Cambridge City Amnesty Group - Talk on South Caucasus
Thursday 12th July 2007
Venue: Friends Meeting House
Category: Talks & Classes
One Liner: AmnestyInternational
Price Info: free
Time Info: 7.45 - talk at 8.15
The Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane, Cambridge CB5 8BA
7.45pm, Business Meeting AI Cambridge City Group
8.15pm (approx), Barrie Hay, AIUK country-co-ordinator for the South Caucasus, who will talk about human rights issues in the South Caucasus, some current actions and about the role of (volunteer) country co-ordinators in AIUK.
Since the collapse of the USSR the South Caucasus has suffered from poverty and corruption. There is impunity for the authorities in many countries. Torture is used to gain confessions. Prison conditions are appalling with high rates of HIV and TB. In Georgia, there are continuing allegations of torture and ill treatment in police custody. Executions continue in Belarus and Uzbekistan.
Media and political control by the state remains the norm. Violence against women has reached epidemic proportions in Russia, and there is trafficking of thousands of women annually to the West from former USSR states.
There are a number of ethnic and other conflicts, including Chechnya in the Russian Federation and South Ossetia in Georgia, where disappearances, torture and other human
rights violations against the civilian population by state and non-state actors are widely reported. There is widespread persecution of ethnic minorities and religious repression. Anti-terrorism measures are often used as an excuse to justify this repression.
The South Caucasus countries of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan present different challenges for Amnesty International in tackling human rights violations. As well as the
violations facing the rest of the Former Soviet Union, a new report on the plight of some 600 000 Azerbaijanis who were displaced from Nagorny Karabakh following the conflict in
the late 1980s, and one of the largest proportions of internally displaced peoples in the world, illustrates AI's concerns in the region.
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