Glasgow University Amnesty International

Hey everybody,

Since some of you had to leave early, here’s a quick recap of what happened at the meeting today.

We voted for our campaigns for this year with the results as follows:

Our Campaign for the Year: Conflict Minerals as part of the Conflict Free Campus Initiative (CFCI), a creation of Enough Project’s ‘Raise Hope for Congo’ campaign.

First Semester Main Campaigns: LGBT Rights with a focus on Russia (October) and then Women’s Rights with a focus on India (November).

Second Semester Main Campaigns = Guantánamo Bay (January) and then Human Trafficking (February/March).

Although we appear to have more time next semester, the Secret Policeman’s Ball will leave us short on time for campaigns in February, which is why we opted for just two main campaigns again.

The full list of campaign suggestions were:

1. Destitution and Forced Evictions
2. Guantanamo Bay
3. Right to Education
4. Asylum Deeker and Refugee Rights
5. Tibet
6. LGBT Rights (Russia)
7. Pussy Riot
8. Human Trafficking
9. Women’s Rights (India)
10. Violence Against Women (in the UK)
11. Organ Harvesting in China
12. Conflict Minerals
13. Death Penalty
14. Water Rights/Land Rights

We will try and cover the remaining campaigns at various points throughout the year as one-off meetings.

I am very excited for our chosen campaigns! As I said, LGBT rights, human trafficking and
Guantánamo Bay have never been a main focus for GU Amnesty (not since I joined anyway) so it is
great to be doing these. For now though, here are the suggestions for our first campaign:

• 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.’
• Events in partnership with LGBTQ+, the Equality Network (including something discursive),
  and the 4 student bodies but particularly GUSA and GUSSC in relation to a campaign in the run up to the Winter Olympics.
• Attending events in the Glasgay festival.
• A photo campaign in support of the LGBTQ+ at our university/globally and against Russia’s anti-gay crackdown and the Olympic Committee’s inaction.
• ‘Love is a human right’ gig night, hopefully with the GU Band Society, as a combined campaign and fundraiser.
• Visual demonstration on campus (somebody suggested creating an image using the Olympic rings and someone else thought of playing the Russian anthem).
• Letter writing, as always.

These ideas were FANTASTIC and we will begin contacting the various organisations to see what we can arrange.

We will be having a bake sale outside the library next Thursday 10th October for International Day against the Death Penalty. We will need everyone who is available even if it’s only for a couple of hours to help run the stall and to take part in a demo. We will spend some time at our next meeting organising this.

Elections – we are hoping to start next week’s election at 6pm so that we still have time for a regular meeting. However, we will obviously double check at the start of the meeting to make sure that everyone who wants to run can stay from 6pm onwards, and if not we’ll begin before then.

Finally, it’s our Tibet meeting tomorrow in the Boyd Orr 6(6.30 start)-8pm. I’m glad so many of you are coming along, I’ll see you there.

Ruth