Conference Speakers in 2009
Mr Asad Rehman, Friends of the Earth
Asad Rehman has been a voice of progressive activism in the UK for over 20 years. Asad worked for over ten years campaigning for Amnesty International, and was one of the founders of the ‘Stop The War’ coalition. He is also Chair of Newham Monitoring Project, the UK’s oldest community based anti-racist organisation, and has been an advocate for the family of Jean-Charles de Menezes.
He is active in the International Social Forum process, bringing together diverse social movements globally to challenge issues on race and diversity, Islam and human rights, global justice, racism and police brutality, globalisation and war. Currently Asad works for Friends of the Earth where he campaigns on issues of biodiversity, biofuels and broadening the coalition for environmental change.
Gareth Peirce – Birnberg & Peirce
Gareth Peirce (born c. 1940) is one of Britain’s best known Civil Rights lawyers.. She is noted for taking on controversial cases, including high profile human rights issues. Her clients include the Birmingham Six, the Tipton Three, the Guildford Four, former MI5 operative David Shayler, Abu Qatada ,Judith Ward, Mouloud Sihali, the family of Jean Charles de Menezes, Mozzam Begg and Bisher Amin Khalil al-Rawi, a detainee at the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp.
In the 1960s, she worked as a journalist in the United States, following the campaign of Martin Luther King. In the mid 1970's Gareth Peirce supported campaigns for reform of laws and police procedures that permitted the prosecution and conviction of persons solely on identification evidence. She was played by Emma Thompson in the film In the Name of the Father, based on a case in which four clients were falsely accused on an IRA bombing. She was appointed CBE in 1999, but later she returned its insignia.
Peirce was one of the initial eight people inducted in March 2007 into Justice Denied magazine's Hall of Honor, for her lifetime achievement in aiding the wrongly convicted.
Deborah Finding is a researcher at the Gender Institute at the London School of Economics. She works on the representation of sexual violence in music, and has also published more widely on issues of gender and sexuality in the media.
Prior to this, Deborah was the team leader for the POPPY Project, the first government-funded project in the UK to help women trafficked into the country for prostitution. She helped to set up the project when it was in its pilot phase, and worked with the police, goverment and other agencies to ensure its continuation.
She has also worked with other organisations helping to support women who have experienced gendered violence, including as a mental health support worker for the Richmond Fellowship and as the women's studies tutor for Camden's Creative and Supportive Trust.
