Recently, a group of students organized a booth in the Upper School hallways punctuated by white and yellow papers. Each one featured a stranger’s photo followed by a brief story. Looking off the page in a hardened mix of exhaustion and contempt was one photo of a woman named Teodora. Her story read: “After suffering a still-birth, Teodora was sentenced to 30 years for homicide under El Salvador's abortion ban.”

 

Other stories on the table were different: A woman who was raped and tortured into confessing to a murder in Mexico; a Louisiana prisoner who has spent more than four decades in solitary confinement in a cell the size of a parking space; a member of Iran’s ethnic Kurdish minority, tortured into confessing to shooting a soldier, then sentenced to death. Despite the different storylines, however, each had one thing in common: Their human rights were being violated.

 

The students staffing the booth were juniors Eliza Ducnuigeen, SunHee Seo, and Grace Ingebretsen, members of the Amnesty International club at Colorado Academy. Together, they organized a 'Write for Rights' Write-a-thon in honor of International Human Rights Day, which was on December 10, 2015. After researching the 12 cases of human rights violations selected to be a part of this year's Write for Rights program, the girls picked five cases they thought had the most urgent need for help and the greatest potential to strike a chord with the CA community.

 

Visiting the booth throughout the day were Upper School students who wrote a total of 94 letters. Those letters were sent to government offices, in prison cells and to families all over the world to aid in the fight to free these victims.

 

The Amnesty International website features many success stories, which are a reflection of this effort around the world. Birtukan Mideska, a prisoner of conscience sentenced to life in prison in Ethiopia for peacefully exercising her right to freedom of expression was freed after two years. She writes of Amnesty International: “You were my voice when I had none.”

 

According to Grace, success stories like these are what make being a member of Amnesty International so rewarding.

 

“The organization emails us when a case has been resolved, and the person has been freed,” says Grace. “It really goes to show that a day like Write for Rights actually helps people.”

 

A quick Google search reveals the meaning of the word Amnesty: an official pardon for people who have been convicted of political offenses. But in the club sponsored by Upper School English teacher Chip Lee, the word has a slightly more proactive meaning. “Here, it means, not prosecuting, jailing, torturing, murdering or otherwise harming someone for a political belief and its expression,” says Lee.

 

Meeting every “B” day during lunch, the eight total members of the club gather to discuss these cases and the countries where the human rights violations have taken place. They continue to write letters every time they meet and look forward to organizing next year’s Write-a-thon.

 

“The event had a big impact on me,” says Eliza. “It was the first time that I've helped lead something that mattered to the world outside CA. While it wasn't that hard to pull off, it felt like a much bigger deal because we knew that what we were doing would be felt beyond the Upper School.”

 

If you are interested in joining the Amnesty International Club at Colorado Academy, simply show up to a B-day meeting during lunch.