[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index ][Thread Index ]

NEWS FEATURE-''No Safety in Cowardi



Subject: NEWS FEATURE-''No Safety in Cowardice'' Could Be Activists' Motto

FEATURE-''No Safety in Cowardice'' Could Be Activists' Motto

               Reuters
               25-MAR-99

               NEW YORK (Reuters) - One traveled on foot in
               rural Burma gathering testimony from villagers
               forcibly removed from their homes and terrorized by
               soldiers. One who escaped from sexual slavery in
               West Africa now helps spirit others out of bondage. 

               Another is a student leader who was repeatedly
               arrested and tortured by authorities in his campaign
               for democratic reforms in Kenya, and the fourth
               defends poor people sent to death row --
               sometimes wrongly -- in the United States, where
               capital punishment is widespread. 

               All four, men and women in their 20s, met in New
               York this week before receiving a human rights
               award Wednesday night from the Reebok
               International Ltd. athletic footwear company. 

               Gathered around a conference table a day before
               the awards ceremony, they discussed their
               activism, their hopes for their generation, the state
               of world human rights and the compassion, pain and
               despair that have indelibly marked their lives. 

               "Despite my suffering ... the fact that I survived has
               come to teach me there is no safety in cowardice,"
               said Suba Churchill Meshack, 26, chairman of the
               Kenya University Student Organization, who has
               been arrested and tortured eight times by
               authorities, who he said pulled off all of his toenails.

               "Everybody who bears a human face must stand up
               and rise to the occasion when it comes to fighting
               dictatorships," said Meshack, who was expelled
               from a university for speaking out against corruption
               in Kenya's university system and in the government
               of longtime President Daniel arap Moi. 

               His elderly father died of shock in 1996 after being
               wrongly told that his son had been killed in prison. 


               ACTIVISTS RETELL STORIES OF OTHERS BEING
               MISTREATED 

               Some of the activists cried as they recounted
               human rights abuses and listened to one another's
               stories of being tortured or seeing friends or people
               they came to know being mistreated or killed in front
               of them. 

               They said they felt their work had gone largely
               unrecognized by the world outside their immediate
               community and all expressed a determination to turn
               adversity into positive change in their societies. 

               "The mistreatment of people is frighteningly
               universal," said Tanya Greene, 28, a lawyer for the
               Southern Center for Human Rights. In just two years
               she has become known as a tenacious defender of
               indigent black death row inmates in Georgia and
               Alabama who are victims of racial discrimination. 

               "It seems like you can go to all corners of the world
               and find people who are being mistreated in the
               name of government, order, discipline and tradition,"
               said Greene, a Harvard Law School graduate who
               lives in Atlanta. 

               "I think this award and meeting these three people
               inspires in me the power of young people to just go
               out and do things." 

               The four received the Reebok Human Rights Award,
               which was established by the company in 1988 and
               comes with a $25,000 grant. All 56 recipients in the
               past 11 years are advocates of nonviolent change.
               They are selected by company advisers who
               receive nominations from human rights
               organizations. 

               BURMESE MAN IN EXILE HIDING FROM
               MILITARY RULERS 

               "I used to think that people from Burma suffered the
               most but now what I've heard from the others, it
               makes me think I need to learn more about the other
               countries and why human rights abuses happen
               there too," said Ka Hsaw Wa, 28, an advocate for
               ethnic and rural minorities in Burma (now called
               Myanmar) who has lived in hiding in Thailand for 11
               years. 

               Co-founder of EarthRights International, he
               documented oral evidence and filed an
               unprecedented class-action lawsuit in a U.S. court
               against Unocal company for alleged human rights
               violations on the Yadana gas pipeline project in
               Burma. 

               The testimony accuses soldiers of the ruling military
               government -- the State Law and Order Restoration
               Council (SLORC) -- of clearing villages to make way
               for the pipeline. Among the worst atrocities, he saw
               a woman impaled with the branch of a tree through
               her vagina and was told of a soldier who cut out the

               fetus of a pregnant woman and killed her. 

               The woman's 12-year-old brother vowed to arm
               himself and seek revenge against soldiers. "I heard
               that he doesn't want any education, all he wants is
               revenge. I don't want that happening in my country,"
               an emotional Ka Hsaw Wa said. 

               Julie Dogbadzi of Ghana was sent away from home
               at the age of seven in a sexual slavery and labor
               tradition intended to redeem her family for the
               alleged sins of an ancestor. 

               She said she was forced to work for a priest and
               fulfill him sexually. While she declined to discuss
               details of her experiences, she has previously
               recounted being forced to work in the fields with
               little or no food and being beaten by the priest if she
               refused his sexual demands. 

               "I feel a bit sad to know what is going on around the
               world about human rights and meeting my
               colleagues fighting for the rights of others. It
               touches me, it touches my heart a lot," said
               Dogbadzi, covering her face with her hand. 

               ESCAPE FROM BONDAGE LEADS TO FREEDOM
               FOR OTHERS 

               Dogbadzi, 24, escaped after 14 years in bondage,
               taking her two children with her to the refuge of the
               International Needs organization. She has become
               an advocate for other young girls and women forced
               into the practice known as Trokosi in the Upper
               Volta region of West Africa. 

               Speaking in the Eve language through an
               interpreter, she said she had helped free 1,000
               women but 4,000 were still in bondage. Her work
               was instrumental in getting Ghana's parliament to
               pass legislation that outlaws the practice. 

               "I think we are all working in the right direction. I
               want to call on young people to work harder to free
               our colleagues from bondage and suffering and to
               get their rights," she said. 

               At one point in the discussion, Greene, who says
               her family has been the victim of racial
               discrimination, and the Burmese activist briefly
               debated the relative merits of the U.S. political
               system and those in other countries, which often
               look to America as a model of democracy and
               justice. 

               "So you mean you got a great system but not the
               best?" Ka Hsaw Wa asked. "We have a really bad
               system. The worst." 

               Greene replied in essence that every endangered
               human life was worth saving if it could be saved.
               "We can't make a hierarchy. I think it's dangerous
               because then I can sit and think I have nothing to
               say," she said. 


               "But actually the people that I serve, whose lives I'm
               trying to save, are in the same boat as the people
               you are trying to save because they are all going to
               die at the hands of the government if we don't step
               in. It's just mine is legal and yours isn't."