Call For Solidarity From Poets Against War

Dear Poets Against War:

Fernando Rendón, poet and workhorse for peace, directs the Medellín International Poetry Festival. We at Poets Against War support his petition whole-heartedly.

Please go to
http://www.poetsagainstwar.net/poetspetition2.asp
and add your signature.

Namaste,
Sam Hamill & the PAW Board

Medellin, March 22nd, 2006.
Dear poets:

Greetings from Colombia.

We invite you to sign the attached letter to express as soon as possible your solidarity with this cause and then to circulate this letter electronically among your friends.

All the best,
Fernando Rendón
Director
International Poetry Festival of Medellin

Cease hypocrisy on the issue of Human Rights
The 62nd Session of the UN Commission on Human Rights will begin next March 20 in Geneva, coinciding with the broadcasting of new footage of US military torturing Iraqi prisoners.

The United States and its EU allies have successively prevented this Commission from condemning the massive and systematic violations of human rights promoted in the name of the so called war against terrorism.

The EU governments have refused to admit the testimonies and evidences submitted by citizens of their countries, who have been victims of several forms of torture at Guantánamo navy base. They have also allowed the flight of CIA aircrafts carrying prisoners to illegal detention centers in Europe and elsewhere.

We the undersigned call upon intellectuals, artists, social activists, and men and women of goodwill everywhere to join our claims: the Commission on Human Rights or the Council that will substitute it, must demand the immediate closing of the arbitrary detention centers created by the United States as well as the ceasing of all these deliberate violations of human dignity.