The Urgent Action Network Mailing List

Participants of Urgent Action Network are expected to be dues-paying members of Amnesty International.

" . . . Serving 5 years and 7 months imprisonment, I have experienced electric torture, and no-sleep torture for four days, beating, kicking every time I was arrested."

" . . . Your efforts and prayers saved my life and thanks to your support I can have an opportunity to live as a human being. Thank you very much."

- Portions of a letter written by former prisoner of conscience, Korean, Lee Shin-bom to the Urgent Action Network

CRISIS RESPONSE - the activists of the Urgent Action Network, working alone and in schools, churches, synagogues and groups of all types, have been on call to help people like Lee Shin-bom since the program's beginnings in 1975. The Network writes letters, aerogrammes, sends telegrams, telexes and faxes, and at times calls government officials on behalf of people likely to be tortured or killed.

The Urgent Action Network has been designed to handle Amnesty International's most urgent crises involving individual victims. This may include the following situations of urgency:

Torture

Capital punishment

"Disappearance"

Extrajudicial execution

Untreated health problems

Hunger-strikes

Unacknowledged detention

Ill-treatment

Denial of legal counsel

"When the first two hundred letters came, the guards gave me back my clothes. Then the next two hundred letters came, and the prison director came to see me. When the next pile of letters arrived, the director got in touch with his superior. The letters kept coming and coming: three thousand of them. The President was informed. The letters still kept arriving, and the President called the prison and told them to let me go."
-- A released prisoner from the Dominican Republic

The UA Network is established in over 60 countries and may include 100,000 people, including religious and political leaders, legal and health professionals, artists, students of all ages, educators, and others from all walks of life. Many times, the success of the UA technique is the universality of the appeals; perhaps more than any other AI technique, the UA Network can guarantee that the response to a call for action will be truly worldwide. We have received letters from government departments actually listing the people who appealed to them. One particular list, from an official in Peru, was compiled of people who appealed in response to an Urgent Action in early 1990 and includes addresses from: Austria, France, Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, the United States, Denmark, Belgium, Northern Ireland, Japan, England, Canada, Spain, Australia, Grenada, Brazil, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Italy, Israel, the Fareo Islands and Luxembourg.

Information about a victim that reaches AI's International Secretariat in London is treated with priority status as facts are checked and a two-page Urgent Action casesheet is drawn up by researchers. It is immediately sent via computer into the United States (as well as to other countries).

"We could always tell when international protests were taking place... the food rations increased and the beatings were fewer. Letters from abroad were translated and passed round from cell to cell, but when the letters stopped, the dirty food and repression started again."
-- A released prisoner of conscience from Vietnam

An Urgent Action casesheet will include specific details about the prisoner as well as background information regarding relevant patterns of human rights violations in the country, recommended actions, addresses of authorities and general guidelines to use when composing appeals.

Each UA Network participant is also sent a monthly follow- up newsletter listing all new information about past UAs for information. This includes news about releases and improvements as well as executions and reports of worsening situations.

"For years I was held in a tiny cell. My only human contact was with my torturers... My only company were the cockroaches and mice... On Christmas Eve the door to my cell opened and the guard tossed in a crumpled piece of paper. It said, 'Take heart. The world knows you're alive. We're with you. Regards, Monica, Amnesty International.' That letter saved my life."
-- A released prisoner of conscience from Paraguay

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