Dr. Robert Cook-Deegan, MD, first joined Amnesty International's Urgent Action Network in the late 1970s. He has seen how new technologies, fax and email, have had an increasing impact on Urgent Action initiatives, making the actions quicker and easier to do. "As the technologies improved, the Urgent Action Network made even more sense. The Urgent Action Network deserves real credit for taking advantage of the new opportunities. I hope we've shocked some complacent bureaucrats holding prisoners of conscience with our barrages of concerned communiques," he says.
Robert says he joined the Urgent Action Network because, "it struck me that the likelihood of helping POCs was much higher if action were taken quickly. The Urgent Action Network was the fastest mechanism in the Amnesty system. The overall experience has been mainly like being a goalie; long periods of nothing happening punctuated by a few very sad or very happy moments."
One incident that stands out for Robert is meeting a former prisoner of conscience. "It was amazing to meet Heng Leng Chee a few years after she was freed from jail in Malaysia. And I only heard a more complete version of the story a few months ago at a World Health Organization meeting in Geneva. Her quiet persistence and courage are exemplary of thousands of prisoners of conscience who embody what is the strongest and best in the human spirit. There will be more Oscar Schindlers if there are more Urgent Action Networks supporting them, more Nguyen Dan Ques freed in response to expeditious, targeted expressions of concern."
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