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December 2011 |
Co-ordinators – Anne Priestley, Celene Lim and Mary Nelson |
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Dear <<First Name>>,
Welcome to our final newsletter of the year, which we hope will give you enough to take action on until we return in 2012. Our priority focus within this issue is on the juvenile justice system in the United States of America (USA).
You will be aware of some of the issues which were canvassed during our activism on the case of juvenile offender Jordan Brown, and which resulted in his case being transferred to a juvenile court.
Amnesty has just launched a report “This is where I’m going to be when I die” – children facing life imprisonment without the possibility of release, downloadable here.
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"They are passing laws that send us to prison forever before we are even adults.”
David Young, now 32 years old, is serving a sentence of life without parole in North Carolina. (He has been incarcerated for almost 15 years, for a murder committed by his 16-year old co-defendant during a drug deal. This photo is of him aged 30) |
In the USA a person who is under 18 years of age may not vote, serve as a juror, buy alcohol, lottery tickets or cigarettes, cannot hold public office or consent to most forms of medical treatment. Yet in the USA, such a person can be sentenced to die in prison for his or her actions.
In the face of a virtually universal legal and moral consensus that life imprisonment without the possibility of release should never be used against children, the USA is the only country in the world imposing this sentence. More than 2,500 people are serving life imprisonment without the possibility of release in the USA for crimes committed when they were younger than 18 years old. Individuals as young as 11 at the time of the crime have faced this sentence in the USA.
This international prohibition does not stem from any inclination to excuse crimes committed by children or to minimize the consequences of such crimes for the victims and their families. It stems, rather, from recognition that children, who are still developing, are not yet fully mature, and hence not fully responsible for their actions. It also recognizes that young offenders have a special potential for rehabilitation and change.
It is not that young people should not be held accountable for their actions. It is that this accountability must be achieved in ways that reflect the offender’s young age and his or her capacity for change. To deny the possibility of release is to deny the possibility of change and is utterly incompatible with basic principles of juvenile justice.
Take action
In 1994, at the age of 16, Christi Cheramie was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. She pled guilty to second degree murder of her boyfriend’s aunt, although her boyfriend actually killed his aunt and also received a life without parole sentence.
Christi Cheramie is now 33 years old and has spent more than half of her life in prison. Click here for a media release and a short video featuring an interview with Christi's grandmother and audios of Christi herself, speaking from prison.
Her case is one of the featured Write for Rights global Letterwriting Marathon cases. We’re particularly urging members of the Children’s Rights Network to prioritise letter writing on her behalf.
You can download her case here.
If you would like to take action on more cases
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You can register on-line here and write from the comfort of your own home – or organise your own event and invite friends and family along.
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You can participate in Right for Writes events nationwide – which are being updated as confirmed here
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And please do advise the totals of any letters you have written to media@amnesty.org.nz to allow us to update the global total with your efforts.
In the line of fire: Somalia’s children under attack
The action on Somali children which we featured in the last newsletter continues to be live so please do continue to write to Somalia’s leader. Details can be found here.
The Auckland Central Group hosted a brilliant “Stop using child soldiers” action at Grey Lynn Festival on November 19. They raised awareness of the issue and collected 424 mostly handprint signatures, which we’ll be sending on to Somalia’s leader the Honourable Abdiweli Mohamed Ali
Argentina: Children caught up in land squabble
If you have extra capacity please do take action on behalf of two children at risk in Argentina who appear to be targeted solely for who they are related two.
The boys aged 11 and 17 are the son and grandson of Félix Díaz, the leader of the Toba Qom indigenous community of La Primavera, Argentina. They were attacked by men with guns on 8 November. The men work for a landowner who disputes the community’s claims over land. You can take action until December 23 here.
New Zealand: Green Paper on Vulnerable Children
The Government has launched a discussion paper to give people and communities a say on how New Zealand can better protect abused, neglected and disadvantaged children.
AIANZ will be making a submission on this paper and will share it with you when it is completed next year. For more information or to make your own submission please click here.
For those of you who missed the screening of the documentary Inside Child Poverty it is downloadable here It made for disturbing viewing and has generated much public debate.
Finally, we take this opportunity to wish you all a relaxed and refreshing holiday season.
Anne Priestley, Celene Lim, and Mary Nelson
This newsletter prepared for Amnesty International
by Margaret Taylor
Contact us by email - childrensrightsnetwork@amnesty.org.nz
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