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  1. Tim Cooke Hurle BW

    Hang on a minute, G4S

    Tim Cooke-Hurle on 07 April 2010

    G4S, you’re one of the world’s largest private security firms, and not long ago one of your companies hired a man with serious mental health problems, packed him off to Iraq, and gave him a rifle.  

    Now he’s facing execution because he’s accused of using that gun to kill two men. 

    The least you can do is pay his legal costs, so that he can get a fair trial in Iraq. He shouldn’t have been there, and he shouldn’t have been armed. 

    So far, you have offered the equivalent of four seconds of your ...

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  2. Cortney Busch BW 2011

    Poll says Americans favour Guantánamo Bay again

    Cortney Busch on 01 April 2010

    On the eve of President Obama’s self-imposed deadline for closing the military prison, only 47% of US citizens supported keeping it open. Yet in a new CNN poll released just two months after the missed deadline, the number skyrocketed to 60%.

    CNN's Polling Director, Keating Holland said:

    “Just Democrats still think that Guantánamo should be closed, but Independents have completely changed—from an even spilt in January 2009 to three-quarters who want to keep the facility open today.”

    Speculation in accounting for the 13% rise includes the case of Umar Faruk Abdulmttalab, the “pants bomber” aboard a trans-Atlantic ...

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  3. Proclaimers and Billy Bragg Poster

    The Proclaimers and Billy Bragg perform in aid of Reprieve

    Matthew Leidecker on 01 April 2010

     Last Friday was a spectacular night of music at the Electric Palace in Bridport, bringing The Proclaimers, Billy Bragg, and a crowd of 400 fans together to show support for Reprieve.

    The Electric Palace, hub of the Dorset town, was the perfect setting for this intimate concert that featured two incredible acts, and it proved to be a great night for fans, as well as a success for Reprieve.

    Folk legend and veteran campaigner Bragg came out first, clearly enjoying the chance to perform in his home town. He sang old favourites like ‘New England’, and dedicated the song ‘I ...

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  4. Chris Chang BW

    Changing the Face of Human Rights

    Chris Chang on 31 March 2010

    Last summer I was privileged to be asked by photographer Nadia Bettaga to be photographed as part of Changing the Face of Human Rights Project.

    Nadia Bettega’s exhibition explores what human rights mean to the lives and stories of 60 people living in Britain today. 

    I chose a key because it represents freedom. My work is all about opening doors, allowing people to come out. The biggest rewards have been the smallest things... someone going home, going free, to be with his or her family.

    She has taken an amazing photograph of me in my mother's garden, in ...

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  5. Generic Front page - Hands through bars colour

    Amnesty International releases its annual report on the death penalty

    Reprieve volunteer on 30 March 2010

    Amnesty International today published their annual Death Penalty Report, calling for China to end the secrecy surrounding sentencing and executions.

    Protesting the continuing refusal by Chinese officials to publish official figures for executions, Amnesty decided not to include an estimate of those killed. Amnesty’s rationale is that such calculations “grossly under represent” the actual number the state has killed or sentenced to death.

    China’s wall of secrecy in death penalty cases is something Reprieve has experienced with the execution of British national Akmal Shaikh in December 2009, despite significant evidence of mental illness. Reprieve’s attempts to pursue ...

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  6. Nao Terai photo

    Shining a light on Japan’s machinery of death

    Nao Terai on 29 March 2010

     Japan executed 15 people in 2008 - the highest number since 1975 - and last month's government opinion poll suggests increased support for the death penalty. Does this mean the pro-death penalty camp is gaining momentum in Japan?

    Admittedly, the value of the Japanese government's poll is questionable, with only 64% of the 3,000 respondents supplying valid answers on whether the death penalty was 'unavoidable.' But more importantly, given how little information is publicly available about Japan's use of the death penalty, on what basis do Japanese citizens supposedly support it? 

    The Ministry of Justice only began confirming ...

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  7. Aimee Griffin

    Robert King: ‘I don’t have time to be angry. I will fight till the day I die’

    Aimee Griffin on 29 March 2010

    Imagine just for a minute that the only world you inhabit for three decades is a cell maybe five steps long and three steps wide. Days turn into weeks, weeks to months and months to years. The possibility of losing your mind and fading into oblivion is very real.

    Last night was the Human Rights Watch London film festival premiere of ‘in the land of the free’. This film documents the shocking and unbelievable story of ex-Black Panther activists Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox and Robert King- known as the Angola three. These three men together have spent a century in ...

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  8. Death row - cell

    Disappointing result in Taiwanese death penalty row

    Chloe Strowger on 26 March 2010

     On the same day that Taiwan’s Justice Minister Wang Ching-feng boldly denounced the death penalty, the Presidential Office released a statement assuring the public that Wang must abide by the law regardless of her views. 

    Wang had said she would rather resign than execute any of the 44 inmates on Taiwan’s death row. In an angry backlash, lawmakers accused her of violating the rule of law enshrined in the state’s constitution, and insisted that she could not refuse to sign orders to execute prisoners already condemned to death. 

    Amid calls for Wang’s immediate resignation, the Minister ...

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  9. Jacquetta Wheeler

    Supermodel Jacquetta Wheeler takes Reprieve's work to the fashion world

    Jacquetta Wheeler on 24 March 2010

    Having been volunteering at Reprieve for two months, I hit London Fashion Week with something to talk about other than what I thought of the various creations wafting up and down the catwalks.

    At every event I went to, I found myself trying to inform people about the atrocities of Guantanamo Bay and other human rights abuses around the world. 

    Some were interested, some weren’t – fair enough I suppose! 

    Here is a web interview I did:  http://www.t5m.com/live-from-fashion-week/live-from-fashion-week-jacquetta-wheeler-on-london-fashion-week.html

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  10. Aimee Griffin

    Courageous Texan judge declares death penalty unconstitutional

    Aimee Griffin on 24 March 2010

    A Texas judge in a county that sends more inmates to death row than any other in the nation has done the unspeakable. 

    In a pre-trial motion of a capital murder case Judge Fine courageously ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional and said ‘it is safe to assume we execute innocent people.’

    Fine said that judges are 'gatekeepers of society’s standard for decency and fairness'.

    “Are you willing to have your brother, your father, your mother be the sacrificial lamb, to be the innocent person executed so that we can have a death penalty, so that we can ...

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