Amnesty International brought the whole world to Iowa in the fight for criminals’ rights.

Magnus Thernelius, president of the ISU chapter of Amnesty International, read several letters to the Iowa Legislature urging them not to reinstate the death penalty in Iowa on Feb. 26. Some of the letters he read were written by Amnesty International officials from countries around the world including Peru, Austria and New Zealand.

Letters were from the Irish Minister of State, members of the Austrian parliament and members of the European parliament.

Gary Comstock, adviser to the ISU chapter of Amnesty International, said the activities the group does are very important.

“It’s not a real sexy group. The activities we do aren’t really that exciting. We spend a lot of time writing letters,” he said. “It’s not what a lot of undergrads are attracted to, but it’s really important.”

Amnesty International tries to work at the grass roots level on behalf of human rights, Comstock said.

He said Amnesty International intervenes on behalf of prisoners of conscience, people who are in prison not because of an act of violence or an illegal activity but because of a position they hold based on their conscience.

“In China, for example, people there can be arrested for speaking against the government. They can be held in prison without being charged for anything for three months to a year,” said Chad Augustine, vice president of the ISU chapter of the group.

The focus of many of the group’s meetings is on writing letters to foreign governments urging them to free these prisoners, Augustine said.

Comstock, who has been involved with the ISU chapter since 1982, said the participation of students in the group has varied widely over the years.

“We got a lot of attention a few years ago when U2 started championing our cause, that was one point when attendance swelled,” he said.

Lately one of the group’s biggest causes has been to stop the death penalty from being reinstated in Iowa.

“Not too many countries in what we would call the civilized world have a death penalty,” Thernelius said. “Even Russia has a moratorium [on the death penalty].”

Thernelius said he hopes the letters he read last month will convince Iowa legislators to look at other countries for guidance in deciding what to do with violent criminals.

One state representative said it is difficult to judge how much impact the letters had.

“It is hard to tell what impact any individual action or piece of information has had on the death penalty debate. I believe the cumulative effect of the information presented to the General Assembly over the past several years had been to significantly dampen the enthusiasm for reinstating the death penalty,” said Bill Bernau, state representative for District 62.

Amnesty International does much more than fight the death penalty, Thernelius said. “In fact, it fights for the kind of human rights that many people here take for granted,” he said.

Besides the ISU chapter, he said there is also an Ames chapter of Amnesty International which is an adoption chapter, a group that actively works to get specific prisoners released from prison.

This year, he said, there are several activities the ISU chapter has participated in that have made him proud to be an adviser, including co-sponsoring a lecture held in the winter.

He said they invited an Indonesian-American poet to campus to speak about his father who had escaped from jail.

“The reason I’m proud of that is we were able to expose students to an experience different than your typical ISU student has had,” he said.

Amnesty International also gets requests from international students on campus, who, Comstock said, are concerned about people in their home countries who are being imprisoned unjustly.

He said when that happens, they research the situation and present it to a student group and see if there is reason for concern. They then inform the national branch of Amnesty International, which decides if the case should be given to a local adoption group somewhere in the world.

The ISU chapter has no events planned for the rest of the semester, but they are trying to organize a benefit concert for next semester, Augustine said.

The group’s next meeting is scheduled for April 8 at 7:30 p.m. in the Gold Room of the Memorial Union, Augustine said. Interested students should contact Magnus at [email protected].