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Amnesty International:
Direct from Guantánamo Bay
March 27, 2007
At a hearing in Guantánamo on 26 March 2007, in his sixth year of detention and at the start of the US administration’s
second attempt in the last three years to try him before a military commission, Australian national David Hicks pleaded guilty
to one specification under the charge of “providing material support for terrorism”.
This plea was made after years of indefinite detention, isolation and allegations of torture and ill-treatment, and after
a day in which Hicks’ legal representation was reduced by the military judge overseeing the commission. ...
full article
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Breaking the chains
Feb 22nd 2007 | CAPE COAST, GHANA
From The Economist print edition
Britain abolished the slave trade 200 years ago this week. Its landmarks are an abiding legacy of cruelty
Mary Evans
THE dungeons can still shock, two centuries after their last inmates were freed. Damp and fetid in the tropical air, immersed
in virtual darkness, this is where slaves were kept, often for months at a time—before being led down a tunnel through
the “door of no return” to ships riding in the surf, ready to begin their appalling voyage over the ocean.
read full article...
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Slavery- 200 years ago, and today
On Friday, February 23, Amazing Grace, a film about the struggle of William Wilberforce, appears in theaters.
William Wilberforce worked 20 years in the British Parliament to ban the
slave trade. In the emancipation proclamation in 1863, Lincoln declared most of the slaves in the US to be free. The courage
and perseverance of dedicated activists had ended overt slave trade by major world powers, but slavery lives on
today in some parts of the world.
We support the systematic enslavement of children and others in
many of the things we buy. Here are two examples:
Young boys whose ages range from 12 to 16 have been sold into slave labor
and are forced to work in cocoa farms in order to harvest the beans, from which chocolate is made, under inhumane conditions
and extreme abuse...
(Note that your P&J Community is now offering chocolate for sale that is free of the taint of child slavery)
....The popular National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Football League (NFL) jerseys are sewn by children
who are forced to work in a dangerous, illegal, and unrighteous environment ...
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British Abolition's Faith-Based Roots
IN THE FIERCE struggles of the 19th century to abolish slavery, Abraham Lincoln
remains the mythic American champion. In Britain, however, that honor belongs to William Wilberforce, the Christian activist
and member of Parliament who thundered against the slave trade for 20 years. Friday marks the 200th anniversary of his legislative
triumph — a campaign rich with lessons for modern-day reformers..... LA Times article
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Resources
Amnesty International
Human Rights Watch is dedicated to protecting the human rights of people around the world.
Southern Poverty Law Center's Tolerance.org is a principal online destination for people interested in dismantling bigotry and creating, in hate's stead, communities
that value diversity.
The purpose of the Episcopal Urban Caucus is to be an instrument of the Gospel exercising radical discipleship in Church
and Society, and to hold the feet of the Episcopal Church to the fire of social justice
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