Amnesty’s One Hundred Days

I’m writing a sermon for Sunday that features a reflection on the amazing work of Amnesty International. Literally, now. Taking only a brief break to throw this note up onto my blog.

I just received a note from Amnesty International (and if you’re not on their email list, I hope after reading this you’ll consider doing so…)

They’re launching a “one hundred days commitment to human rights” campaign, hoping to reverse some of the astonishingly wrongheaded actions of the outgoing administration.

They want to push President Obama to come up with a time line for closure of Guantanamo. This prison has become a stain on our national conscience. While it is no doubt true a goodly percentage of the individuals being held are too dangerous to let go, whoever they are they all need genuinely fair hearings, and out of that no doubt in some cases fair trials, the innocent let go – and those who for the safety of the world need to be held, should be transferred elsewhere.

The very name Guantanamo has come to stand for brutality and extralegal detention. Close it down.

Amnesty is calling on President Obama to issue an executive order banning torture. What the Bush administration has done here is shameful, and criminal, and it needs to be stopped.

And, I suspect, the hardest for the incoming administration, but also very important, the establishment of an independent inquiry into abuses committed in the “war on terror.”

I understand it unlikely we will prosecute the criminal actions of the vice-president and the former secretary of Defense. And others… But, I think the American people and the world would be served well by a truth commission such as helped to heal other nations caught in periods of lawlessness, on their way to reconciliation.

These lead a very good list that I genuinely hope the president will follow…