be a rise in homophobia around the world. From Russia and Kyrgyzstan to Nigeria, Uganda, and beyond, homosexuality is becoming further criminalized. This is particularly hard to understand here in Canada where we are...
October 16, 2014
Blog
By Kathy Price, Mexico Campaigner The photos arrived in a steady stream on my Facebook feed, a flood of images too numerous to include here – impossible to ignore. From the wide boulevards of Mexico’s capital to the streets of small towns across the country, women and men, young and old,...
October 9, 2014
Blog
By Mabel Au, Director of Amnesty International in Hong Kong. The streets of Hong Kong are hard to recognize these days. The exhilarating energy filling the city’s main roads, crowded with hopeful protesters, is something I have not seen since I was a young student back in 1989, when we took to...
October 1, 2014
Blog
by Tara Scurr, Business & Human Rights Campaigner, Amnesty International Canada – from Guatemala City “It’s been hard, because it’s not easy to bear being spat at in the face, being pushed and shoved, the tear gas, the tussles with the police, and we women having to throw ourselves...
September 29, 2014
Blog
, by Alex Neve, Secretary General, and Tara Scurr, Business and Human Rights Campaigner , Amnesty International Canada , – Guatemala City, Guatemala, 18 September, 2014 , What better way to spend the evening before launching our important new report, Mining in Guatemala: Rights at...
September 19, 2014
Blog
The skin across Sasha’s forehead and around his eyes is slightly yellow and there is a recent scab on his temple. He is healing well. Ten days before our meeting, the 19-year-old was barely recognizable: the skin on his face stretched tight, swollen and bruised. Abducted and tortured, Sasha...
July 10, 2014