Your letters and posts


The documentary [Prisoner 951: The Hostages’ Story] is, in my opinion, more powerful as it reveals the real Nazanin and Richard [Ratcliffe], who are members of my extended family. It reminds us that trauma does not dissipate when the cameras stop filming life’s events, and that the scars, both internal and external, are lifelong. It did not show the continuing impact on all the close family groups. It did, however, reiterate the duplicity of governments and highlight the considerable shortcomings of individual ministers.


Richard and Gabriella Ratcliffe campaign for the release of Gabriella’s mum Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in Parliament Square, 2021 © Marie-Anne Ventoura/AI


Not a drama, a warning I sobbed many times watching Prisoner 951 [the BBC drama about Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s imprisonment in Iran]. The power and message were clear: the UK government allowed our citizens to be used as bargaining chips to avoid exposing the truth about the debt they owed. They destroyed families, silenced the innocent and instilled fear to protect their lies.


Danielle Chivonne, via Facebook TOP POST


It was great to catch up with the @AmnestyUK group in Diss recently, hearing directly about their local campaigning and plans for the year ahead. We spoke in depth about the detention of Palestinian health workers, the Israeli government’s bombing of Gaza’s hospitals and the reality that the ceasefire has not ended the ongoing genocide in Gaza. @AdrianRamsey MP on his visit to the Diss group


42 AMNESTY SPRING 2026


Jill Houlbrook, via Facebook Take action


Urge the UK government to do more to protect UK nationals arbitrarily detained abroad:


amnesty.org.uk/detained-abroad Watch


Prisoner 951 and Prisoner 951: The Hostages’ Story on BBC iPlayer


Abortion issues


I applaud the existence of Amnesty and its position on many issues, yet it really pains me to glean from the article Defying the Authoritarians (Winter 2025 issue) your conflation of an anti-abortion stance (like my own) with ‘anti-abortion organisations, funded by the ultra-conservative Christian movement in the USA’. I am a Christian, strongly supportive of human rights, with no ties to or sympathy with the ultra-conservative Christian movement in question, who nevertheless deplores abortion as an egregious example of the negation of human rights destroying as it does a human life in utero. David Cragg-James


Ignored discrimination The Winter 2025 issue states ‘compulsory volunteering [for


immigrants] would discriminate against carers and disabled people’. This statement fails to note disabled and carer immigrants are already discriminated against by UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI), namely via the income requirement; the fact we cannot claim benefits; the amount of required paperwork (which is unmanageable even for people with a master’s degree); and the fact we pay for NHS charges twice (once through UKVI and once through taxes). Now we also have to wait for 10 years instead of five to be allowed to vote against this.


Laura Brandenburg Protest rights


I am in my mid-80s. My parents were Labour party supporters, as I have always been. My mother preached socialism on the streets when her five brothers were out of work and her wages in the local woollen mill were their only financial support for them and their widowed mother in Sowerby Bridge. Enabling the arrest of kindly people for protesting the killing of an enormous number of people for no other reason than they were born in a place that someone else wants for ancient religious reasons means that I cannot see me voting for Labour again. I only wish I could do more. Keith Thompson, via Facebook


HAVE YOUR SAY


Email sct@amnesty.org.uk with ‘Letter to the editor’ as the subject line. Or write to: The Editor, Amnesty Magazine, 2nd Floor, Peter Benenson House, 1 Easton Street, London WC1X 0DW.


Comment @AmnestyUK on Bluesky, X and Instagram, or at facebook.com/AmnestyUK


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