The event is held annually on the initiative of Amnesty International, a global movement with over three million members from more than 150 countries and territories all over the world who campaign to end grave abuses of human rights. The letter writing marathon is, essentially, a simultaneous effort of people all over the world in writing messages to protect specific individuals whose rights were violated and express their solidarity.
The city of Khmelnytsky joined the marathon in 2012 for the first time. Its organizers listed people who are receiving special attention in 2012, mentioning the Russian feminist group Pussy Riot members who have been sentenced to two years in prison camp for peacefully expressing their political views, as well as the Belarusian human rights activist Ales Bialiatski. An activist of the Khmelnytsky youth organization Street University Daria Zhdanova covered the latter case in further detail. Bialiatski’s achievements include helping victims of political persecution in Belarus, visiting a refugee camp in Georgia immediately after the Russo-Georgian war, and risking his life when conducting a research mission in the midst of ethnic conflict in Kyrgyzstan. Given the steadily increasing pressure on human rights activists in Belarus, the marathon is an opportunity to support Ales.
However, the letters’ addressees are not limited to just human rights activists. They include journalists, such as Mehman Huseynov from Azerbaijan, who is persecuted by his country’s authorities for uncovering their illegal actions during the Eurovision song contest and faces up to five years in prison on charges of “hooliganism,” as well as some people who just had bad luck to fall prey of the abusers, such as Rosa Franco from Guatemala who is seeking justice after the brutal murder of her daughter, or Chiou Ho-shun from Taiwan who was sentenced to death on the testimony obtained through torture.
There is a Ukrainian, too, among the heroes of the 2012 marathon. Yakiv Strohan from Kharkiv was selected for the second time. The police took him into the woods in August 2010 and tortured him there, and then demanded that his wife Hanna pay ransom for his release. Strohan was eventually released, but then arrested again and charged with attempted murder when he complained about his treatment. The 2011 marathon contributed to his release on his own recognizance on March 12, 2012. However, the court proceedings against Strohan are continuing.
About 20 people joined the event in Khmelnytsky on the first day. “These were predominantly local civic activists, student unions’ representatives, human rights activists and even school kids,” the Podillia regional organizer of the event Stepan Kushnir summed up. “Our citizens wrote letters in support of people who spent their time and energy to make the world better, and now need help themselves.” Khmelnytsky residents wrote more than 100 letters in support of the marathon’s heroes, unjustly convicted activists and common people from seven countries, during the four-day event.
It was the fifth such event to involve Ukraine. It is among the largest and most effective human rights efforts in the world, being carried out by Amnesty International annually to honor December 10, the International Human Rights Day. The idea of such an event came from Warsaw, and eventually it became a global one, taking place every year in several countries in Western Europe, the United States, and even in New Zealand and Bermuda. The global marathon was held for the 13th time in 2012. As much as 50 sites in 35 Ukrainian cities joined the event. The letters were sent to victims of human rights abuses as well as the governments of Azerbaijan, Belarus, Guatemala, the United States, Taiwan, Russia and Ukraine, that is, the nations where these abuses are perpetrated.
Nearly 5,500 handwritten letters were sent by Ukrainian participants in 2011, adding to the global total of 1,376,492.
The marathon’s effectiveness may be seen from the results achieved in 2011. Of the ten cases that prompted people all over the world to act, the situation changed to the better in five. For example, the prisoner of conscience Jabbar Savalan was acquitted and released a few days after the 2011 marathon letters were received in Azerbaijan. The young activist was arrested after he posted on Facebook a call for protests against the government.
