On the 10-th of December – the International Human Rights Day, human rights activists all over the world are organizing the events. One of the global actions, taking place in numerous world countries is the 24h Letter Writing Marathon, initially organized by the Amnesty International. For the second time Azerbaijan took part in this campaign and raised the voice in defence of dozens of people, whose rights had been violated (13-DEC-2005).
The content of the Marathon is to write letters during 24hours in response to Amnesty International cases – such as Urgent Actions – all the cases are about grave human rights abuses such as – political imprisonment, tortures in jail, etc. all around the world. The rule is to write letters about the cases from other countries (but people from other countries might write about the cases from your country). The letters are addressed to presidents, ministers, etc. – effectiveness of such method is almost 50% (e.g. urgent actions – last year). The impressive fact is that those are just letters written by usual people – but they help concrete victims in very difficult situations.
Results of Marathon for Azerbaijan
In 2005 the Marathon was organized by the activists of Democratic Azerbaijan Initiative, based in Azerbaijan and Poland. It took place in the office of the Association for the Protection of Women’s Rights after D.Aliyeva. Among the main organizers and contributors are Witek Hebanowski (Poland-based human rights activist), Novella Jafaroglu (Association for the Protection of Women’s Rights after D.Aliyeva), Shahla Ismailova (Women’s Association for Rational Development), Ulvi Hakimov (Azerbaijan Democracy Foundation) and others. As a result of this action, there were written 75 letters in Azerbaijan. Though this figure is not very big in comparison with other countries, still taking into account the hard public political situation in Azerbaijan in post-election period, it is concluded that the participation of Azerbaijan-based activists is the most important fact.
It makes sense to note that Azerbaijan is taking part in the 24h Marathon for the second time. In 2004 the 24h Marathon was organized in Azerbaijan by the Women’s Association for Rational Development (WARD) on the 10-th of December. The result was 44 letters, written in response to the cases, selected by AI in 2004.
The Marathon was highlighted in a number of press outlets and broadcasted on ANS TV channel.
