Amnesty International

Nicaragua's total ban on abortion is a violation of human rights and is killing a growing number of women and children, Amnesty International said Monday in launching a campaign to have the measure repealed. In a report released in Mexico City, the international human rights organization said Nicaragua's law, which went into effect in late 2006, puts the Central American country among the 3% of the world's nations that do not allow abortion under any circumstance.

Amnesty International issued a call for an end to torture in Palestinian self-rule areas at the same time that Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat was quoted as declaring: "I will not tolerate torture." The London-based human rights organization said a delegation met with lawyers, human rights groups, chiefs of branches of the security forces and victims of torture during a two-week visit to the Palestinian Authority that ended this month.

More than 6,000 people have been slaughtered in Burundi since a Tutsi former army major seized power July 25, purportedly to end ethnic bloodshed in the Central African country, Amnesty International said Thursday. "We are disturbed that as many people have been massacred since the coup as were reported killed in the preceding three months," the London-based human rights group said.

Sri Lanka said it was unhappy with "highly colored language" in an Amnesty International report that accused the government of turning a blind eye to widespread human rights violations. "We take strong exception to some of the allegations in the report. We're very unhappy with the highly colored language in the report," a Foreign Ministry spokesman said. Amnesty said it was unacceptable for the government to try to justify human rights violations in the context of war.

Israeli forces deliberately attacked a U.N. compound in southern Lebanon in April and killed civilians in violation of the rules of war, London-based Amnesty International said in a report. "The available information indicates that the Israeli Defense Forces intentionally attacked the U.N. compound," Amnesty International said of the April 18 shelling, which killed 91 refugees at Qana. Amnesty International also accused Hezbollah guerrillas of attacking civilians in breach of international law.

Amnesty International launched a worldwide campaign to highlight human rights abuses in Turkey and issued a report condemning extrajudicial killings, torture and disappearances. Amnesty chief Pierre Sane said the London-based human rights group would pressure international organizations in a bid to expose rights abuses by the Turkish government and by the Kurdistan Workers Party rebels and other guerrilla groups.

For the veteran of the protests held in the 1970s by Argentine women seeking word of missing loved ones, there have been 20 long years of unanswered grief. For Hatice Tekdag of Turkey's ethnic Kurdish community, there have been two long years of not knowing what happened to her husband.

Amnesty International, which tracks human rights violations worldwide, is monitoring the investigations into the death of Hong Il Kim, the Korean national shot to death by police after a high-speed chase, according to letters made public Thursday. The letters, dated April 30 and sent to the Orange County district attorney's office and various police departments involved in the shooting, requested the results of the investigations being conducted.

On a kitchen clipboard next to a copper pasta pot hangs a two-page handwritten letter. The writer tells of a relative jailed as a political prisoner in Argentina between 1976 and 1983--a time known as "the dirty war," when abductions and killings by secret police were common. The letter ends with gracias. This is a home into which such letters come routinely. File cabinets brim with thanks on behalf of lost, tortured and silenced people. It is the home of Ginetta.

Ian Gray, 55, former manager of the Hollywood Athletic Club at Universal CityWalk and an author and spokesman for Amnesty International. A native of England who became a U.S. citizen in 1994, Gray was trained as a pilot at the Royal Air Force College in Cranwell, England. He was a versatile businessman and worked in London as managing director of Gear of Carnaby Street and the Chi Cha jewelry boutique, and operated an instant photo poster franchise.