It is this same generosity that enables us to grow and strengthen our work. Our good friends Herb and Marion Sandler and the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation have offered to match every dollar you contribute by half. For every new $500 contribution received during the challenge period, the organization will receive an additional $250 gift from the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation. The Sandlers have allowed the supporters not only to support human rights, but also to get added value for the contributions.
As 2004 comes to an end, it is with pride and sincere gratitude to our friends that we reflect on some of our hard-fought accomplishments of the past year.
* We exposed and fought to reverse ethnic cleansing in the Darfur region of western Sudan. We demonstrated through on-the-ground interviews and leaked official documents that the Sudanese government has launched and supported the murderous Janjaweed militia. We then helped to persuade the U.N. Security Council to order the government to guarantee humanitarian access to displaced civilians, authorize the deployment of 3,500 troops to protect the people of Darfur, and launch an investigative team that may lead to prosecution of those behind the mass atrocities.
* We spoke out against abuses by the U.S. military at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, saying that they were the predictable result of government policy decisions taken since Sept. 11, 2001, to condone the torture and mistreatment of detainees. We contested the government’s claim that these events were an aberration involving a few low-level soldiers by highlighting its disregard for the Geneva Conventions and its authorization of abusive interrogation practices. We played an important role in the U.S. Congress’s recent adoption of legislation to halt the U.S. military’s use of coercive interrogation.
* Following our exposé of the crimes committed by brutal Afghan warlord Ismail Khan, President Hamid Karzai dismissed Khan from his post as governor of Heart in September. Khan had used politically motivated arrests, intimidation, extortion, and torture to cling to power, and had imposed severe restrictions on the rights of women.
* The state of California recently passed legislation expanding access to sterile syringes, which was the central advocacy goal of our report on how restricted access to needle-exchange programs in California fueled the AIDS crisis.
These important accomplishments demonstrate the important work we can do when we band together to defend basic human rights principles.
Your generosity makes an enormous difference to our work and to the lives of countless people worldwide. I hope you will consider supporting, and expanding, your commitment to Human Rights Watch. We need you now more than ever.
Sincerely,
Kenneth Roth
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