Sms Campaign for Human Rights

[Via NewTactics.org]

Amnesty International-Netherlands discovered the power of text-messaging technology to attract new members. They build awareness of the campaign against torture and attracted new people in quickly responding to cases of torture through Urgent Action appeals. The initial result : 520 new members gained directly from SMS participation with over 5,000 additional people becoming active in the SMS urgent action campaign. Amnesty International took advantage of SMS technology to build a new constituency among young people. Here’s an example: the Dutch section, sent out a text message to 8,000 cell-phone users in the Netherlands who participate in a special new text-message alert network. Within 48 hours they sent a protest fax with thousands of signatures to the authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, putting pressure on the D.R.C. authorities to release a journalist called Golden Misabiko. He was arrested and imprisoned without any charge in January 2001. It was feared he would be tortured. Amnesty International sent out an Urgent Action to members all over the world. The result: Golden was released in May 2001. He escaped without being tortured due to Amnesty’s campaign. He then wrote to Amnesty,

When I heard in prison that Amnesty campaigned for my release I knew: Je vais sortir (I will be released).

About 39 percent of the campaigns conducted by Amnesty in 2002 were successful. Prisoners of conscience were released, people who had “disappeared” were found and death sentences were not carried out. Find out more about the Amnesty International campaigns in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
P.s. Burke’s Triumph of Evil quote :"All it takes for evil to spread, is for good people to do nothing." I saw this quote and thought how appropriate it is right now.