Human Rights Organizations and Web Sites: A Small
Selection
Episcopal Peace Fellowship; November 10, 2011
National
Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT).
Web www.nrcat.org Main issues: Commission of Inquiry, Optional
Protocol, Torture, esp. solitary confinement, in U.S. prisons. Provides resources (videos, banners, study
guides, literature)
Episcopal
Peace Fellowship WNY http://epfwny.org/ (not
updated; e-mail sahartny@gmail.com)
American
Civil Liberties Unions (ACLU) and NY affiliate (NYCLU). General website, http://www.aclu.org/;
for torture, http://www.aclu.org/national-security/torture Huge number of issues, including
dissenter/demonstrator rights, use of state secrets privilege to avoid
accountability for torture and extraordinary rendition. NYCLU working with Steven Reisner,
a psychologist on case against state board that supervises psychologists, re
their involvement in torture http://www.nyclu.org/case/reisner-v-catone-challenging-office-of-professional-disciplines-failure-investigate-and-sanctio
Also works on solitary confinement http://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights/stop-solitary-articles-other-resources
Amnesty
International. Has local groups, also
national (section) offices, including one for U.S., and international
secretariat where Julia Hall works. Not
clear whether there are local groups in Buffalo that are currently active. U.S. web site http://www.amnestyusa.org/
Human
Rights Watch http://www.hrw.org/
Center
for Constitutional Rights http://ccrjustice.org/ works on Guantanamo, U.S. death penalty
regimen as torture preceding execution, much else
Witness
Against Torture http://www.witnesstorture.org/ focused on actions against Guantanamo, Bagram, etc., including fasts, civil disobedience, Jan 11.
Buffalo
Human Rights Center (at UB) http://wings.buffalo.edu/law/BHRC/ Educational programs. A journal: Human Rights Law Review
Erie
County Prisoner Rights Coalition http://ecprc.weebly.com/
Physicians
for Human Rights http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/
Torture
Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition (TASSC) http://tassc.org
School
of the Americas Watch http://www.soaw.org/ (n.b. School of the
Americas is now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security
Cooperation)
Center
for Justice and Accountability. www.cja.org .
Bellevue/NYU
Program for Survivors of Torture. http://www.survivorsoftorture.org/ Put forward NYS bill making participation in
torture grounds for discipline in medical profession
Psychologists
for Human Rights. No working web site;
on Facebook.
Participants in Jan 11 action that are
not otherwise primarily focused on human rights, but rather on more general
peace or civil liberties issues. Pax Christi http://paxchristiusa.org/; does a lot of
School of the Americas. Has a local
chapter, no web site; contact Bill Privett wprivett.paxchristi@gmail.com. Catholic Worker www.catholicworker.org . War Resisters League www.warresisters.org . Code Pink www.codepink.org;
has a local chapter. Bill of Rights
Defense Committee http://www.bordc.org/.
September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrow http://peacefultomorrows.org/ National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance
(cant find web site). World Cant Wait http://www.worldcantwait.net/ and its subsidiary War Criminals Watch http://warcriminalswatch.org/. http://warisacrime.org/,
formerly AfterDowningStreet
And
two people who valuable blogs with great emphasis on human rights and civil
liberties: Scott Horton http://harpers.org/subjects/NoComment
and Glenn Greenwald http://www.salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald/. Another frequent source of human rights info
you wont find in the mainstream media: radio show Democracy Now, available at http://www.democracynow.org/