Human Rights Day Event: Screening 'Dirty Wars' Documentary

Screening of film "Dirty Wars" In Woodbury Room, Jones Library to mark the 65th  Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Each year the Amnesty International Chapter in Amherst celebrates Human Rights Day, the day in 1948 when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by sending a message of hope to human rights defenders.  This year, along with other local human rights and religious organizations, we are screening the award-winning film "Dirty Wars" that depicts a journalistic investigation of the enigmatic and potent Joint Special Operations Command. The documentary, directed by Richard Rowley, is based on the book by New York Times international bestselling author Jeremy Scahill. The film dramatically unfolds as “part political thriller and part detective story.” And along this journey, we learn shocking aspects of our country’s secret operations that transpire in the name of our War on Terrorism. The screening will be followed by a discussion as well as announcements from co-sponsoring organizations and light refreshments. The event is free and open to the public. We also will ask attendees to sign petitions and write personal letters of support and encouragement to several prisoners of conscience. This year, Amnesty International chapters from the entire Northeast region are focusing on the release of a Tibetan filmmaker Dhondup Wangchen who has been imprisoned in China for almost six years “for subversion of state power.” He had produced a film about how his fellow Tibetans felt about the Olympics and human rights issues; he has endured a secret trial, torture and ill-treatment of a serious medical illness, Hepatitis B. We are also calling for his access to legal, medical, and familial assistance. _____________________________________________________________________________________ More about the film "Dirty Wars," quoted from the websitewww.dirtywars.org: “Part political thriller and part detective story, Dirty Wars is a gripping journey into one of the most important and underreported stories of our time. What begins as a report into a U.S. night raid gone terribly wrong in a remote corner of Afghanistan quickly turns into a global investigation of the secretive and powerful Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). [It is] a world of covert operations unknown to the public and carried out across the globe by men who do not exist on paper and will never appear before Congress. In military jargon, JSOC teams “find, fix, and finish” their targets, who are selected through a secret process. No target is off limits for the “kill list,” including U.S. citizens. We encounter two parallel casts of characters. The CIA agents, Special Forces operators, military generals, and U.S.-backed warlords who populate the dark side of American wars go on camera and on the record, some for the first time. We also see and hear directly from survivors of night raids and drone strikes, including the family of the first American citizen marked for death and being hunted by his own government.