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NEWS FEATURE-''No Safety in Cowardi
- Subject: NEWS FEATURE-''No Safety in Cowardi
- From: Rangoonp@xxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 20:30:00
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."