Roberto and Ingri Roman are proud to live in Canada. The Chilean couple have been in the country for about 26 years and are proud volunteers and activists with the Weyburn Action Circle for Amnesty International.

Living in a country as free and open as Canada has given the couple a chance to lend a voice in the battle against torture and human rights violations, something they may not have been able to do back in their home country.

"We had our own experiences back in Chile," Roberto said. "There was lots of persecution. People were disappearing and many were taken to concentration camps and detained for no reason other than their political views."

"Amnesty International is very precious to the people in some of these situations," Ingri added. "You can ask people who have been incarcerated and they'll tell you that Amnesty International changed things for them - maybe they'll be asked what their name is or they may even be told why they're being held. It's a start in the right direction."

Roberto and Ingri left their homeland amidst a complicated civil war, not unlike that which is facing Guatemala. It's Roberto's knowledge of Spanish that has helped the local Amnesty group communicate and send letters to the small Central American country. They have chosen to support the Guatemalan children's rights group HIJOS.

HIJOS is the Spanish acronym for Children for Identity and Justice Against Forgetting and Silence. HIJOS was formed in Guatemala in June 1999, by children of parents who disappeared during the civil war that took place from 1954 to 1996. Its purpose is to find out who killed their parents and prevent more human rights violations from happening.

A Peace Accord between the Guatemalan government and guerrillas was signed in 1996, but the government in power is still the same government from before - the current president is the same dictator who promoted a state of martial law years earlier. The country has been unsafe and inhumane for many, many years.

"It's very hard to change the system over a short period of time," Roberto says. "We'll continue to send letters and hope for a better future."

The local Amnesty International group is proud of its letter-writing campaigns. At one point, the group managed to get 500 letters of support to stop Canadian rigging companies from dumping oil in the Philippines.

"We always write letters which are very polite and impartial," Ingri notes. "We tell them that there is an injustice being performed and we ask for an action to be taken. In that action, we never command or demand anything."

Sometimes the letter-writing campaigns can have a backlash. This year during an e-mail letter campaign, Roberto was the victim of a nasty computer virus sent back to him in a message from Guatemala. On the grand scheme of things, a computer virus is a mild attack towards Amnesty volunteers, but then again Roberto is on the other side of the world; the group now sends postal documents only.

"I don't think it's so difficult to get people in Weyburn to do things," Amnesty member Tom Collings adds. "There are some people here in the city that have supported Amnesty International financially in the past. We're only small people, but we do what we can. Letters make a large impact on the desk of a foreign country. It shows that the rest of the world is watching and we know what's going on."

The Weyburn group staged a successful event with guest speaker Jim Mercer last month. Mercer is a Regina orthopedist who had the chance to spend six months in Afghanistan operating a clinic. Collings said the organization plans to host more of these events and public meetings in the future.

There will be a presentation at Grace United Church on Saturday, Jan. 6 and plans are also in the works for a meeting with the Weyburn Rotary Club next year as well. Collings is hoping to get all the Saskatchewan Amnesty groups together next year to sponsor a major keynote speaker to talk to different communities around the province.