participate in a 43t letter-writing group for amnesty international

and receive e-mails. I just need to reduce the number of goals on my list a bit, it`s feeling a bit overwhelming at the moment.

this campaign about a journalist who has “disappeared” in Chechnia. (Is that how the country name is spelled in English? It`s called something else in Norwegian.) This is going to be my amnesty letter this weekend, I`m posting it in case more of you want to send it!

Yurii Yakovlevich Chaika
Procurator General
General Procuracy of the Russian Federation
Bolshaia Dmitrovka 15d., Moscow, 125993
Russian Federation/ Rossijskaia Federatsia

Dear Procurator General

I am writing to you to express my concern for the fate and well-being of the journalist Elina Ersenoeva. She has not been seen since she was abducted on 17 August in Grozny. She may have “disappeared” and be at risk of torture or ill-treatment. Reportedly, men in camouflage uniforms forced her to get into a car, and brought her to a secret location. Two days before her detention, Elina Ersenoeva had asked for support from representatives of Russian human rights organizations, as she and her family had been harassed and threatened over several months.

I urge you to investigate the whereabouts and well-being of Elina Ersenoeva; to make any findings of the investigation into her whereabouts immediately known to her family and to bring to justice those found responsible for her abduction. If she is being detained by security forces in the Chechen Republic, I call on you to release her immediately or charge her with a recognizable criminal offence.

Yours sincerely,

OK, I had to post this one too, and I hope someone would like to send it! Thousands of girls and women have been killed, and most cases never even get investigated.

Letter to President Oscàr Berger, Guatemala

President Oscàr Berger
President of the Republic of Guatemala
6a. Avenida, 4- 18 zona 1
Ciudad de Guatemala

Fax: 011 502 238 3579

Your Excellency,
I would like to express my concerns about the numerous murders of women and girls committed in Guatemala every year. This summer Amnesty International published an update of the 2005 report Guatemala: No protection, no justice: Killings of women. The report documented that the killings of women still is followed by impunity, and that this issue needs immediate attention and action by your government,

As long as the killings of women do not lead to a thorough police investigation and only 3% of the reported cases lead to a conviction, these killings will not end, and the perpetrators will continue to go free.

I urge you to ensure that Guatemala provides justice for the thousands of women that have been killed since 2001, and to immediately ensure that such violence will not be rewarded with impunity in the future.

To achieve this, I urge you and your government to

-exercise zero-tolerance against gender-based violence;
-sanction police investigators and others who fail to acknowledge the serious nature of crimes committed against women;
-investigate and prosecute perpetrators who harass and otherwise threaten relatives of murdered girls and women;
fully coordinate and support efforts to improve the quality of criminal investigations and improve the cooperation and coordination between police investigators and public prosecutors to ensure immediate, coordinated and effective investigations;
-immediately organize and put in action an urgent search mechanism for missing women and girls;
-educate and train police investigators, crime scene investigators and forensic experts in how to investigate and in particular how to collect evidence in relation to gender-based violence;
-immediately approve the draft law to criminalize sexual harassment and the draft law (no. 2630) which proposes the abolition of certain discriminatory provisions and the criminalization of other acts of violence against women;
provide the necessary resources to implement a standard system for collecting data and compiling statistics on violence against women and girls for use by Law and Justice Sector agencies and other relevant bodies.

Yours sincerely,

I`ve posted this somewhere else, but I`ll post it here to (per Snowleapard`s request;) ) in case more of yopu want to send it. It`s a letter copied from Amnesty`s pages.

UN Security Council
President of the UN Security Council
UN Headquarters
First Avenue at 46th Street
New York, NY 10017USA

Your Excellency,

A humanitarian tragedy continues to take place in Darfur and is now also unfolding in the eastern parts of Chad.

I call on the UN Security Council to protect civilians in Darfur now by sending UN peacekeepers to take over from the African Union mission without delay, in accordance with Security Council Resolution 1706 .

I urge you to secure that the peacekeepers are mandated and trained to protect civilians everywhere in Darfur, using all necessary means, in full compliance with international human rights and humanitarian law. I especially stress the need to protect women from gender-based violence.

The peacekeepers must ensure the disarmament of the government-supported Janjawid militia, secure humanitarian access to the civilian population and the safe, voluntary and sustainable return of all the displaced to their homes.

I also ask you to ensure investigation of all human rights abuses in Darfur, including all cases of rape and sexual violence.

Yours sincerely,