Hi everybody! Here is the newsletter of the Human Rights WG and, though some of you think that it may seem too long and maybe a little boring, we invite you all to read it. ;-) All those who are interested in joining the WG are welcome and can contact our Secretary: Natalie the Mighty (address is at the bottom)! Best wishes for your Summer holidays. :-) HUMAN RIGHTS WORKING GROUP UPDATE (25/06/1999) *SPRING AGORA 1999, Barcelona At the Agora we have organized a money-collection for Kosovar refugees. People who donated money received a red sticker in order to encourage others (without stickers) to participate as well. The amount of money that we raised was 50.000 pesetas, which resembles about 300 Euros. Thanks again to the people who contributed. We have donated the money to a special account of UNHCR in Spain, only meant for Kosovo-donations. There was an exhibition of Homeless-newspapers from countries like Germany, Spain, Italy, Hungary, Holland. There were not enough participants for the Homeless Photo-Contest to make an exhibition, maybe we will try again at a later stage. The signatures for our petition against death penalty were handed in at the Agora. The total amount of signatures raised is 2000. Thanks everyone (special thanks to the Skopje-HRWG and AEGEE-Valencia) for raising so many signatures!!! Özgür Özdamar presented a workshop about the Kurdish question and human rights issues connected to that topic. Besides that there has been a wg-meeting, where we discussed about the projects and had input from the participants. A new topic that came up was the discrimination/ exclusion of ‘outsiders’ like handicapped people, in their own society. * CONTINUOUS ACTION - Death penalty: The signatures that were handed in at the Agora will be presented to the Hands off Cain organization, which will present them to the United Nations. Besides that there will be a conference about the death penalty in Lviv. The Human Rights Working Group is assisting in finding speakers and fundraising. Contact: Alex Zucconi -Peace and Human Rights in the Balkans: The HRWG is very much concerned with the tremendous sufferings due to the Kosovo-war. Our former actions were connected to the Independent Student Union of Pristina, the Student Unions in Serbia and the Kosovar refugees. This meant mainly workshops, a letter of concern, money-collection. We are supporting the Bridges to Kosovo-project. This project focuses on real commitment in the area of Kosovo and concrete action, like giving help in rebuilding, organizing meetings between Serbs and Albanians and organizing a final conference with experts in Budapest. People from the Heidelberg-HRWG are involved in preparations for a Mediation-weekend with Kosovar and Serbian students in Wuerzburg/Germany, which is organized by AIESEC/AEGEE Heidelberg (from 18.6-20.6). Furthermore, people from the HRWG will assist in efforts to get places and scholarships for Serbian and Albanian students in foreign Universities. Contacts: Roland Jesseit, Else Weijsenfeld - Homelessness: The homeless people all over Europe are socially excluded and encounter huge problems in daily life. Besides the past activities on this topic there will be a European Homeless Action Day in November. We invite all locals to participate! This project might be broadened, to include also other ‘outsiders’ within our own society, such as disabled people. Besides specific problems there are common hurdles for both groups, like for instance discrimination and social exclusion. Contact: Berber Hettinga - Human Rights and the Students Movement in South East Asia (Indonesia and Burma): The Heidelberg-HRWG is mostly concerned with this project. South-East Asia has relevance for AEGEE-Europe because of multiple reasons. First of all ther is a historical connection through countries which had colonies in South-East Asia. Burma especially has a close connection to Europe, because companies from our countries in Europe are supporting the autocratic, military regime and are violating human rights of students in Burma. The Heidelberg-HRWG is in contact with the Free Burma Coalition, a grouping of various organisations involved in campaigning for the respect of Human Rights and Democracy in Burma. Furthermore they established contact with the Watch Indonesia Bureau and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jose Ramos Horta, who assured being willing to attend an AEGEE-meeting as a speaker. On the 27th of may 1999 four Burmesian students gave a lecture in Heidelberg. One of them is right now with the resistance at the border to Thailand, the other three are living in Germnay, in exile. Their main campaign now is to isolate Burma, to throw them out of the U.N. Also they are campaigning against companies still working with Burma regime, financing them through mainly oil and gas. They succeeded in the case of Pepsi Cola in the US. The lecture was attended mostly by students from ethnological and politological sciences. Afterwards there was a lively and large discussion. Contact: Roland Jesseit * WE NEED YOU !!!! For all our projects we need people in different cities, preferably (but not necessarily) in teams to work, find interested people, coordinate, discuss etc. + For instance, for the Sout-East-Asia project we need to establish a team which is interested in work on the concept for a congress, concept for pratical work: e.g. book collecting, sponsoring in kind for resistance groups like computers, modems etc., PR-work, economical relations Europe-South Asia (especially Netherlands,Germany and Portugal and South East Asia), political relationships: friendships and enemities (e.g. Habibie and Germany). +For the European Homeless Action Day we need people to organize this in their city. Furthermore this new idea of including other ‘outsiders’ needs to be elaborated and discussed. +For the Peace and Human Rights in the Balkans-project we need people who want to discuss about the Human Rights-aspects of the war and peace-building in Serbia, people to work on the actions locally, like pressuring politicians, working on the university-project or whatever new comes up. +Furthermore we invite you to introduce the writing-nights (in cooperation with Amnesty International) in your local. Just contact the person who is concerned with the project you are interested in and join the action!!!!!!! Thanks to all those who endured reading till here! .. and now you can know who we are! * THE BOARD: - President: Else Weijsenfeld I.B.Bakkerlaan 139 NL- 3582 XV Utrecht Tel: +31.30.2511753 E-mail: [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] Secretary: Natalie Van der Linden Eerste Helmersstr. 184-I NL- 1054 EL Amsterdam Netherlands Tel: +31-20.6162133 E-mail: [log in to unmask] - Treasurer: -External relations: Ozgür Ozdamar David Chillaron mm-120 C/La Palla 13-17, 4’ 2A Odtü 06530 Ankara 08002 Barcelona Turkey Espańa Tel: +90-312.2101131 Tel: **34-670-233232 E-mail: [log in to unmask] E-mail: [log in to unmask] Death Penalty Project/ PR responsible Alex Zucconi Via del Boschetto, 144 00184 Roma Italia E-mail:[log in to unmask] Project Responsible South-East Asia/ IT-Responsible: Roland Jesseit Goethestr. 7 D-69221 Dossenheim Germany Tel: +49-6221-861206 E-mail: [log in to unmask] -Project Responsible Homeless & Landmines: Berber Hettinga Justus van Effenstr. 15 bis 3511 HJ Utrecht Netherlands Tel: +31-30-2322904 E-mail: [log in to unmask] Ciao Ciao Alex Zucconi Human Rights PR responsible AEGEE-Roma [log in to unmask] ============================================================================= MISC-REG-L is hosted on aegeeserv courtesy of AEGEE-Karlsruhe. 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