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For Immediate Release
March, 31 2020, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
AIUSA media office,Email:,media@aiusa.org,Phone: 202-544-0200 x302
Amnesty International USA and LIRS launch "Hope Can't Be Quarantined" campaign to help immigrants and asylum-seekers held in detention during the COVID-19 crisis
WASHINGTON
As a response to the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) have launched a new campaign entitled "Hope Can't Be Quarantined." The initiative encourages the public to support immigrants and asylum-seekers held in detention at this time of crisis and offers several ways to get involved. Participants can download a digital toolkit with instructions to write messages of hope to detainees, learn about immigration detention in the U.S., donate to detention visitation programs, and share their acts of support online.
"As more Americans are confined to their own homes, they increasingly relate to the isolation and fear that thousands of migrants in detention feel," said Krish O'Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. "This campaign allows supporters to engage in creative ways to forge closer connections and offer hope to those who need it the most."
As of late March 2020, approximately 38,000 immigrants were being held in detention centers across the country. Following the COVID-19 outbreak, immigration authorities suspended all social visitation in an effort to curb the spread of the virus. These visits from friends, family, faith leaders, and volunteers are a vital source of hope for thousands of men and women.
"Now is the time for the United States to ensure that everyone, no matter where they may be, has the health care that they need. Treating people that are detained as an afterthought puts everyone's public health in danger. We can, and we must, do better" said Denise Bell, researcher for refugee and migrant rights at Amnesty International USA. "This is the time to show that are all interconnected and that we stand together, even while physically apart."
Letters, poems, and artwork will be delivered to detention centers by El Refugio (Atlanta, GA), Allies to End Detention (San Diego, CA), Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest (Phoenix, AZ) and LIRS' wider network of visitation partners. Donations to local partners will be used to support their mission, which includes the bolstering of commissary accounts immigrants use to contact their loved ones and purchase hygiene products while in detention.
"If this crisis has made anything clear, it is that we are all dependent upon each other to ensure the health and well-being of our neighbors and ourselves," noted Vignarajah. "We may have to self-isolate for the time being, but we know that hope can't be quarantined."
Amnesty International is a global movement of millions of people demanding human rights for all people - no matter who they are or where they are. We are the world's largest grassroots human rights organization.
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"Look what anti-personnel landmines will do to your people," read a sign displayed by two of the protesters who gathered in Siem Reap, Cambodia this week to confront delegates at a conference on the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty.
The people holding the sign were among those who took part in the demonstration while using wheelchairs or crutches due to the amputations and serious injuries they have suffered from landmine attacks.
More than 100 people lined a walkway leading to the conference venue on Sunday as the Siem Reap-Angkor Summit on a Mine-Free World opened.
The conference began days after the Biden administration announced a reversal of its own policy and approved a plan to provide anti-personnel landmines to Ukraine—a decision that was condemned by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and other human rights groups.
As Amnesty International USA advocacy direct Ben Linden said last week, the weapons are "inherently indiscriminate" because they cause explosives to scatter across a wide region, putting people at risk long after conflicts end. The majority of landmine victims are children.
In 2023, at least 5,757 people were killed or maimed by landmines, 84% of whom were civilians. Over one-third were children.
Alex Munyambabazi, who lost a leg to a landmine in 2005 in Uganda, was among those who assembled at the landmines summit.
"We don't want to see any more victims like me, we don't want to see any more suffering," he toldAgence France-Presse (AFP). "Every landmine planted is a child, a civilian, a woman, who is just waiting for their legs to be blown off, for his life to be taken. I am here to say we don't want any more victims. No excuses, no exceptions."
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Tamar Gabelnick, director of ICBL, told AFP that Ukraine's use of U.S.-supplied landmines would signify a "blatant disregard for their obligations under the mine ban treaty."
Ukrainian delegates were present at the Siem Reap conference this week.
In a message delivered to delegates in Siem Reap, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres acknowledged the "important progress" made by the treaty, "with over 55 million anti-personnel devices destroyed across 13,000 square kilometers in over 60 countries, and thousands of people receiving lifesaving awareness education and victim assistance services."
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An ultrasound showed a "sac-like structure," but no fetus or cardiac activity were detected, indicating that she was having a miscarriage.
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