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INTRODUCTION / AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL – A WORLDWIDE CAMPAIGN
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petitions and support protests.
A campaign can take months or years but once the call has been made for the release of a prisoner of conscience, Amnesty International never gives up. The Dunedin group in New Zealand vigorously campaigned for 19 years on behalf of South Korean prisoner of conscience Suh Sung. He was finally released in February 1990, and later said: "It is my hope that those who worked so hard on my behalf will now continue to work to bring about the release of all the other political prisoners in South Korea."
In the course of any campaign, Amnesty International groups must raise money for postage, stationery, leaflets, publications, meeting rooms and the dozens of minor expenses incurred. Members have devised a wide variety of fund-raising events, many of which also provide opportunities to publicize urgent human rights concerns. In 1990 the Hong Kong group participated in sponsored "walkathons". Artists in New Zealand donated their work to a charity auction for Amnesty International. A group in Sierra Leone grew and sold cas- savas. Concerts promoting human rights work were organized in the Philippines, New Zealand, India, Chile and Japan. In Kuwait, before the Iraqi invasion, local groups staged a well-publicized art exhibition in Kuwait City.
Large-scale political imprisonment, detention without trial, torture, "disap- pearances" and extrajudicial executions cannot be confronted solely by high- lighting individual prisoner cases. In countries where a pattern of abuse warrants sustained and increased international pressure, Amnesty International organizes country campaigns or actions. In 1990 there were campaigns on countries including Brazil, Chad, China, Myanmar (Burma), Peru, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Sudan.
The campaign on China continued the work begun following the June 1989 massacre in and around Tiananmen Square, Beijing. Then, Amnesty Inter- national launched an emergency campaign involving hundreds of thousands of members all over the world. Although the Chinese authorities failed to respond, Amnesty International maintained the pressure throughout 1990. In May the organization published the names of 650 of the thousands of prisoners arrested and held since the June 1989 pro-democracy protests at that time the longest list of prisoners in China ever compiled by a human rights organization. "One year after the killings in Beijing, the fate of those prisoners is still veiled in official secrecy but they are not forgotten," Amnesty International said. "We know some of their names and we want to know what has happened to all of them.... Our message to the government is that these human rights violations are an international concern and international pressure will not go away." In September Amnesty International launched a further action on China aimed at maintaining international attention on the continued repression of trade union- ists, workers, writers, academics and human rights activists and on the increased use of the death penalty.
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Between March and June an action on Chad mobilized groups in Africa, Europe and the Americas to send thousands of letters urging the government to release all prisoners of conscience, stop torture, and account for prisoners whose
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL REPORT 1991
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