Ready-Made
Human Rights Letters

Here are short letters that you can easily print and mail.

Select the address and text; copy and paste them into Word or whatever you use for writing. Arrange on the page to your liking.

Even better is to spend a few moments individualizing the text. You could change words, add your own remarks, use different points from the fuller information given.
A short letter in simple language is most likely to be understood. Stay polite.

Get back to us if you have a question. Or if you have the luck to receive a reply—it could be important. We'd love to know that you've written.

—Guy Ottewell and Tilly Lavenás, founder members of the Amnesty International groups of Greenville, South Carolina, and Lyme Regis, England.

The top letter on the home page is new. Others are about some long-term cases on which we keep working. More letters on them are always needed.
YOU CAN RECEIVE NEW APPEALS BY EMAIL. Please go to http://groups.google.com/group/humanrightsletters
By clicking "Join this group" (at the right) you can become a member of our “Google Group” and will receive sample letters whenever we have them ready.

If you don't see a "Join this group" link, or if you have received an email about “Ready-made human rights letters”, you are already a member.
Under "Discussions" you can see the emails we've previously sent.

GET FRIENDS TO JOIN!

Postage for one sheet (mark envelope AIRMAIL):
from the USA 98¢ (to Canada and Mexico 80¢)
from Britain 76p (to Europe 68p)

Updates on past cases

You may submit a letter appeal for possible use. Please make it easy for us: Keep it short. Provide a summary of the fuller information (which we like to get in chronological order). Expect to be edited. Provide a web link if possible, or a citation of the authority for the information, e.g. for an Amnesty International Urgent Action, its number, date, and "write no later than" date. Send to guy@universalworkshop.com

Do letters do any good? Mostly they get no apparent response. But they bother the authorities and have been known to play a part in a prisoner's release. Often they cause atrocious conditions to be improved. If known about by a prisoner or other victim, they mightily ENCOURAGE.

“When the first two hundred letters came, the guards gave me back my clothes. Then the next two hundred letters came, and the prison director came to see me. When the next pile of letters arrived, the director got in touch with his superior. The letters kept coming and coming: three thousand of them. The President was informed. The letters still kept arriving, and the President called the prison and told them to let me go.” —Julio de Peña Valdez, trade union leader, after his release in 1974 from underground solitary confinement in the Dominican Republic

“I can't remember how many times I have been told by a prisoner of conscience or an organisation like Women and Men of Zimbabwe Arise that our cards and letters bring real hope. They are a link to the outside world and give them knowledge that they're not struggling on their own.” —Kate Allenm director of Amnesty International UK

These “remhurls” have been sent by email to a list of friends at irregular intervals (monthly, sometimes less, sometimes more) since 1996. Since 2008 we have used this better method of distribution. We are responsible for them; they are not an official production of Amnesty International, Survival International, or any other of our sources.

Another resource for easily sending human-rights letters (it provides individualized texts or printed letters, for small fees per year or other period):
Appeals Worldwide, www.appealsww.com

t's time we all sent another letter for Hakamada Iwao, condemned in an unfair trial, longest on death row in the world, and driven to insanity.

More about Hakamada Iwao, condensed from Amnesty International documents (website, the Individuals at Risk portfolio, greeting-card actions, and a new mailing in 2011)

Hakamada Iwao, now 75, has spent over 44 years on death row, 28 of them in solitary confinement. He was arrested in 1966 for the murder of his employer, his employer's wife, and their two children.
Held in a police cell, he was interrogated for 20 days under a system called daiyo kangoku (“substitute prison”). During this time there are no rules controlling the length of interrogations, which last up to 12 hours a day; sessions are not recorded; no lawyers are present. Amnesty International has documented methods routinely used to obtain “confessions,” including intimidation, beatings, sleep deprivation, questioning from early morning till late at night, and making the suspect stand or sit in a fixed position for long periods. At his trial he said that he was beaten and threatened by police officers to coerce him into signing a onfession. He has repudiated it ever since, maintaining his innocence.
Used as evidence at the trial was a set of bloodstained clothing, found in a tank at the factory where he worked. The clothing was too small for him, but the prosecution claimed it had shrunk while in the tank. The knife he was supposed to have used was, according to his lawyer, too small to have made the fatal wounds. And the door by which he was alleged to have entered and left the victims' house had been locked.
He was convicted in 1968. Lawyers have made several unsuccessful appeals to the higher courts.
One of the three judges at the original trial, Kumamoto Norimichi, has publicly stated that he believed Hakamada Iwao to be innocent, but, outvoted by the other two, had to sentence an innocent man to death. This judge has joined the campaign to get Hakamada Iwao freed, and has testified to the UN:
www.protectthehuman.com/videos/-i-had-to-sentence-an-innocent-man
. British Liberal Democrat MP Alastair Carmichael has worked on the case with Amnesty International, made a trip to Japan, and commented (on the Amnesty Blog website): “I have never come across a campaign before claiming a miscarriage of justice where the campaign included one of the trial judges!“

Waiting to be hanged for 44 years, could be hanged tomorrow
In Japan, prison governors and wardens have wide discretion to set their own rules, and these rules are kept secret. Death row inmates are not allowed to talk with other prisoners, nor to engage in hobbies or other interests, nor watch television. Visits from family and lawyers are at the discretion of the governor. Rules control how many letters a prisoner may write, when he may go to the toilet, even the way he is expected to walk.
Execution is by hanging. After appeals are exhausted, a prisoner may wait years or decades for this. Yet could be executed at any time. He is notified only on the morning of the day he is to die. It is done in secret. The family is informed only afterward.
The Ministry of Justice claims this secrecy protects the family of the prisoner from shame, even that it reduces mental strain on the prisoner. It does the opposite: the prisoner lives year after year in unremitting fear of imminent hanging.
In 1998 the UN Human Rights Committee found that prison conditions for death row inmates in Japan were incompatible with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by Japan in 1979. In 2009 there is no apparent improvement.

Driven mad
No wonder that Hakamada Iwao suffers mental illness. After his sister requested a re-trial, a psychiatric review was made by Dr Nakajima, who found that Hakamada's condition amounted to a “state of insanity,” he could not maintain a conversation, had megalomania, had lost understanding of what execution meant, needed hospital treatment, was not competent to petition for a re-trial, or indeed to be executed.
This allowed his family to petition in his stead for a re-trial, which his sister did, but re-trial was again turned down. His sister believes that a re-trial would lead to his release.

Cautious hope
The death penalty has wide support in Japan. This is at least partly due to the extraordinary secrecy that shrouds it from view. People do not have to think about it, and there is little information for potential public debate.
But in past months the government has shown some openness to public debate on the death penalty. New Minister of Justice Eda Satsuki delcared at a press conference on 21 January 2011 that it is time for Japan to consider abolition.