FreeThe20 is a

campaign Campaign or The Campaign may refer to: Types of campaigns * Campaign, in agriculture, the period during which sugar beets are harvested and processed * Advertising campaign, a series of advertisement messages that share a single idea and theme * B ...

to call attention to women who are political prisoners around the world. The campaign names twenty women who are imprisoned unjustly. Samantha Power, the U.S.

Ambassador An ambassador is an official envoy, especially a high-ranking diplomat who represents a state and is usually accredited to another sovereign state or to an international organization as the resident representative of their own government or sov ...

to the United Nations, started the campaign for the twentieth

anniversary An anniversary is the date on which an event took place or an institution was founded in a previous year, and may also refer to the commemoration or celebration of that event. The word was first used for Catholic feasts to commemorate saints ...

of the Beijing Declaration. The reason for the campaign was to tell governments to stop putting women in prison, and to tell the women and their families that they are not alone. There were twenty names of women in twenty days, one for every year since the Beijing Declaration. In September 2015, a bipartisan "#FreeThe20" bill was introduced to the U.S Senate. All twenty women senators of the two political parties supported the bill. They said, ::As 20 women serving in the United States Senate we stand unified in calling on governments to recognize the universal human rights of women and to release women who have been imprisoned unjustly for exercising those rights.

Names of the women

*Day 20: Rasha Sharbaji,

Syria Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...

(

free Free may refer to: Concept * Freedom, having the ability to do something, without having to obey anyone/anything * Freethought, a position that beliefs should be formed only on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism * Emancipate, to procur ...

) *Day 19:

Tạ Phong Tần Tạ Phong Tần (born 15 September 1968 in Vĩnh Lợi District, Bạc Liêu Province) is a Vietnamese dissident blogger. A former policewoman and a member of the Communist Party of Vietnam, she was arrested in September 2011 on anti-state ...

, Vietnam (free) *Day 18: Women Political Prisoners, North Korea *Day 17:

Nadiya Savchenko Nadiya Viktorivna Savchenko ( uk, Надія Вікторівна Савченко; born 11 May 1981) is a Ukrainian politician, former Army aviation pilot in the Ukrainian Ground Forces and former People's Deputy of Ukraine. During the 2014 ...

, Ukraine/ Russia (free) *Day 16:

Naw Ohn Hla Naw Ohn Hla (; my, နော်အုံးလှ; born 5 August 1962) is a Karen democracy activist, politician, human rights defender, environmental rights and land rights activist for decades. She has been active in campaigning against the ...

, Burma (free) *Day 15:

Sanaa Seif Sanaa Seif ( ar, سناء سيف; born 20 December 1993) is an Egyptian activist and film editor who became actively involved in the Egyptian revolution in 2011. She was a student of language and translation at October 6 University until her ar ...

, Egypt (free) *Day 14: Judge María Lourdes Afiuni Mora, Venezuela (free) *Day 13: Bui Thi Minh Hang, Vietnam (free) *Day 12: Liu Xia,

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

(free) *Day 11:

Phyoe Phyoe Aung Phyoe Phyoe Aung ( my, ဖြိုးဖြိုးအောင်; born 25 August 1988) is a student activist and former political prisoner from Burma (Myanmar). Her father is also an activist and was repeatedly arrested and sentenced for long ...

, Burma (free) *Day 10:

Leyla Yunus Leyla Islam qizi Yunusova (née Vəliyeva; born 21 December 1955, in Baku), better known as Leyla Yunus, is an Azerbaijani human rights activist who serves as the director of Institute of Peace and Democracy, a human rights organisation. She is p ...

, Azerbaijan (free) *Day 9: Matlyuba Kamilova, Uzbekistan *Day 8:

Aster Yohannes Aster Yohannes is a veteran of Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) and an independence activist. Post-independence, she was working in the ministry of Fishery and Marine Resources in 1995. She also is the wife of detained Eritrean politician ...

Eritrea Eritrea ( ; ti, ኤርትራ, Ertra, ; ar, إرتريا, ʾIritriyā), officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa region of Eastern Africa, with its capital and largest city at Asmara. It is bordered by Ethiopia ...

*Day 7:

Gao Yu Gao Yu (高郁; died 929) was a chief strategist for the Chinese Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Chu state. He was said to be instrumental in the consolidation of power that allowed Chu's first ruler, Ma Yin, to find the Chu state, but was later ...

(free) *Day 4-6: Blen Mesfin (free), Meron Alemayehu (free), and Nigist Wondifraw (free), Ethiopia *Day 3:

Bahareh Hedayat Bahareh Hedayat ( fa, بهاره هدایت, born 1981) is an Iranian activist and campaigner for women's rights. She was one of the activists who worked on the One Million Signatures campaign to change laws that discriminate against women in Ir ...

, Iran *Day 2: Khadija Ismayilova, Azerbaijan (free) *Day 1: Wang Yu,

(free)

References

{{reflist

External links

Text of #FreeThe20 bill in the U.S. Senate
Human rights organizations based in the United States Women's rights organizations Imprisonment and detention Political imprisonment