Ready-Made
Human Rights Letters

Here are short letters that you can easily print and mail.

Select the address and text; copy and paste them into Word or whatever you use for writing. Arrange on the page to your liking.

Even better is to spend a few moments individualizing the text. You could change words, add your own remarks, use different points from the fuller information given.
A short letter in simple language is most likely to be understood. Stay polite.

Get back to us if you have a question. Or if you have the luck to receive a reply—it could be important. We'd love to know that you've written.

—Guy Ottewell and Tilly Lavenás, founder members of the Amnesty International groups of Greenville, South Carolina, and Lyme Regis, England.

The top letter on the home page is new. Others are about some long-term cases on which we keep working. More letters on them are always needed.
YOU CAN RECEIVE NEW APPEALS BY EMAIL. Please go to http://groups.google.com/group/humanrightsletters
By clicking "Join this group" (at the right) you can become a member of our “Google Group” and will receive sample letters whenever we have them ready.

If you don't see a "Join this group" link, or if you have received an email about “Ready-made human rights letters”, you are already a member.
Under "Discussions" you can see the emails we've previously sent.

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Updates on past cases

You may submit a letter appeal for possible use. Please make it easy for us: Keep it short. Provide a summary of the fuller information (which we like to get in chronological order). Expect to be edited. Provide a web link if possible, or a citation of the authority for the information, e.g. for an Amnesty International Urgent Action, its number, date, and "write no later than" date. Send to guy@universalworkshop.com

Do letters do any good? Mostly they get no apparent response. But they bother the authorities and have been known to play a part in a prisoner's release. Often they cause atrocious conditions to be improved. If known about by a prisoner or other victim, they mightily ENCOURAGE.

“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.” —Julio de Peña Valdez, trade union leader, after his release in 1974 from underground solitary confinement in the Dominican Republic

These “remhurls” have been sent by email to a list of friends at irregular intervals (monthly, sometimes less, sometimes more) since 1996. Since 2008 we have used this better method of distribution. We are responsible for them; they are not an official production of Amnesty International, Survival International, or any other of our sources.

Another resource for easily sending human-rights letters (it provides individualized texts or printed letters, for small fees per year or other period):
Appeals Worldwide, www.appealsww.com

More about Myo Min Zaw

—based on Amnesty International documents and on the long experience of AI USA group 182 in Greenville, S.C.:

Myo Min Zaw, born about 1978, was a second-year student of English. He was involved in the large-scale student demonstrations of 1996. The military sought him but he managed to evade arrest. In 1997 he joined the central organizing committee of the All-Burma Student Union (ABSFU). Using the alias of Moe Hein Aung, in July 1998 he founded the Student and Youth Unity Front. Between June and September 1998, more than 300 students were arrested when they staged small demonstrations to protest the human rights situation and the poor quality of education. Before these demonstrations, letters appealing to the public for support and signed by "Moe Hein Aung" were widely distributed in Yangon (Rangoon) and were used prominently by the demonstrating students.
On September 14, 1998, Myo Min Zaw was arrested in the street and accused of agitating unrest. He was sentenced to 38 years, later increased to 52.
He was at first in the notorious Insein Prison in Yangon. In April and May 1999, just before an attempt by the International Committee of the Red Cross to investigate Burma's prison conditions, the military authorities secretly transferred hundreds of political prisoners from Insein to remote prisons around the country; the families of the transferred prisoners were not told, and no official news was released. Myo Min Zaw was transferred to Pathein Prison.
After a hunger strike in 2003 calling for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, he was transferred with 28 others from Pathein to Mandalay Prison. up in the middle of the country. When he arrived he was hooded, and beaten at the prison gate and then in the cell, with prison service batons. He was held for one month in shackles and solitary confinement, then put in a cell with others. Later he was transferred to Puta O prison in Kachin State — the remote north of Burma — making it even more impossible for his family in Rangoon to bring him food and medical assistance.
Myo Min Zaw was adopted as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International in 1999, and his case was assigned to USA groups 182 (Greenville, South Carolina) and 9/280 (Manhattan, New York), and to groups in Britain, the Netherlands, and Sweden.

Burma background
The elected government was overthrown by General Ne Win in 1962, and since then the country has been ruled by a military regime, who changed its name from Burma to Myanmar, and their own title from State Law and Order Restoration Council (the much-ridiculed "SLORC") to State Peace and Development Council.
    The regime uses its huge army, the Tatmadaw, to wage wars against the country's many and large ethnic minorities. In the words of one activist, it "sells the teak forests to foreign companies for bullets to kill the tribes that live in them."
    The country was almost closed off to outsiders, but in 1988 a student-led uprising blew it open to the world's attention. The uprising was bloodily suppressed, but next year Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of independence hero Aung San, returned from Britain where she had been living, and rapidly found herself the leader of the populat movement; her peaceful principles probably saved a great deal more bloodshed.
    In 1990 the regime allowed an election which it assumed it could control, but the National League for Democracy won 82 percent of seats (and other opposition parties won most of the rest, leaving the regime with 2%), even though the NLD's presidential candidate, Aung San Suu Kyi, was in house arrest and most of its other leaders in prison. The military refused to accept the result, and Suu Kyi has been in house arrest for most of the years since then, the world's only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner.
    The military regime set up a second and sham election, for May 6, 2010, designed to gie itself a civilian appearance. It ruled that the National League for Democracy could register as a party only if it expelled its leader Aung San Suu Kyi on the ground that she is a prisoner. The NLD refused to do this, and so has officially ceased to exist.

Do letters to Burma do any good?
Here (slightly shortened) is a March 2010 message from Amnesty International's Myanmar campaigner Haider Kikabhoy to Canadian members who had asked this question.

We're constantly being told by the families of POCs [prisoners of conscience], and Burmese activists who are campaigning for their friends' release, both privately and publicly (such as in regular Burma stakeholder meetings organised by the British Foreign Office), how Amnesty's steadfast letting-writing does make a difference to POCs' lives.
The consistent and concentrated letter-writing from across the Amnesty movement makes it clear to the Myanmar authorities that we're watching their actions and that the POCs aren't forgotten. The stream of appeals that members send to the SPDC maintains pressure on the authorities to not torture or mis-treat detainees. Although we're not going to secure everyone's release tomorrow, we're often encouraged and, indeed, prodded, by the families of POCs, and Burmese activists, to keep up and increase our work because the continued attention we give to POCs often brings them some protection, influencing the authorities to treat them less harshly (e.g. by giving better medical care and increased access to their families, or reducing restrictions on their on movement in prison). Improved conditions for POCs won't last if the pressure isn't maintained, which is why we need Amnesty's time-honoured letter-writing campaigns.
Second, the loyal commitment members show in fighting for the freedoms of POCs is a source of great moral support to POCs and their families. The father of Zaw Htet Ko Ko carries solidarity letters he receives from AI members in his wallet. He calls the letters "my gold". He's overwhelmed by the amount of greeting cards he received last Christmas (his letter-box would overflow if he didn't clear it everyday). A thank you message from him is attached below. U Win Htein's son, who lives in the US, is also thankful for the messages of support he receives from AI members.
Third, our letter-writing campaigns have actually helped to bring about the release of POCs. And that kind of success is the result of a division of labour, a combination of efforts and supreme teamwork from across the AI movement.
AI Canada members aren't working on their own, as there are always strangers/fellow activists in other parts of the world who are campaigning with them for the very same hopes over the long haul. That to me is the beauty of Amnesty, that it can mobilise common outrage at human rights violations, a shared sense of justice, goodwill, and a desire to make progress, across the world, into a force for change.
The global AI membership works along with the International Secretariat as well as colleagues in New York, Geneva and Brussels to apply pressure on the right people, at the right time, to achieve what we want. The release of eight of the 16 POCs we've had in the Individuals Portfolio (since Sep 2008) is a good indication of what we can achieve if we work together over the long haul.

And a letter from Aung Myint, father of prisoner Zaw Htet Ko Ko, December 2009:

Dear AI members (all over the world)
Merry Christmas to you!
Greetings to you from the Netherlands and Kyauk phyu prison. Your supports soothe my grief and strengthen the spirit of my son. We are very very pleased with your huge amount of post cards and letters. I hope this year will be our real happy new year.

By the way, we suggest writing Union of Myanmar (Burma) in the address because the government that took power in 1989 changed the country's name from Union of Burma to Union of Myanmar. But the USA and its postal service still use "Burma" (as does the democratic opposition in the country), so omitting that on the envelope could delay delivery.