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Today, April 8, 2011, Amnesty International is holding a day-long event in New York City in support of human rights. Known as the “Get on the Bus for Human Rights” (GOTB) it is an annual day of human rights education and activism organized by Amnesty International USA Group 133 of Somerville, MA which “draws upwards of 1,200 participants riding buses, commuter trains, and carpooling down to New York City to take peaceful action in front of embassies, consulates and corporate headquarters in NYC in support of human rights.” Amnesty has been doing this for the past 16 years.

Tibetan film-maker Dhondup Wangchen who was arrested in March 2008. He had just completed his film "Leaving Fear Behind."

Amnesty International has now expanded it this year and is organizing a “Get on the Bus to DC” on April 15. The Washington, D.C. event is being organized by Amnesty International Group (Capitol Hill/Adams Morgan 536/211) in which “activists from high school, college and local Amnesty groups in the 6-states of the Mid-Atlantic region will converge on Washington, DC to demonstrate in support of human rights in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Myanmar/Burma, Chad and Tibet.”

On Tibet, Amnesty International is specifically focusing on the case of the detained Tibetan filmmaker, Dhondup Wangchen, and will be asking China for his “immediate and unconditional release.”

Dhondup Wangchen was detained in Amdo (present-day QinghaiProvince) on March 26, 2008, soon after completing filming of the documentary ‘Leaving Fear Behind‘. The film documents candid Tibetan views of Beijing Olympics, the current situation in Tibet and the Dalai Lama’s return to Tibet. He is currently said to be undergoing a six year sentence.

His wife, Lhamo Tso, and children are in India and you can listen to an interview with Lhamo Tso by Students for a Free Tibet here.

Amnesty International’s Get on the Bus to Washington, D.C.’s event includes the following activities on April 15, 2011:

* Visit the Chad Embassy to call for better treatment of displaced persons.

* Rally at the Indonesian Embassy to urge the government to release Filep Karma, prisoner of conscience and Mid-Atlantic Region’s special focus case. This rally will be to support the monthly rallies at the Indonesian Embassy, organized and supported by Claudia Vandermade, Special Focus Case Coordinator for Mid-Atlantic Region.

* Visit the Consulate of Iraq to call for the release of Walid Yunis Ahmad, Kurdish man accused of being “a threat to security” and one of an estimated 30,000 cases of detention in Iraq.

* Visit the Myanmar/Burma Embassy to call for the release of Burmese political prisoners who were jailed for non-violent protests.

* Visit the Sri Lankan Embassy and focus on an action focusing on the need for an international war crimes investigation and journalists at risk.

* Have a China action to bring focus and attention to the Chinese government’s detention of Tibetan Dhondup Wangchen, filmmaker of the documentary “Leaving Fear Behind,” and to call on China for his immediate and unconditional release.

* Rally in support of the leaders of Women of Zimbabwe Arise and all human rights defenders in Zimbabwe by demanding the police in Zimbabwe quit harassing, intimidating, jailing and torturing people fighting for their rights.

Amnesty International’s focus on a Tibetan artist is timely given the recent development in China and Tibet. The International Campaign for Tibet has just written to US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell citing cases of Tibetans resorting to desperate measures to call the attention of the international community to their plight, including a young monk who set himself on fire in March to protest Chinese policies, and two other monks who died in the last two weeks as the result of torture suffered in Chinese detention. ICT has voiced the feeling that the “arrest of artist Ai Weiwei has become the latest and perhaps highest profile in a trend of disappearances and detentions in China in recent weeks. Likewise, Tibetan writers, intellectuals, singers, artists and civil society leaders are being systematically targeted, detained and prosecuted for their work, as ICT has documented.”