The Bishkek group of Amnesty International (AI) began its work on human rights in Bishkek one year ago to join the efforts with Amnesty International to strengthen its human rights mission worldwide. After only eight months of work, the Bishkek group received official recognition from the International Secretariat of Amnesty International and become a full Amnesty group.  Amnesty International - Bishkek is based at American University in Kyrgyzstan where the most active and open-minded students in Kyrgyzstan study. The unique atmosphere and support of the university's administration encourages students to be involved in different kinds of extracurricular activities. Participation in Amnesty International--Bishkek's activities is an excellent chance for students to make a difference in the human rights of not only Kyrgyzstan but in other countries and continents as well.

The first year of AI Bishkek encountered difficulties in the beginning with fundraising. The group tried all kinds of ways to raise money for the group's activities including selling fresh fruits at school in the evenings, collecting donations from individuals including AUK professors who showed great support for the human rights work done by Amnesty members, and selling t-shirts with the group's logo. The group also faced misunderstandings from ordinary citizens as well as the students. One of the most frequent questions was "Why don't you work on individual cases from Kyrgyzstan. We had to explain that it is a part of Amnesty International’s mandate that AI members must not work on cases from their own countries as it might cause problems for them in their country. The second thing we always explain is the reliability of the International Secretariat of Amnesty International that checks all information is checked with different sources and of different levels.

We hope that ordinary citizens will be more active in building a developed Democracy and Civil Society where human rights are fully respected. People still believe that struggling for their rights is not worth it and will only cause them troubles from the government. One of the most important activities that AI-Bishkek are doing now is the Human Rights Education Project for the high school students of Bishkek and its suburbs. The project is indispensable, as there lacked any tradition in Soviet society of teaching about human rights to ordinary citizens. They are not aware of what kind of rights they have due to the fact that they are human beings. This Human Rights Education project is one of the goals that Amnesty International tries to achieve through the network of its members worldwide which now total more than one million member in more than 160 countries around the world. The Human Rights Education Project is supported by the Soros Foundation Kyrgyzstan.

This year Amnesty International launches campaign against torture. More than 60 countries will join simultaneously this worldwide one-year campaign. Kyrgyzstan is one of them. The name of the campaign is "Take a step to stamp out torture." It is important that the tortured people do not remain silent and speak out when the government agents and security forces torture them. Torture still exists in more 150 countries of the world, and many survivors of torture are afraid of making the fact of being tortured public known. They fear that they will be subject to revenge for doing this. The Bishkek group of AI will join the campaign against torture on October 18 by issuing a press release to the Mass Media representatives in Kyrgyzstan. In a recent seminar in Moscow given by Amnesty International, AI Bishkek members received valuable information on the strategies of the anti-torture campaign, how to make their campaign effective in eliminating torture as an abuse of the fundamental human rights declared in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Bishkek group of AI really wants to make a difference and improve the human right situation worldwide.

Kadyr Toktogulov, Coordinator of Amnesty International Bishkek—Kyrgyzstan, sophomore at American University in Kyrgyzstan.