Community Church of Douglaston Members Seek Amnesty for Political Prisoners

The Community Church of Douglaston is joining hundreds of thousands of people across the globe to fight for human rights.  

On Monday night, church members participated in Amnesty International's Write for Rights campaign.  The letter-writing marathon takes place each year for 10 days this month, culminating on Dec. 10, which is International Human Rights Day.

Letters are written on behalf of political prisoners in other countries, urging their governments to treat them fairly.  

Amy Wolf has been participating in the program for as long as she can remember.

"We write letters saying that they should be released or they should be given due process," she said. "And then another set of letters go to the prisoners themselves, saying 'you are not forgotten.'"

Linda Mule introduced the program to the church eight years ago and they were immediately sold on it.  

All letters are written in advance by Amnesty International, focusing on 10 different cases.

"It's a no brainer," Mule says.

Attendees at the Community Church's event signed the letters that Mule printed off Amnesty's site and then sent them off.

Armed with pens and return address labels, church members gathered around a wooden table and got down to work, with the goal of sending out 50 letters.

Those letters will be sent to Iraq on behalf of a man who was imprisoned and tortured for 10 years without having been charged or put on trial.

Another batch will be sent to Myanmar, where a woman who put up an anti-government banner is serving an eight-and-a-half year sentence in a remote area, keeping her far from her family.

Other letters will be sent to China, where a defender of women's reproductive writes is serving an 18-month hard labor sentence and suffers regular beatings.  

"If you can bring them any hope that they might get released or there might be justice or they might get a trial instead of being held without charge, I think that's a good thing," Mule said.

And it works. Wolf says a prisoner was released from China as a result of the letter writing campaign.

"It does make a difference because it puts pressure on the government and it lets them know that they can't just do this and expect no one in the world to know and get away with it," she said.

Anyone interested in writing letters who missed Monday's event will be able to receive letters from Mule following the Community Church's Sunday services.

The church is located at 39-50 Douglaston Parkway.