[Mitai-announce] Petitions for Middle East and North Africa

[Hanzhi Zhu]

Dear All:

A recent wave of democracy has swept across the Middle East and North Africa, ushering a new era of freedom for the Arab world. The ripple effects of the successful and peaceful revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt can be felt across the Muslim world. Many people, long disenfranchised by despotic regimes supported by the United States, have rose up by the millions to protest against oppression and cronyism in their governments. However, their peaceful protests were often met with machine gun fire and Rocket Propelled Grenades. From Bahrain to Libya, the military has fired indiscriminately at peaceful demonstrators, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of unarmed and peaceful demonstrators. Amnesty International has an obligation to ensure that the rights of the people are protected at all costs and we have to hold the respective national governments responsible for their indiscriminate use of force and rampant human rights abuses. We are petitioning the governments of Bahrain, Iran, Yemen and Libya to exercise maximum restraint in their dealings with the opposition, negotiate with the opposition and end all media censorship. Also, we are urging Senator John Kerry, who is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to express America's solidarity with the millions of people demanding social and political reforms throughout the Middle East. Hence, we look forward to your continued support with our petitions. Lastly, we will try to hand the petitions over to diplomats of those countries which have a presence in New York City.  Our efforts are paying off because Libyan diplomats are abandoning their posts en-masse, paralyzing the Gadaffi regime.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/02/201122275739377867.html

We will be reserving booths in Lobby 10 in the coming weeks (which we will announce once the dates are confirmed), during which you will be welcome to sign our petitions. If traveling to MIT is not possible, we would also greatly appreciate it if you could sign the attached petitions and mail them to us at the following address:

Amnesty International
Hanzhi Zhu
500 Memorial Drive,
Cambridge, MA 02139

Thank you very much!

Sincerely, 
Hanzhi Zhu
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