Poster companies reject Amnesty's ads

by Larissa Vince, Campaign 12-Oct-07

Amnesty International is to launch a hard-hitting campaign against human rights abuses by governments performed in the name of the "war on terror".

Three poster ads, created by Drugstore, use images so graphic that the
UK's two biggest poster operators, JCDecaux and Clear Channel, have
refused to carry them.

Instead, the 48-sheets, which feature scenes of torture, illegal

detention and bombsites, will run on sites owned by Titan Outdoor from

next week.

Using the strapline "unsubscribe", the posters urge people to visit a
social networking site, www.unsubscribe-me.org, where they can remove
their name from the electoral register as a protest against the war on
terror, which, according to the site, "has been used to justify acts of
torture, 'rendition', discrimination and unlawful detention".

Drugstore has also created three short films, the first of which will be
released in arthouse cinemas from early 2008. The film, Waiting for the
Guards, shows a blindfolded, handcuffed man stripped to his underwear
and crouching on a cardboard box - the so-called "stress position" used
as part of the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques".

The campaign has also enlisted the support of Moazzam Begg, the British
man who was held without charge for more than two years at Guantanamo
Bay.