Co-authored by Marc Kielburger
By Craig and Marc Kielburger
Growing up, there was an unspoken absence in Zainib Abdullah’s life.
Living just outside of Toronto, far from the home her family left in Iraq, she pieced together the story of her uncle. He had been unjustly arrested and disappeared years earlier by Saddam Hussein’s government, without a trial or a chance to say goodbye to his loved ones.
Now she puts pen to paper, writing letters on behalf of people unfairly imprisoned around the world.
“I wasn’t able to write to my uncle, but this is a way I can help others,” she says, lifting her pen from a letter at Amnesty International’s Write for Rights, an annual global letter writing campaign that produced over three million letters and petition signatures this year. “There is definitely a healing element.”
The pen holds power and letters can change lives.
More intimate than an email, more impactful than a tweet, the personal touch of a letter can reach prisoners of conscience hidden away in the world’s darkest corners and remind those in power they can’t act with impunity.
Journalist Khadija Ismayilova spent nearly two years in prison on trumped-up charges of tax evasion after she exposed corruption in Azerbaijan’s government. Malek Adly called on people to protest human rights abuses in Egypt and ended up in jail. Both of them walked free this year after massive global letter writing campaigns.
Letters and petitions were among our first actions as young activists.
When Kailash Satyarthi was arrested in 1995 for raiding carpet factories to fight child labor, we wrote an impassioned letter to the Indian Prime Minister and included 3,000 signatures on a petition for his release. We put both in a shoebox and mailed them to New Delhi.
A year later, Satyarthi was free and discussing his ordeal when he remembered the shoebox brimming with name. “It was one of the most powerful actions taken on my behalf,” he said.
We hear a lot about clicktivism—about tweets unleashing global awareness campaigns and social media causes going viral. While it’s easier than ever to mobilize huge numbers and support, the low barrier to entry can mean that many worthy causes fade into white noise.
That is why we believe in meeting with your representative or senator and in marches of protest. And when your feet can’t carry you far enough and meetings aren’t an option, write a letter or pick up the phone. This was a major theme at the recent Women’s March on Washington because politicians pay attention when people raise their voice.
When Canadian-Iranian computer programmer Hamid Ghassemi-Shall was arrested in Iran in 2008 and baselessly accused of espionage, Abdullah immediately got involved with his case. At one event she attended, his wife Antonella Mega played a voicemail she’d received from prison.
“We listened to him saying how much he loves her and it was beautiful. Antonella was beaming,” Abdullah recalls. “I remember thinking, ‘what if he’s never released’.”
Finally free after five years in prison, Ghassemi-Shall told supporters at an Amnesty International event how their letters gave him the energy to keep fighting, and Abdullah couldn’t help but reflect on her own uncle.
“I think about him sometimes, about what it would have been like for him to get a letter.”
That’s what keeps her writing.
Craig and Marc Kielburger are the co-founders of the WE movement, which includes WE Charity, ME to WE Social Enterprise and WE Day.