Letting their Voices Be Heard

Today is Human Rights Day worldwide.  If anyone's interested, here are two brave persons, continuing to speak out.   

 "They shot him nine times.

Losing a child breaks your heart in pieces.

It can't be compared to anything.

We gather strength from nowhere,

and start over.

My dream is to find justice."

Doris Berrio is the founder of the "League of Displaced Women", a group of women denouncing human rights violations and supporting women's issues.  She was forced to flee her home village in the region of Uraba in Colombia in 1997. Her husband received death threats from armed groups who had moved into the area. She escaped with her two young sons to the city of Cartagena, only to have her youngest son then murdered in retaliation for her efforts to fight back.

Blind self-taught legal activist Chen Guangcheng speaks directly to China's new leader Xi Jinping about human rights and rule of law violations, as well as religious persecution.  He names particular prisoners of conscience and asks for their release, one of whom is Nobel Peace Price Laureate Liu Xiaobo*.

(*For 26 months, Xiabo's wife Liu Xia has been cut off from the world outside her apartment in Beijing – prevented from receiving guests, making phone calls or using the Internet. She’s been charged with no crime. She is being punished for being the wife of China’s most famous political dissident, jailed Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo). [Source]

When life becomes intolerable because their rights as human beings are consistently denied them, people sometimes, in desperation, take their own lives,  because the entities who govern them do not do anything to help or protect them:  Here are two countries' examples:

In Kyrgyzstan, three young women, aged 19, 19 and 20, hanged themselves after having been kidnapped for marriage, a 'tradition' in their country.

Every day approximately 32 girls are kidnapped and six are raped. That’s more than 11,000 young women who are kidnapped each year, and 2,000 rapes. Only one out of 700 are investigated as crimes, and only one in 1,500 is prosecuted. [Source]

And in Tibet, recently, three more!:

A 16 yr old Tibetan girl died yesterday after setting herself on fire.[Source]

A 17-year-old Tibetan man burned himself a week ago in Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Gansu province. In an apparent protest against China’s repressive policies in Tibet, Songdhi Kyab set himself on fire near Bora Monastery. He was reported to be alive when police forcibly took him away to a public hospital in Tsoe township, one of the biggest towns  in the area.  Eyewitnesses in the area say that Songdhi's survival may be “very slim” as he was seen smashing his head while engulfed in flames.[Source]

Lobsang Gendun, 29, a monk at the Penag Kadak Troedreling Monastery in Seley Thang, died after after setting himself on fire today in Pema County, Golok Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province. Eyewitnesses say Lobsang raised slogans with his hands clasped in prayers while engulfed in flames.[Source]

At least 92 Tibetans have set themselves on fire since 2009, with 28 cases reported in November alone. The acceleration has coincided with several anti-China rallies and a corresponding security crackdown.

China's response to protests of the Tibetan people has been to more harshly tighten an already tight control over them regarding their practice of religion and ability to speak out about their situation. Journalists are forbidden to investigate. 

U.S. officials have urged their Chinese counterparts to address policies such as restrictions on Tibetan Buddhist practices, surveillance on monasteries, arbitrary detentions, disappearances, and use of force against Tibetan activists, calling on  the Chinese government to "permit journalists, diplomats, and other observers unrestricted access to China's Tibetan areas," where Beijing has tightly restricted the flow of information. [Source]

Expressing concern and asking China to "please stop doing this" I don't think will have much effect, unfortunately.  It hasn't worked in the past.   Human rights violations have been occurring in Tibet for many, many years, since the Chinese swept in and took over the country.  Anyone following these matters can see that the Tibetan culture is slowly being erased and replaced.  Sixth-generation exiled Tibetan refugees living in India cannot become citizens. [Source]  They remain stateless, a people without a homeland.  When there are soldiers on every street corner, when  displaying an image of the Dalai Lama is grounds for punishment, when a people live in constant fear so great that they see no other recourse than to suicide themselves, it seems to me governments who are signatories to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights should do a tad more than just express concern, claim sadness, and merely request the country violating these rights to please stop.  Am just saying.


This is 2012.  We humans have been living among one another for millions of years.  You'd think we would've evolved more by now.  Why is this crap still going on everywhere?   The injustices remain the same; only the technology and methods get more sophisticated.  Human trafficking, sexual abuse of children, kidnapping or disappearing whole groups, imprisonment for expressing an opinion, torture, murder, assassination  by drones, destroying another's land and people with poisonous chemicals or bombs laced with white phosporous guaranteeing lasting suffering to generations to come.  It never ends.

I sometimes wonder what it'd be like  to be inside the skin of one of many thousands of frightened, severely oppressed people, for just one day.  To feel that absolute fear, to have to watch everything you say and do for fear you be 'taken away', to live under such threat day after day after day.  Would I fight back, and how?  Would I keep silent, for fear of what they'd do to my children if I continued?  Say I escaped them, would I stay silent, just glad to have gotten away?  Fear can follow you, live in you, scar you  forever.  All these thoughts flood through me when reading these stories.  And it's not just one's rulers one fears.  The growing power of the drug cartels in Mexico, for example, decapitating and dumping mutilated bodies in public places as a warning not to interfere with their activities - last year, 493 such deaths; this year predicted by year's end to have been similarly high (49 headless and dismembered bodies in Nuevo Leon state in one month alone).  Not to mention the countless lives destroyed by civil unrest causing humanitarian crises in places too numerous to mention.

Not only lawless criminals, ruthless governments  or endless wars take away one's rights (and life); ordinary persons do it to one another as well, like a husband to a wife, a mother to a child, a friend to a schoolmate, unfortunately.  No one should have the right to tell you what to think or believe.  Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion" and that "this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief."  Under this provision, not only does no government have the right to not allow you to practice your religion, but no parent has the right to dictate his/her offspring's present or future beliefs or religion.  (The Declaration also declares that one has the right to change one's beliefs.)  Choosing to follow this or that path in life, especially one that is not 'traditional', should be one's right as well.  One should be free to choose the life one wants, marry who one wants, be who one wants, without fear of reprisal.    This is a subject that's rarely addressed, much less discussed, in terms of universal human rights.  Granted, being shunned, chastised, bullied or disowned is not the same as being imprisoned for speaking out or being physically tortured, but the victims of intense or sustained personal intimidation (of whatever kind) and certain victims of state-sponsored, unjust persecution do have this in common: their individual rights have both been summarily dismissed as being totally irrelevant. 

 It's interesting to see how many of the basic rights specifically mentioned --even among the more civilized, democratic and 'advanced' countries, are still, sadly, simply not the case today,  due to massive economic hardship, and the arrival and spread of Terrorism, where citizen's rights are increasingly subject to being bargained away. But here's the thing.  The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is just that--a declaration.  It does not in form create binding international human rights law. 

The "right to an existence worthy of human dignity", of those basic things necessary for survival, such as "food, clothing, housing, medical care, and protection" -  may one day amount to being privileges, as more and more are finding themselves entitled to less and less (or no) access anymore  to what was long taken for granted.. A sobering thought.

There are many ways to fight injustice, support human rights, and spread the word.  Here's one:

Video from 2011 celebrating 50 years of Amnesty International

I remind myself that although I've posted about the situation in Tibet  here, here, here, and  here (and about writer Liu Xiaobo here and elsewhere),  these and today's posting are but small, infrequent or 'occasional' speakings-out, and that it's  not enough.  It's never going to be enough, given the magnitude of the reported abuses.  But maybe a reader (assuming anyone actually got this far reading!), might do the same - i.e., spread the word.  Let's do it!  Because they can't, the ones for whom it would be dangerous to do so, the ones who will be punished for doing so.  We should do it - because we can:     Talk about it, write about it, sing about it - just get the word out.  ("Let's stand up/ Stand up for your rights! Get up, stand up/ Don't give up the fight!" ~ ~ Bob Marley).  :)

Thanks for stopping by.


 

Human Rights Day Today

The librarian from Odessa arrested for advocating the right of Ukrainians to use their native language. She was declared insane and confined in a maximum security psychiatric hospital. A gentle woman in a white blouse and plaid skirt, we get to meet her years after.  As also a psychiatrist who refused to declare dissidents mentally ill.  For this he was himself sent to prison.  I remember when we got reports that he was on hunger strike, being forcibly fed and drugged with antipsychotic medications. And there he sits, years later, across the table from us, sharing a coffee.  The Tibetan monk, describing the instruments of torture to which he and his cell mates had been subjected, recounts the gnawing hunger and frequent beatings, that prisoners ate rats and shoelaces to quell their hunger pains. These were the survivors, the ones who eventually got out.   So many, many more that didn't; now new ones being arrested and imprisoned every day.

So here it is 2010 and not much has changed.  You write letters, sign petitions, send words of support, march in protest, hold candlelight vigils, all of which helps bring attention to the situation, but it's not enough.  Because it's still happening, it's still going on, people are still being imprisoned and tortured for what they think or believe or write or say.

My mom used to have a little Indian saying posted in her kitchen, something about walking a mile in someone else's moccasins and I  wondered if I could stand just five minutes in someone else's shoes in a dark cell, being starved or beaten, not being allowed contact of any kind with loved ones, knowing it'd be years before I got out or even if I ever would--all because of something I wrote.  Still, that's in the realm of imagination only.  I could maybe "imagine" it but I don't ever see it as happening to me.  But it could.  I mean, I could one day be in the wrong place at the wrong time and express an opinion or write something that might anger certain officials and suddenly find myself in a similar position as those for whom I once wrote letters.

According to Amnesty International,  “Too many perpetrators are getting away with some of the worst crimes known to humanity."  Amnesty surveyed conditions in 159 countries last year, noting that "people were tortured in 111 nations" and that “human rights abusers enjoyed impunity for torture in at least 61 countries.”
The report sharply criticized some of the world’s largest and most powerful nations for not fully signing up to the International Criminal Court  — notably the United States, China, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Russia.[1]

Because I was once energetically involved in human rights work, this day--December 10--when it arrives every year, jolts me out of my complacency.  What have I done lately to help further human rights in the world?  When's the last time I wrote a letter to or for a prisoner of conscience?  Or even thought much about it?   It's not enough to know that injustice happens, that it continues to happen.  Does one ever "retire" from activism?  Yes and no; no and yes.  So many other things on one's plate these days, so many other things clamoring for and eating one's time.  You profess to care, my little voice nudges me.  Care how?  But really, how much effort would it take to write one letter?  Is once a year, on the anniversary of Human Rights Day, enough?  Could writing one letter really make a difference?  Well today at least there will be many people all over the world doing just that--writing one letter.[2]



 Liu Xiaobo on the effect of just one letter:
  
One Letter Is Enough

for Xia

one letter is enough
for me to transcend and face
you to speak
as the wind blows past
the night
uses its own blood
to write a secret verse
that reminds me each
word is the last word
the ice in your body
melts into a myth of fire
in the eyes of the executioner
fury turns to stone
two sets of iron rails
unexpectedly overlap
moths flap toward lamp
light, an eternal sign
that traces your shadow

~ ~ Liu Xiaobo

Translated by Jeffrey Yang
 [From:  PEN American Center]

They wouldn't let him attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony.  His wife is under house arrest. They wouldn't let her go either. He was supposed to receive his award today.  It's the first time in 75 years that no representative of the winner was allowed to make the trip to receive the medal.[3]  He may not be getting out soon, but his words are.  Greywolf Press will be publishing his poetry collection, and Harvard University a selection of his works, in 2012.  

Not everyone being incarcerated for their writings or peaceful activism is as famous or well-known as Xiaobo.  Scores of others are complete unknowns, caught up nevertheless in the web of injustice.  You rarely hear about them. Some vague notion occasionally, but it seems so far from one's daily life.  Not something one thinks about a lot, or even at all.  Even for those who follow such things, sometimes silence is too easy.  It takes over, becomes habitual:  Situation noted.  Now what. 

Maybe it's time to go bang some pans in the street, as Molly Ivins once suggested.  Or write a letter.  Something.  Anything.  My inner voice just won't let this go for some reason.  These are fellow human beings.  They could be us. We could be them. We are them--all in this together.  Some of us just get to be more free than others, get to have our say without repercussion.  Should be something that's possible for all.  (In a perfect world.  Which of course it isn't.)  (Okay, off the soapbox now.) Anyway ....if anyone cares to join in and write a letter,  grab a pen.  Get a stamp.  Some cases and addresses can be found here. 

Words matter.