Anti-Death Penalty Day 2009 - Petition handed over

AIA contributed 10,518 signatures to a global total of 90, 708 signatures collected by the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty (WCADP) - that's 12% of the global tally.

Thank you to everyone who signed and encouraged other people to sign the petition.

The petitions were handed over on Friday 20 November - the 20th birthday of the Convention for the Rights of the Child - to the embassies in France of the four countries that still execute juvenile offenders - Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Iran.

Each embassy received a quarter of the petitions:
Sudan and Yemen met and accepted the WCADP delegation and petitions.
Saudi Arabia would not meet with the delegation but accepted the petitions.
Iran refused to meet or accept the petitions (they will get them in the mail).

AIA collected 10, 518 signatures for a month from 10 Oct (World Day against the Death Penalty). Special thanks to the efforts of the Web Team (online petition and supporter email) and Fundraising Team (Street Fundraising Team with paper petitions) who via their methods collected a combined 96% of the signatures for our section.

You can read the WCADP press release (AI is part of the Coalition):
http://www.worldcoalition.org/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=374&sel_lang=english

Still time to take further action

We are still running with the Japan

and death penalty actions - two postcards: one to do with

mental health generally, and one for Hakamada Iwao (one of our IARP cases). There are also standard letters to the new Justice minister in Japan for people to sign.
If you have limited time, there is also an online action for Hakamada Iwao you can take:
http://www.amnesty.org.au/action/action/20600/