Awareness Month on the Island.

The local group is backing the international campaign "Children Around the World Targeted For Human Rights Violations''.

It aims to draw attention to the fact that children are being tortured, killed or detained by military forces and the Police.

Bermuda co-ordinator, Ms Charma Yuill said: "The local chapter of Amnesty International is currently working on this worldwide campaign featuring children and young people.

"The cases and countries are varied but the common denominator is that children as young as eight-months-old are being brutally murdered and systematically slaughtered by their own governments.

"Members of Amnesty International write letters to governments who kill, torture and imprison their children. The more letters we send, the better the chance that these governments will listen to the international pleas for an end to human rights violations.'' Examples of violations, sent to Amnesty International, include deaths of Brazilian street children, abuses of Kurdish children in Turkey and even cases in the United States.

An Amnesty International spokesman said: "In February, 1992 the State of Texas executed juvenile offender Johnny Garrett for a crime he committed when he was just 17. He was mentally impaired, chronically psychotic, brain damaged and suffered from paranoid delusions.

"Children and young people are particularly vulnerable but instead of protecting them all too often we see governments killing, torturing and imprisoning them.''