Dr Charlie Perkins: the Australian hero you should know about

This amazing activist gathered a group of black and white protesters, placed them in a bus, and took the fight for equality to rural Australia. On the way they got egged and rammed by other vehicles, but they also managed to edge Australia closer to equality. As a young white Australian, I didn’t know who …

‘Here lies a Revolutionary’: Lionel Fogarty

Lionel Fogarty, a Yugambeh man born on Wakka Wakka land, is an award-winning poet and longtime Aboriginal rights activist. He spoke with Amnesty International campaigner Roxanne Moore to reflect on 40 years of political poetry, justice, revolution, and the 1967 Referendum. Q What inspired you to write poetry? A I grew up in a mission, …

The 7 best human rights films to watch this weekend

By Andrea Sophocleous Humans have been telling stories for tens of thousands of years. Today, one of our most powerful storytelling forms is film. Movies have the power to transport us into the world of the story. Whether it’s following the tenacious investigations of a pair of journalists into the corrupt conduct of a US …

The day I realised I was contributing to child labour

By guest blogger Milly Stilinovic Milly Stilinovic, like the rest of us, goes about her daily routine in ignorance of the human rights violations she is inadvertently contributing to across the span of an average day. Until the penny drops. It’s 7:45 AM on a Monday. I have managed to oversleep my alarm and have …

The day I bailed up the Prime Minister on a train platform

What would you do if you were presented with the opportunity to tell the Prime Minister exactly what you thought of his government’s policy on offshore detention? Our intrepid activist Victoria had just that opportunity. On my way to work last week, I was surprised to see the Prime Minister on the train platform, surrounded …

‘My relatives walked over 5,000 kilometers to reach Saudi Arabia’

By Imran Mohammad, winner of the 2016 Amnesty Blogging Competition There is a very small area of land on the western coast of northern Myanmar called Rakhine State, where a group of people are not able to speak for themselves. This cultural group, the Rohingya, is losing its people, culture, traditions, language and land. These are …