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Offer of Hope - an offer from prisoners to governments to help break the cycle of destructive vengeance in our prisons
International Human Rights Day Action
12 Midday Saturday 10 December 2005
As you know, the Federal Government is using its Senate majority in the last parliamentary sittings of the year to ram through Anti-Terrorism and Industrial Relations laws, which will change the political and cultural face of Australia. They have also announced their intention to remove prisoners' right to vote in federal elections.
Our prison populations are rising yet governments only notice them when they can be used for cheap political point-scoring and fear-mongering. Meanwhile, prisoners are being dehumanised and alienated further by being denied family visits, proper access to health and education, and restricted in their freedom of association and freedom of speech inside.
Offer of Hope
As the union movement and activist groups have responded to the Government's attacks, so have prisoners responded with Offer of Hope - an offer to help break the cycle of destructive vengeance in our prisons: to break down the penal colony mentality.
We need your support. Please take a moment to read this timely message to governments from prisoners.
Justice Action and the APU call for one minute's silence in support of the Offer of Hope at midday on International Human Rights Day, Saturday 10 December 05.
Please encourage those in your organisation to observe this action. We also request you send us a short statement in support of the Offer of Hope.
We will call for a minute's silence every Monday at midday until we have a response from Governments to the Offer of Hope.
Justice Action will be in touch in the next few days to see if you can support the statement and/or associated actions.
We will be following up government responses to the Offer of Hope which will be presented to the International Conference on Penal Abolition, ICOPA, in Tasmania 9 -11 February 2006.
Thanks for your support now and in the future
Justice Action and the Australian Prisoners Union
For more information please click on the pdf links (arrows) below.
 Offer of Hope (103k/PDF document)
Media Release: Offer of Hope (PDF) || Offer of Hope (MS Word)
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