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''No safety in cowardice'' could be



Subject: ''No safety in cowardice'' could be activists' motto

''No safety in cowardice'' could be activists' motto

By Grant McCool

NEW YORK, March 26 (Reuters) - One travelled on foot in rural Burma
gathering testimony from villagers forcibly removed from their homes and
terrorised 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 Organisation, 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 Centre 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 organisations. 

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 foetus 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 labour tradition intended to redeem her family for the
alleged sins of an ancestor. 

She said she was forced to work for a priest and fulfil 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 organisation. 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.'' (RBK.N)  

22:04 03-25-99