Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International & ACLU launch “Pardon Snowden” Campaign

This text appeared originally on Human Rights Watch. acTVism Munich translated excerpts from it into the German language to inform a wider global audience.

(New York) – US President Barack Obama should pardon Edward Snowden, who disclosed the US National Security Agency’s mass surveillance program, a coalition of prominent organizations and individuals said today.

The Pardon Snowden campaign, supported by the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, will work through the end of Obama’s administration to make the case that Snowden’s act of whistleblowing benefited the United States and enriched democratic debate worldwide. The campaign urges citizens around the world to write to the president via the pardonsnowden.org site, as attention is to drawn to Snowden by this week’s release of the film “Snowden,” directed by Oliver Stone and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

VIDEO: Edward Snowden statement at the Pardon Snowden launch even:

“Thanks to Edward Snowden’s act of conscience, we have made historic strides in our fight for surveillance reform and improved cybersecurity,” said American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. “It is indisputable that our democracy is better off thanks to Snowden, and it’s precisely for cases like his that the pardon power exists. President Obama should use this power for good instead of leaving an American whistleblower stranded in exile.”

The Pardon Snowden campaign also includes prominent legal scholars, policy experts, human rights leaders, technologists, and artists. Dozens of public figures have joined the campaign’s call urging the president to use the pardon power in Snowden’s case, including George Soros, the founder and chair of the Open Society Foundations; Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple; Yale Law Professor Bruce Ackerman; Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg; actors Daniel Radcliffe, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Danny Glover; writers Joyce Carol Oates and Eve Ensler; and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.

For more on the Snowden campaign, please visit: www.pardonsnowden.org

Notice our upcoming acTVism Event: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden confirmed his participation for acTVism Munich’s next event called “Freedom and Democracy: Global Issues Connecting the Dots” at Muffatwerk in Munich on the 15th of January 2017.  Ticket infos and details will be released in October.

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acTVism Munich plans to continue translating the event organized by the University of Arizona, “A Conversation to Privacy” that hosted Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald and Noam Chomsky. We Munich believe that privacy is a central ingredient to democracy and creating awareness on it on a global scale is of utmost important for the future of human freedom and liberty. We will also continue to translate an event organized by the New York Public Library (NYPL) that hosted Yanis Varoufakis and Noam Chomsky. This event took place on the 26th of April, 2016, and focused, amongst other issues, on the state of European democracy; the underlying problems confronting it and the solutions required for meaningful change.

Secondly, acTVism Munich will gain full access to the German government’s national press conference in Berlin in the fall of 2016. This will provide us an opportunity to pose critical questions directly to the German government which will foster awareness on a host of issues seldom discussed in the mainstream media. The attempt is to translate and synchronize the question and answers in English as well.

We lack technical and financial resources to translate the events and press conference mentioned. Furthermore, we will only be able to attend the press conference once in 3 months due to the high costs of travelling and lodging.

Lastly, acTVism Munich received Edward Snowden’s confirmation about participating in a future event known as “Freedom & Democracy: Global Issues – Connecting the Dots”. This Event is planned for 15. January 2017 and plans to bring leading experts together to discuss the connections between various issues and reveal the system at work. We believe that we can only arrive at viable solutions by increasing public awareness of the principal and structural faults of our system.

We lack the necessary financial and technical resources to execute the projects, trips and events mentioned above. Since we are a non-profit and independent media outlet that has a strict policy against accepting advertisements, government or corporate support – we depend only on you, the public.

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