Glasgow University Amnesty International

by Ruth

Tuesday 12th November: Our Right to Education, Write for Rights and FGM

November 11, 2013 in main, newsletter by Ruth

Hi everyone,

I know this is the stressy essay time of year but hang in there, you’ll make it! Also, we have Jamnesty to look forward to so remember to get your tickets on Tuesday and bring back money/spare tickets if you have taken any away to sell.

Next meeting: Right to Education, Write for Rights and FGM

On Tuesday Debbie is going to talk to us about our right to education. We are focusing on this as part of the ‘Right to Education Week’ which was established to raise awareness of the many Palestinians who are being denied access to education in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

After this discussion, we will be looking at the Write for Rights campaign, which AIUK launched earlier this month. There are 13 cases that Amnesty are focusing on and asking us to get involved with. Some of these are specific to women’s rights, our current campaign, and therefore we can focus on these.

The final part of our meeting will be on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Jana will take this part of the meeting as she has studied this as part of her course. We deliberately decided to make this last so that anyone who thinks that this will upset them and does not want to hear about it can leave earlier. This presentation has been designed to be the most informative but least distressing and Jana will give an introduction to what she will cover so that you can decide whether or not you want to stay.

Tuesday 19^th November: Guest Speaker – Scottish Transgender Alliance

A reminder that Nathan Gale from the Scottish Transgender Alliance (part of the Equality Network) will be coming to talk to us, so we are really looking forward to hearing from him. We will also take part in their postcard campaign and discuss how to include this at Jamnesty.

Wednesday 20^th November: Day of Silence and Jamnesty!

Day of Silence – All day on campus/at home/in your bed/at work/wherever you are in solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community

Thanks to Debbie and Alex who visited the SRC drop-in, the SRC are going to publicise our Day of Silence via social media and try to get it in the next SRC mailing if that comes out beforehand.

We thought of buying white t-shirts so that we can decorate them with our GU Amnesty stamp and solidarity messages. Jana has looked into these and the cheapest are £4.50 ethical and fair-trade so we can discuss whether or not to go for these.

Jamnesty: Halt 2, Woodlands Road, doors open 7:30pm, tickets £3/£4 on the door

Of course we have Jamnesty in the evening, which we are all super excited for! Please remember to get your tickets in advance as they are selling fast. You can get tickets at the meetings, and you can take tickets away for friends that you know are coming. You don’t need to pay for these at the time, I’ll make a note of who is taking away tickets and can collect money the week after.

Now get back to that coursework you’re supposed to be doing,

Ruth

Tags: fgm, jamnesty, right to education
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by Ruth

Meeting on Tuesday 5th November: Women’s Rights and Upcoming Events!

October 31, 2013 in events, information, main, news, newsletter by Ruth

BOO!!

Happy Hallowe’en everyone.

This one’s early because it is indeed the Student Conference this weekend and then the next time we meet it will be November! Talk about scary.

If you missed our meeting this week, Dominyka has written the blog, so check it out. I can now report that we have photos from the GUU, SRC and GUSA to add to our LGBT photo action. You can find them all on our website thanks to our Website Manager Rob who does a lot of hard work with that camera.

Next meeting: Tuesday 5^th November, Committee Room 1, QMU

We are moving onto our next campaign – women’s rights with a focus on India. Dom is putting together a presentation that looks at the recent gang rape case in India and the subsequent changes in law with regards to reinstating the death penalty for certain forms of sexual violence. However, it has been largely overlooked that there are certain forms of rape that are still considered legal. This meeting will be a good opportunity to discuss what really ought to have been changed in India in terms of legal protections for women.

The first plenary at the Student Conference is ‘Women in Afghanistan – in the news for the wrong reasons’. Those of us who are attending will hopefully have lots to talk about after listening to the various speakers. This was in fact Amnesty UK’s October campaign for student groups, so we will cover this on Tuesday as well.

We are hoping to end the meeting at 6pm for mobdro free download those of you who have plans for bonfire night. If you don’t have plans and wish you did, you can join those of us who are heading to Glasgow Green after the meeting for the fireworks. Remember warm clothes!

Film Event: Wednesday 6^th November, 12-2pm 217A Gillmorehill Centre

Screen Seminars at Glasgow – Women making documentaries in the Arab world

One of our members pointed this very well timed event taking place next Wednesday, right after the beginning of our women’s rights campaign. And it’s on campus, even better.

‘Filmmaking in the Middle East is often a matter of idealism and activism, especially in the case of women documentary makers. In spite of harsh censorship, conservative morals and a lack of investment, women have found ways of subtly negotiating dissidence in their films, something that is coming to light very clearly since the ‘Arab Revolutions’. In this talk I will introduce the aesthetic and ethic practices by the very first women making documentaries in the Middle East.

‘A historical overview of the struggles by women making documentaries will be supported by images and clips taken from documentaries by the pioneering women of Arab documentary making, e.g. Jocelyne Saab (Lebanon), Ateyyat El Abnoudy (Egypt), Selma Baccar (Tunisia) and Assia Djebar (Algeria).’

Tuesday 19^th November: Guest Speaker – Scottish Transgender Alliance

I know we had our last meeting on LGBT rights this week but there is actually still more to come, yay! Nathan Gale from the Scottish Transgender Alliance (part of the Equality Network) will be coming to talk to us and we can take part in their postcard campaign. We are delighted that he can make it and after that we will have achieved everything that members suggested we do in terms of events for LGBT rights this semester. So that’s something to celebrate!

Wednesday 20^th November: Day of Silence and Jamnesty!

Day of Silence – All day on campus/at home/in your bed/at work/wherever you are in solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community

Jamnesty: Halt 2, Woodlands Road, doors open 7.30pm, tickets £3/£4 on the door

We have begun looking into t-shirts for our Day of Silence and Maisie is emailing Mobdro Online TV the SRC to make sure that a message is sent to every student telling them about our plans. We thought of buying white t-shirts so that we can decorate them with our GU Amnesty stamp and solidarity messages. We’ll let you know next week how much this will be and see if you want to go ahead with ordering the t-shirts. Whatever we decide, we need something visible for those taking the pledge to be silent and those who are supporting – everyone is welcome to take part so encourage friends outwith the society to join in too.

Ali has been busy finding the best deals for printing the LGBT campaign photos for decorating the Halt 2 and also for creating a poster collage. We are hoping to have big posters in the QMU, GUU and SRC to publicise our solidarity action on that day.

Of course we have Jamnesty in the evening, which we are all super excited for! Please remember to get your tickets in advance as we are almost through our first batch of 30. You can get tickets at the meetings, and you can take tickets away for friends that you know are coming. You don’t need to pay for these at the time, I’ll make a note of who is taking away tickets and can collect money the week after.

Spook to you soon,

Ruth

Tags: Afghanistan, Day of Silence, india, jamnesty, lgbt, women's rights
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by Dominyka

Round Up: The Final LGBT Rights Campaign Meeting (Tuesday 29th October)

October 30, 2013 in information, main, meetings by Dominyka

Hey everyone!

Yesterday we had our final LGBT Rights campaign meeting – which left some of us wondering where October went… There were some great events over the month though, so it’s not something to be upset about!

To remember why we chose this as our first campaign, and why a special focus on Russia is needed, we turned to the recent BBC’s documentary Stephen Fry: Out There. The excerpt we watched focused on Russia and featured both members of the gay community that face violence and laws against them, and people that make such laws, namely a Russian politician Vitaly Monolov who initiated a ban on ‘propaganda of homosexuality’ among minors in Saint Petersburg back in 2012.

This was followed by some letter writing: we addressed the International Olympic Committee, which will receive the letters together with our photos (Rob made sure that those of you who haven’t had a chance before got their pictures taken!), and the companies sponsoring the Games, such as Coca-Cola and McDonald’s.

We also had a look at the previous Secret Policeman’s Ball posters to encourage everyone to take part in the design competition!

Our first campaign being over definitely doesn’t mean we’re finished and never looking back at it again! Wednesday 20th November will be our Day of Silence, when we symbolically (or not) take a form of silence to demonstrate solidarity and draw attention to LGBT-related harassment, bullying, and persecution around the world. We have agreed to look into the options of white t-shirts and stickers for the occasion. The silence will be broken at our ‘Love is a Human Right’ Jamnesty gig which you’ve all probably heard about by now, but if not,Â check it out and get a cheaper ticket in advance!

The next meeting will see the start of the Women’s rights campaign – but you’ll hear more about this from Ruth in the upcoming newsletter!

See you soon,
Domi

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by Rob Hallam

Photos from Meeting 6 – Out There (Featuring Stephen Fry) and LGBT IOC Letter Writing (2013-10-29)

October 29, 2013 in main, photos by Rob Hallam

This week we were fortunate to enjoy a segment of the documentary Out There, with Stephen Fry. Having been informed further on the LGBT rights situation in Russia, we finished off our LGBT Photo CampaignÂ and wrote letters to the IOC to go along with these photos.

Tags: letter writing, lgbt, photo campaign
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by Rob Hallam

Photos from our Pub Quiz (2013-10-27)

October 29, 2013 in main, photos by Rob Hallam

A big thanks to everyone who came along and made the night special, and those whose work let the rest of us enjoy ourselves and have fun – you all know who you are. We made £132.22 from the quiz and our mini-stall, so well done to all!

(Click any photo for a larger version)

Team Photos

I tried to get round all the teams before the quiz kicked off, sorry if I missed your group!

Read the rest of this entry →

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by Ruth

Meeting on Tuesday 29th October and our Pub Quiz Today (Sunday)!

October 26, 2013 in cfci, events, information, main, meetings, news, newsletter, spb by Ruth

Hi everyone,

Welcome to our new members! It’s lovely to still have people joining the society. If you missed the meeting, you can read Ali’s blog on what happened.

I hope you are all remembering our PUB QUIZ TODAY!! Looking forward to seeing you then! We will be starting at 7.30pm in Jim’s Bar, QMU and those of you who are bringing home-baking, thank you in advance, we will add them to the stall with our tote bags.

Conflict-Free Campus Initiative

If you didn’t make this meeting (2 weeks ago), you can read the blog to see what this is all about. Some people who were there said that they would ask certain lecturers if they would support the campaign – please do this is you haven’t already. I will also remind folk on Tuesday!

Next meeting – Tuesday 29^th 5pm, QMU

We have been unsuccessful in finding another meeting room for Tuesday so will still be in Committee Room 1.

Unfortunately the Equality Network and Scottish Transgender Alliance do not have anyone who can come and talk to us on Tuesday, but there is a small chance of getting a speaker towards the end of term leaving us with the opportunity to show a recent documentary featuring Stephen Fry who has travelled to various countries where the gay community face persecution, violence and potentially the death penalty.

As this is officially our final LGBT rights meeting, we were hoping to finish with a quick letter writing action to the International Olympic Committee to send with our photos.

Debbie will be bringing along our previous Secret Policeman’s Ball posters so that we can think about the design for this year, and for those of you who want to enter the competition, this is an opportunity to get started!

November Campaign – Women’s Rights with a focus on India

For those of you who have just joined us, we voted this as our 2^nd campaign of the year. At Tuesday’s meeting we will have a discussion about what particular topics to cover in our meetings in November and possible campaign actions we want to do.

Day of Silence

Wednesday 20^th November – Day of Silence

‘The National Day of Silence is a day of action in which students across the country vow to take a form of silence to call attention to the silencing effect of anti-LGBT bullying and harassment in schools.’

Although the date for this is in April and focuses on schools in the USA, we thought this was a brilliant solidarity action and even better when we can end our Day of Silence with our Jamnesty gig.Â We will invite the LGBTQ+ Society to take part with us and anyone else who wants to join in is welcome to, so spread the word!

Love is a Human Right Jamnesty

Wednesday 20^th November, The Halt 2 (Woodlands Road), 7.30pm

Well the banners are looking amazing! Thank you to everyone last week who helped make them J Ali is printing off all of our LGBT campaign photos as well so that we can stick these up all over the venue.

We are going to start selling tickets for this event because the Halt 2 need to know numbers in advance in order to organise staffing for the night. For this reason we decided to make tickets £3 in advance and £4 on the door- so remember to get yours on Sunday at the Pub Quiz, or at our next meeting.

See you later on!

Ruth

Tags: cfci, competition, fundraising, india, jamnesty, lgbt, love is a human right, pub quiz, spb, women's rights
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by Ali Cooper

Meeting Round Up: LGBT Rights Campaign (Tuesday 22nd October)

October 26, 2013 in information, main, meetings by Ali Cooper

The focus of our meeting last Tuesday (22^nd October) was our LGBT Rights campaign.Â This is the first of our campaigns running over the 2013/14 academic year and includes a specific focus on Russia.

Why Russia? Increasing violence towards the LGBT community and repressive new laws have significantly infringed LGBT rights there.Â Despite being a signatory of the European Convention on Human Rights the country seems to be moving away from the values of tolerance and open-mindedness that underpin the treaty.Â In 2007 Russia was selected to host the 2014 Winter Olympic games.Â Amnesty is concerned that the IOC has failed to preserve the Olympic ideal and see the detrimental effects of the discriminatory legislation.Â Russia is not alone.Â From Iran to Cameroon, many countries are experiencing a deteriorating LGBT Rights situation.

On this note, Dom and I (Ali) started off the meeting with a presentation outlining LGBT Rights around the world. Did you know that:

more than half of the world’s countries either directly oppose LGBT Rights or are unwilling to give recognition to them?
transgender people still have to undergo sterilisation before their gender is recognised in many European Countries?
in Nigeria a law was recently passed outlawing same-sex marriage, punishable with a 14-year prison term?

A big thanks to Josh from Amnesty Scotland who also talked about the campaign.

After the presentation everyone got stuck into banner decorating.Â This was for our ‘Love is a Human Right’ Jamnesty gig which will be held on Wednesday 20th November. The banners look really impressive and it was especially good to see new members getting painty!Â Meanwhile Rob was overseeing the photo campaign. Check out the updated pictures below.Â A small group then headed off to the Glasgow University Union to get their committee involved in this element of the campaign.Â As of Thursday we also have GUSA!

Finally, a few members headed into town after a quick bite of pizza to see the play Cured.Â The production was especially commissioned for the Glasgay festival: Scotland’s annual celebration of LGBT Culture. Inspired by real accounts of conversion therapy, two performers, Julie Hale and Mary Gapinski, uncovered the stories of four women dealing with the treatment’s effect.Â Cured really complimented the campaign, highlighting the stigmatization of many who consider themselves L, G, B or T.Â Despite dealing with serious issues both actresses got laughs throughout. Make sure you don’t miss out if the production runs again!

Hope to see everyone on Tuesday.

Ali

Tags: lgbt
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by Rob Hallam

Photos from Week 5 Meeting – Banner Making and more LGBT Photo Campaign

October 23, 2013 in main, meetings, photos by Rob Hallam

Thank you to everyone who took part in our continuing LGBT photo campaign, and a big well done to everyone who was involved in the banner-making!

Tags: banner, lgbt, meeting
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by Rob Hallam

Photos from Week 3 Meeting – LGBT Campaigns and Fundraising

October 22, 2013 in main, meetings, photos by Rob Hallam

Well done to everyone who came up with fundraising ideas, campaign messages and the banners that we used.

Tags: meeting, photos
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by Rob Hallam

LGBT Photo Campaign (Updated!)

October 21, 2013 in main, photos by Rob Hallam

Thanks to everyone who has taken part so far. If you haven’t taken part yet and want to get involved, please come along to one of our meetings or contact us using the details on our about page.