Salient

Amnesty Freedom Week campaign targets Internet freedom

By Stacey Knott | 13 Aug, 2007

To raise awareness for Amnesty International Freedom Week, Victoria’s Amnesty on Campus club held a series of events around campus and in Wellington City earlier this month.

The week was a nationwide appeal to support Amnesty International’s priority campaigning work in 2007 and 2008.

One of these campaigns which the Amnesty website says is “the new frontline in the fight for human rights” is Internet repression, which was the focus of the campus group’s campaigning.

Amnesty on Campus Activist Manager Simon Le Quesne cites China as being their biggest focus, saying the Chinese Government “have scores of people dedicated to tracking other people on the internet. People go into chat rooms and so on and get knocks on the door, which is they whole crux of the problem to us, its about the internet and it’s also about the human rights in this day and age. This may be seen as a small thing but it leads onto bigger things and we want to break that chain in China’s mentality so we can make some difference.”

As part of the week, the group staged a silent protest in the Quad, in unison with Auckland, Canterbury and Otago Universities. “We all just linked hands and had gags over our months with human rights on it in solidarity with a heap of countries around the world that have internet repression; Sudan, China, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia the list goes on and go,” says Le Quesne.