Amnesty International’s mission ended with a week long visit to Goma and other areas of North Kivu, from where we were unable to provide a daily blog for security reasons. Our team met with local human rights activists, representatives of MONUC, UN agencies and a number of international humanitarian NGOs, and were able to gain further eyewitness testimony of recent killings and other human rights abuses.
We held detailed discussions about our human rights concerns with General Mayala, commander of the North Kivu military region, Laurent Nkunda, leader of the CNDP armed group, and representatives of PARECO / mayi-mayi armed groups. Despite at time vigorous exchanges, however, all these people denied that their forces had committed human rights abuses.
The jury hearing of the trial into the murder of Anna Politkovskaya has been going on now for about two weeks.
There is still strong media interest in the trial and on some days I have not been able to attend the hearing. The court official, who is in charge of organizing the media access, does not really know what to do about me. I’m the only NGO representative wanting to attend the trial.
Every morning, I have to struggle hard to get on the list of those who are allowed into the court room. Once I got in with the help of Karinna Moskalenko, one of the lawyers of Anna Politkovskaya’s family, who dragged me past the court official and told him that Amnesty International has to be at the hearing.
The journalists from Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper Anna Politkovskaya worked for, get in every day and give a daily account of events in the court room. The following summary is partly based on the reporting from Novaya Gazeta:
Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered on 7 October 2006 in Moscow. She was shot on a Saturday afternoon, when she walked into the lift in the apartment building she lived in.
I had met her several times, one time right after Russian special forces had stormed a theatre in Moscow, where a group of men and women had taken over 800 people hostage. Anna Politkovskaya had tried to intervene and help to save the lives of those in the theatre. Subsequently, the theatre was stormed and about 150 people died.
Amnesty International invited the world to call on the Chinese authorities to deliver a positive and lasting human rights legacy for the Beijing Olympics.
Livewire es el nuevo espacio para blogs creado por el Secretariado Internacional de Amnistía Internacional. En él se alojan blogs de acciones de campaña, visitas de investigación o reuniones y actos de alto nivel escritos por el personal de la organización.
Amnesty International's new action-zine for human rights is available now. Click here to access features, appeals, information and easy actions.
Para información y artículos en español, ver La Revista
