Campaigners who highlight China's appalling human rights record are sometimes accused of trying to force "western values" on to an unwilling Chinese public. Such criticism implies that only those born in a particular hemisphere should be entitled to liberty or free speech, and also ignores China's many brave human rights activists.

The stereotype of the Chinese people as a mute and obedient mass is way off the mark. While the [...]

When, a few years ago, I won an Amnesty International Media Award for human rights journalism, I felt a bit of a fraud. We western hacks preen when adjectives such as "dogged", "brave" and "committed" are attached to our names. But the risks for us are seldom all that high; and even when we do face danger, it is not usually for all that long.

Alongside us at those awards, [...]

Readers of these pages may or may not know what the following three songs have in common: "Born in the USA" by Bruce Springsteen, "White America" by Eminem and "Barney the Purple Dinosaur" from the children's television show.

Indeed, these are the Top of the Pops for the CIA when it comes to torturing prisoners in the "War on Terror".

I am writing this on my 21st visit to Guantanamo [...]

Fifteen years ago my son Stephen was murdered. To lose one's child is a devastating blow from which a mother can never fully recover. And to lose one's child as a result of a violent attack - in the case of my son Stephen, a racist attack - leaves an even deeper wound. But it is the failure to get justice that stops that wound from ever truly healing.

Stephen [...]

"There can be no right without a remedy." This legal aphorism was once thought to mean that if the law recognises your right, the law must provide you with a remedy when your right is violated. Otherwise pretending you have the right would be meaningless. The maxim was first recorded in the laws of England 700 years ago.

However, those who would disparage human rights are a devious lot. There [...]

These days at Reprieve, we seem to be doing much of our human rights work on the high street. In February, there was the "Fair Trial My Arse" underwear in Agent Provocateur shop windows. This month, more questions were being asked of the Bush administration in Lush cosmetics stores.

Lush teamed up with Reprieve to produce a "Guantanamo orange" bath ballistic that dissolves in hot water to reveal an image [...]

Aster Fissehatsion is a former director of the ministry of labour and social affairs in Eritrea. She has been imprisoned incommunicado, without charge or trial, since September 2001, and her precise whereabouts are still unknown. She and ten other political dissidents who were arrested at the same time as her are prisoners of conscience, detained solely for the peaceful exercise of their rights to freedom of expression.

In the late [...]

According to legend, Sana'a, the capital of Yemen, is the oldest inhabited city on earth, established by one of the sons of Noah. When I arrive at the airport, the walk down the steps from a smart Emirates jumbo jet at once takes me 50 years into the past, and an airport out of the film Casablanca. Drive ten miles further to the cracked, 15-foot-thick mud walls of the Old [...]

When Amnesty International interviewed Jenni Williams about the attempts of the authorities in Harare to silence Women of Zimbabwe Arise (Woza), the peaceful protest group she heads, Jenni told them: "They will not be able to criminalise freedoms of expression and assembly, unless they take away our mouths and our ears and our eyes."

How uncanny. We had a portrait of the "three wise monkeys" - "speak, hear, see no [...]

Afshin is 36 years old and he arrived in the UK from Iran 12 years ago, fleeing further persecution. He had a long history of opposition to the Iranian regime and was imprisoned and beaten many times before leaving the country.

He arrived in Britain by accident: he was stopped by immigration officials in the UK while en route to Canada to join relatives, and had to apply for asylum [...]