We thank the Chairman and committee for having us here today. We are very grateful for the opportunity. We know how busy the members are and it is good to see so many here.
I will give a quick outline of the organisation and of what we have been doing for the past year and hope to do this year. We have circulated a document I call the "Hello" version of Front Line Defenders, which has a lot of pictures and not much text, but it does give an idea of the kind of work we do. We work for human rights defenders at risk. These are people who are in danger because of their human rights work on behalf of others. They are people who work non-violently for the rights of others and who become "at risk" because of this work. All our activities are focused on these people and we have a 24-hour emergency line in English, French, Spanish, Arabic and Russian to support them.
The organisations work comprises different areas, first of which is research. We research who these front line workers are, where they are and the risks they face. Last year we undertook 27 missions to 22 countries. We continually try to meet human rights defenders on the ground, talk to them, see what they need, assess the risk and decide what we can do for them. Advocacy is also hugely important. We advocate through the UN and have a rolling internship in the office of the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders and in the office of the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders in the African Commission. We have an office in Brussels which was set up deliberately. We are proud that in 2004 the Irish Government agreed to make human rights defenders a priority for its Presidency and that it fought like an NGO to achieve this. Ireland's partners in Europe did not really want it, but Ireland fought for it and EU guidelines on human rights defenders were adopted. That has led to a significant increase in the attention given to human rights defenders around the world. Our office in Brussels follows this agenda day in and out.
We also have bilateral arrangements with people in government, such as the UK Government, the Norwegian Government, the Swiss Government and the Irish Government, which has agreed to take urgent appeals. We provide grants for security and protection, such as walls around offices, CCTV within offices, medical treatment in torture cases, lawyers for trials and any such help that will increase security. Today, we arranged for a steel door and bars to be installed in the office of a women's organisation. We provided €488,748 through 189 grants last year. Some 97 of these grants were to provide for temporary relocation for human rights defenders and their families who were in extreme danger.
Another big programme area is training. We provide training in personal security and risk assessment so that defenders can increase their capacity and decrease their vulnerability to attack. Last year we conducted 17 training sessions and trained some 242 human rights defenders in personal security and risk assessment. We do the same with regard to digital security, which is a significant issue nowadays. We trained 230 human rights defenders through 22 digital security sessions last year. We also publish personal and digital security handbooks.
We have an annual award programme and every year we make an award to a human rights defender at risk or an organisation at risk. We find this a very good way of helping to protect defenders and it also ensures media coverage. The awards have been presented by people like Mary Robinson - last year - Peter Sutherland, Bono and Martin Sheen. Every two years, we have a platform for human rights defenders. In November 2011, we brought 132 human rights defenders at risk from 85 countries around the world to Dublin to share their experiences, to learn from each other, to form strategy and to meet international actors, because we always have people in attendance from the UN, the EU, the Council of Europe and other international organisations. These platforms provide defenders with a rest from the relentless pressure they face.
The main focus for us this year is Ireland's Presidency of the OSCE. We have submitted a paper to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which I would be happy to forward to anybody interested in it, to urge it to progress the agenda on human rights defenders in the OSCE in the same way as done with the European Union. We have two specific requests. First, we seek the appointment of an OSCE special representative for human rights defenders. This would be a separate institution and would operate pretty much like the UN and African Commission special representatives and monitor the situation of human rights defenders on the ground and regularly report to the parliamentary committee and support particular cases.
Last week I was in Kyrgyzstan. This is one of the cases I am hoping the committee might take up. I ask it to encourage the Minister to make it one of his goals. Azimjan Askarov is a long-time human rights defender in Kyrgyzstan who has been working on human rights issues for 25 years. Last year he documented ethnic violence and, as a result, was arrested for the killing of a policeman - an absolutely fake charge - and given a life sentence which was confirmed on appeal in December. The only evidence against him is what the police has said. He gave evidence under torture. In the prison hospital I visited last week he is being held in an underground cell with no natural light. He is 61 years old and has asthma. All the prison officers are really good to him; they know he is innocent. I spoke to the Deputy Foreign Minister who said we had to wait for reform of the judiciary and the judges in the Supreme Court to be changed. Mr. Askarov is innocent, but it could take many years for his case to be dealt with. The Kyrgyzstan Government is instituting a reform programme, but it will take time to bring in the rule of law and reform of the police and the judiciary. We need action now. I would be grateful, therefore, if the committee would do whatever it could on the case. I hope that, with the chairmanship of the OSCE, we can have a little more leverage this year.
Another case is that of a man in Uzbekistan, Dilmurod Saidov, who is a member of a human rights society and an independent journalist at Voice of Freedom, working to defend the rights of farmers. Media freedom is one of the issues being highlighted by Ireland in its chairmanship of the OSCE. He was given a sentence of 12 years and six months and now has tuberculosis. While he was being detained as a human rights defender - a perfectly innocent man who was working for the rights of others - he was tortured and his wife and five year old child were killed in a car accident, another tragic story. If it were possible for the committee to make that the second case to be dealt with during the OSCE chairmanship, that would be terrific.
During the OSCE chairmanship, we would like to see our guidelines on human rights defenders which are similar to the EU guidelines drafted by Ireland during the Presidency in conjunction with its partners and also passed during the Irish Presidency dealt with by the OSCE. We ask the committee to take up this matter with the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade.
I will mention one other case in connection with the upcoming visit of the Chinese Vice President who will replace President Hu Jintao as General Secretary of the Communist Party later this year. I do not know if any of the members will have the opportunity to see or meet him in any capacity, but we would be grateful if it were possible to raise in a polite way the case of a blind lawyer, Chen Guangcheng, who was given a sentence for advocating for free public transport for disabled people which has resonance here and for the rights of farmers and against forced abortions and sterilisations. He served his sentence in full, but on his release he was put under house arrest. We know that he and his wife have been beaten and that their little girl of about seven years was not allowed to go to school until recently. The people who bring her to school are the same people who have beaten up her parents in front of her. Mr. Chen's cane was taken away, as were the little girl's drawings and toys. Again, this is terrible. However, there is a little hope, which is why I am anxious that the committee find a way to raise this case. For the first time in China, it has obtained domestic traction. There has been a lot of information on Mr. Chen on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, and other social media, and academics, lawyers and bloggers, as well as human rights defenders and ordinary people, have come out in favour of him. The committee might put it in the context of the support already evident in China for his release from house arrest. I would be very grateful for its support.