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More bad news from Russia’s southern republics.
On Friday, Oleg Orlov, head of Russia’s leading human rights NGO Memorial, was abducted, along with three journalists, from a hotel in Igushetia. The men who abducted Orlov and the journalists drove them to the Ingush-Chechen border, beat them, and told them to not return to Ingushetia. Memorial staff were in Ingushetia to monitor a demonstration by residents of the republic angry at authorities for not stopping a wave of abductions, murders, and disappearances.
At the demonstration, police beat demonstrators and attacked them with electroshock weapons, according to monitors on the scene.
One day later, in neighboring Dagestan, Farid Babayev, a prominent Dagestani member of Russia’s Liberal Yabloko party succumbed to gunshot wounds inflicted by an unknown attacker four days earlier.
According to the Moscow Times:
Babayev had spoken out about human rights abuses,
organized protests and criticized regional authorities, Yavlinsky said
in a statement issued Saturday. He had investigated the shooting of a
peaceful demonstrator, the abductions of civilians and the use of
excessive force in special police operations, the statement said.
Today, another prominent political figure in Dagestan and his wife were found killed in their home.
None of this bodes well for stability in Southern Russia or the entire Caucasus area.
Human Rights Watch, Voices for Justice Dinner
San Francisco, CA
Opening with a film on cluster munitions, the guests at Human Rights Watch’s annual fundraising dinner event (the elite $250-a-plate crowd) ate their pear, spinach and gorgonzola salad slowly at first. As an intern charged with making sure the votive candles made it onto the tables and guests received the customery shwag of t-shirts, bags and pens emblazoned with the Human Rights Watch logo, I was in a unique place to watch the dinner unfold.
The Human Rights Watch Voices for Justice dinner celebrates the work of two individuals working to protect human rights around the world. The year, the defenders included Hollman Morris from Colombia and Sunila Abeysekera from Sri Lanka.
Introducing Morris, Jose Miguel Vivanco, Human Rights Watch Americas Director, discussed how Morris’ work goes “beyond what is reported.” He has received death wreathes, had his phone tapped and has had to leave the country on more occasions than one. But he returns, to shed light on the situation in Colombia.
Colombia has the second largest number of internally displaced people in the world, and “to work as a journalist [in Colombia] has become one of the most dangerous professions,” Vivanco said.
Through a translator, Morris spoke to the nearly 600 strong audience in the grand ballroom of the Fairmont Hotel: “If you listen to my government and President Bush, you might think that all is well in Colombia. That is not the whole story.” He went on to say that killings and massacres still persist and 40 congressman are under investigation for working with paramilitary groups. “The few of us who do go out to find the truth face serious risks,” Morris said. Maintaining a strong partnership with Human Rights Watch has allowed Morris to avoid becoming a statistic as just another journalist taken away in the night. A late-night call from Vivanco has already saved Morris’ life once.
“By being here tonight, you too are sending a strong message to the Colombian government,” Morris added. 600 chairs scooted out slightly to stand up in applause of the lone human rights defender on stage.
Fred Abrahams, from Human Rights Watch Emergency division then introduced Abeysekera. Describing the tense situation in Sri Lanka and the not-long-ago reality of 17 Sri Lankan aid workers being shot in the head. Abeysekera’s work has brought optimism to an increasingly disheartening situation. As Abrahams said, “The work of Sunila and others has minimized the suffering of civilians stuck in this war.”
Abeysekera began by describing a monument to those passed away with photos, “the photos on the monument are of people I knew.” With check-points every 250 yards, Abeysekera has combined field skills with advocacy in an attempt to document abuses on all sides of the conflict. Despite the fact that children as young as nine-years old are abducted, Abeysekera has hope for the future of her country. This hope allows the main course to be eaten and to give way to apple strudel with whip cream. Somehow it doesn’t seem right to be eating such a delicious meal as these abuses persist. But the dinner brings in the revenue to help make Human Rights Watch possible.
The auction of three “experiences” complete with Human Rights Watch related photos, guest appearances from Human Rights Watch staff, and gift certificates for dinner at some of San Francisco’s finest restaurants went for between $30,000 to $40,000 per package. Raising more than enough money for me to pay back my college loans, or for an emergency researcher and thousands of pages of Human Right’s Reports to be translated.
Faced with responsibility of clean-up duty; gathering left-over supplies as the dinner came to a close, encouraging center-pieces to be brought home and boxing the candles back up, I also had the privilege of attending the “after-party”. Despite the seriousness of human rights work and the concept, at least in my mind, that human rights work couldn’t possibly be “fun,” per se, the Fairmont’s touristy (and politically incorrect) Tonga room proved otherwise.
The defenders, Morris and Abeysekera, alongside Human Rights Watch staff, family and friends relaxed, danced and drank in a way that can only give hope to the future of human rights. At the end of the day, we all just wanted to enjoy ourselves, and tomorrow we’d continue fighting for human rights around the world.
For more information on Human Rights Watch: http://www.hrw.org/
Voices for Justice Dinner: http://hrw.org/englishcomm/docs/2007/08/10/usdom16644.htm
At the heads of Commonwealth meeting in Uganda — where 53 states belong to the former British Commonwealth — UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown pledged 700 million pounds in development aid to the East African country. This adds to the yearly combined giving amount of $26 billion from Europe and recent substantial debt forgiveness by G8 finance ministers.
But aid, more often than not, stifles real development and industrialization in Africa. In fact, it goes further by enabling corruption and putting power in the hands of those who don’t deserve it. This isn’t merely coming from Western policy-wonks. Kenyan economist James Shikwati called for "ending this terrible aid" in an article noting that, on the whole, aid also hurts trade. And the president of Uganda himself, Yoweri Museveni, once said, "I don’t want aid; I want trade."
Investment capital is a needed component in the fight against abject poverty. Business solutions — in the form of direct investment by responsible, rights-abiding foreign companies — will help deliver slowing economies like that in Uganda and Africa at large from the world’s worst poverty by employing native Africans, paying them relatively good money, and training them in important disciplines.
Foreign direct investment isn’t the only trick in the playbook. The burgeoning microfinance industry, comprised by for-profit businesses and non-profit organizations, will help bring small native businesses to their feet and increase the flow of accessible capital at rates comparatively good for the borrowers.
Development aid has its place — but that’s just it: it has a place. It best assists emergency endeavors by funding medical treatments and food delivery. Development aid shouldn’t be the bread and butter of money going into Africa.
Bottom line: If the world is interested in ending endemic poverty in Africa, leaders should stop sending so much aid and start encouraging more trade.
Globalization is touted by some to be a weapon of unfair free trade where grossly underpaid workers on the other side of the world slave to produce trinkets for the West. Through streamlined international trade, consumers are able to choose cheap, foreign goods produced in environmentally unfriendly factories over homegrown, regulation bound local companies. At least, these are some of the fire and brimstone stories meant to keep environmentalists and humanitarians like myself awake at night.
However, globalization, much like any tool of humanity, can have positive benefits and negative consequences, depending on how it is used. Across the globe there is a consumer-led push for change, and this stems from a myriad of locations.
One such example can be seen coming from the Japanese car industry where new and improved plastics are being researched to replace many heavier metal parts in vehicles. These plastics will make automobiles lighter, improving fuel efficiency, and they are easier to recycle than their metallic counterparts, for when your beloved car does finally pass away.
It is not an undying love for the environment that is the basis for the billions of dollars companies put into research and development, but rather fierce international competition in the courtship of increasingly discerning consumers. “Both Asian and European chemical companies are competing to produce the next highly refined synthetic that can offer a competitive edge.” Writes Louise Cole in the November 5-11 edition of ICIS Chemical Business magazine about these new plastics. Top of the line producers of high end, high technology products are understanding more and more that in order to make a profit, they will need to also protect this earth.
Another sign of hope can be seen not too far away across the Sea of Japan in China (that long time friend to mother earth *cough cough*). The China Daily reported on November 2nd that during an APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) meeting, China developed a set of environmental and social standards that businesses would be required to follow when conducting operations abroad. Clearly, China also wants to jump on this environmentally friendly approach to doing business as well.
For example, Chinese businesses, along with the guidance of NGOs such as Global Environmental Institute, would have to survey the social and ecological damage they could potentially cause by their presence, and set up strategies and funds to counteract this negative impact. This practice would actually help developing countries since Chinese businesses have the financial stability to invest in long-term environmental goals while other businesses strapped for cash might rape the land of resources and run to make a short term profit.
Again, what drives this change? “…China is something of a factory for the world, a big proportion of the imported raw materials are transformed into products that are sent to industrialized countries in Europe and America” writes the Xiong Lie. They have customers to keep happy.
Amnesty International has a devastating new documentary up about the segregation of Romani children in Slovak schools. As I work on Roma issues, this hit me hard. Slovakia has been a member of the European Union since 2004, yet it still practices blatant, state-sanctioned racial discrimination, and denies its Roma citizens (who account for about 1/10 of the total population) basic human rights. Shameful.
Here is another video that should give you a better idea of the appalling conditions of life Roma in Eastern Europe are subject to.
the short film is titled "Vuka Vrcevica," the name of a slum on the Belgrade municipal dump in Belgrade, where thousands of people live in abject poverty and squalor. (I’ve seen this slum myself, and it’s awful.)
On a more positive note, IntLawGrrls has a post about the case that is being called "Europe’s Brown v. The Board of Education," a case in which the ECtHR ruled against the Czech Republic for systematic discrimination against Romani students.
Europe’s Brown v. Board of Education
It would be hard to exaggerate the level of racism experienced by Roma
(widely known as “gypsies,” a word many Roma abhor) in virtually every
facet of daily life. Hostility toward Roma runs so wide and deep that
it is peculiarly difficult to dismantle: Governments that have an
otherwise strong commitment to human rights all too often act on the
belief that Roma have earned the stereotypes that are enforced to their
detriment.
Thus it is all the more noteworthy that discrimination
against Roma in the Czech Republic provided the occasion for this
week’s historic judgment by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
In the Case of D.H. and Others v. the Czech Republic the Court’s Grand Chamber ruled on November 13, 2007, that Czech Roma have suffered unlawful discrimination in relation to education,
a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights and its Protocol
No. 1. (Proud disclosure: My colleagues at the Open Society Justice
Initiative, James Goldston and Anthony Lester, were lead attorneys in the case.)
The
decision marked a watershed in anti-discrimination law in Europe. For
the first time, the ECHR found that a pattern of racial discrimination
in primary education, in this case resulting in an especially
pernicious form of segregation, violated the anti-discrimination
provision of the European Convention.
San Francisco Green Festival, November 9-11, 2007
Introducing Amy Goodman, Jason McKain, of Free Speech TV told audiences of the need for “connecting to movements for empowering local citizens to revitalize democracy,” and the need for media to “represent community interests, not corporate interests.”
Who is Amy Goodman? A tireless advocate for free speech, free press and democracy now, an investigative journalist, author and occasionally, an inspirational speaker.
“Every time we run Democracy Now something happens… It’s as if we’ve entered into a democratic dream-state,” McKain said, “we see the resilience and power of people fighting back.”
Short in stature, but enormous in presence, Amy Goodman began by using the date to commemorate Ken Saro-Wiwa’s death. A Nigerian author and environmentalist, Saro-Wiwa spoke out against Shell in Nigeria, and lead nonviolent protests before his trial, allegedly under the watchful eye of Shell oil, and subsequent execution November 10, 1995.
Goodman then went on to discuss Burma. While Condoleeza Rice has castigated China for supporting the regime, Chevron continues fueling the military junta for supporting the regime. Despite US government sanctions on Burma, as a company, Chevron is not being held accountable. Despite Rice’s rhetoric, she has served on the Board of Directors for Chevron (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2001/05/05/MN223743.DTL&type=printable) yet has not taken action to hold the corporation accountable.
The oil theme persisted, and Goodman went on to discuss British Petroleum (BP) and it’s impending $500 million dollar partnership with the University of California school system over the next ten years, as well as Exxonmobil’s $100 million dollar project at Stanford University. Conflict of interest? Perhaps. Especially when considering Exxonmobil allegedly spent millions to deny global warming was fueled by people.
The most recent San Francisco oil spill highlights the importance for developing, creating and sustaining alternatives to oil.
The end of her speech shifted focus from oil to instances of successful movements and protests from the Port of Olympia, Washington to Jena, Louisiana. She mentioned her newest book Static, and implored the audience to support free media, “We need a media that is the fourth estate, not one that covers for the estate.”
Goodman’s short speech exposed issues and corporate ties unexposed by other media sources. If Americans for Informed Democracy is to persist as a useful and active organization which brings issues to light, the issues discussed by Goodman and Democracy Now must be brought to light.
http://www.greenfestivals.org/content/view/626/281/
http://www.democracynow.org/
Last November 11th, I wrote this:
Whether you call it Armistice Day, Remembrance Day, Veterans Day, Poppy Day, or the Day of Peace, November eleventh is the day hundreds of millions of people around the world mark the end of the First World War. Eighty-eight years ago today, the guns fell silent on the Western Front of that war. The Armistice was signed at 11am –the eleventh hour of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month of 1918.
More than 15 million people, including almost 7 million civilians, lost their lives in World War I. For Europe, it was the first in a series of connected conflicts that would shake the continent for decades to come. Beginning with the victims of World War I, an estimated 95 million Europeans lost their lives to political violence within the span of a single generation.
Reflecting on such awful numbers makes me question human nature, and its capacity for cruelty. Looking at Europe today, however, fills me with hope. Peace, here, is a great multi-generational project. And it continues today.
I will leave you with the words of Robert Schuman, one of the fathers of European unification.
"World peace cannot be safeguarded without the making of creative efforts proportionate to the dangers which threaten it."
-Robert Schuman, the Schuman Declaration, 1950
This year, I am spending November 11th in Sarajevo, a European city that bears the scars of a war that took place within my memory. A hundred thousand people perished between 1992 and the winter of 1995 in this small country, and nearly one out of every ten victims died here, in Sarajevo, the victims of attacks that deliberately targeted civilians as they went about their everyday lives. Today, Sarajevo is alive and culturally booming, but it will be along time before it recovers from the loss of so many lives, and the destruction of so much history.
Thousands of landmines lurk under the soil in the lovely hills surrounding the city, and cemeteries filled with civilian war dead stand out as splashes of striking white in Sarajevo’s old neighborhoods.
Politically, Bosnia is a mess, and a long way from European integration. One can only imagine where Bosnia would be today if the Bosnian War had never taken place. A civilian war victim I spoke with this past summer told me that despite the unspeakable tragedy that befell him, he desires peace, not vengeance. More than anything, he said to me, he wishes, every day, that time could be reversed to the day the war broke out and history altered so it never happened at all, so his family would still be alive and happy.
So, my thoughts today are on war’s long, difficult aftermath, and the necessity of working for a world in which diplomacy, tolerance, and compromise replace tanks, and mortars, and helicopter gunships — a world that would be safe for you and me alike, whoever we are, and wherever we live.
This response is a bit late coming, but there was an editorial that I have simply been unable to shake ever since it was published in early October. New York Times writer, Thomas L. Friedman called me out, and I just haven’t been able to get his words out of my head. And because I am allowed to, I have to get this off my chest.
In one of his weekly opinion articles Friedman commented on my generation: the do-gooder-twenty-somethings. He is so impressed with us, and what an honor it is. We have the optimism; we have the opportunity; we go where others have not gone before. We are amazing. But, wait, here is comes, the adoration and praise was just the calm before the storm. We have been sourly named “Generation Q,” the Quiet Americans. Friedman eloquently tells us that we are “too quiet, too online [hello], for [our] own good…activism can only be uploaded, the old-fashioned way – by young voters speaking truth to power, face to face, in big numbers…virtual politics is just that – virtual.”
Friedman points out that there are certain issues that we, the twenty-somethings, aren’t addressing enough. Okay, note to self. But, there was something else that hit below my altruistic belt. Friedman states, “Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy didn’t change the world by asking people to join their Facebook crusades or to download their platforms.” And I agree that these are probably not the most powerful political tools. But, don’t you wonder; would they have if they could?
I am not advocating that every twenty-something join a blog (and if you have continued reading this far, you are probably wondering why anyone gave me that power) instead of marching on Washington. I sense a gaze of disappointment in the older and wiser and I find it frustrating. All right Friedman, you got me. You have discovered my true fear and vulnerability – my effectiveness as a do-gooder-twenty-something – do I truly have the power effectively evoke change? We, the twenty-somethings, have more exposure to global problems, and more forums to worry about them on. And we are exploring the possibilities. Each generation has presented a new medium for change, and we will work with ours. Do not fear, the light of creative altruism will shine through; do not mistake our evolving voice for a quiescent one.
Read the op-ed.
Pakistan seems to be on the minds of a lot of our bloggers here at AID. Here’s my two cents to this issue:
On Sunday, as Pakistan’s General Musharraf declared a state of emergency in Pakistan, which will enable him to severely limit democratic freedoms in that country, the Bush Administration made it clear that this will have no effect on the billions of dollars we are pouring into Pakistan as our ally in the war on terror.
Exactly how many times does the United States need to get burned by propping up unpopular leaders who attempt to keep domestic power through dictatorship-like governance? Isn’t this similar to a Shah-run Iran over a generation ago or a Taliban-run Afghanistan two decades ago? We simply had to pour our money and support into those despotic regimes because if we didn’t the Soviet Union would have jumped on that weakness and communism and evil would have won in the end.
Sure…
Too bad back then we made problems worse for ourselves now, with a war in one of those countries, and harsh anti-US sentiment in the other. This is also a terrible move for an administration that built their foreign policy strategy on promoting democracy in the Middle East. “If your agenda is to save attacks in the U.S. and eliminate Al Qaeda, only the
Pakistani Army can do that,” said the close aide to General Musharraf. “For that, you will have to forget about elections in Pakistan for maybe two to three years.” (Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/05/washington/05diplo.html?ex=1352005200&en=bf4c7e3f9b8bbbbc&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink )
The Bush Administration has made it clear that their efforts are not to spread democracy, but first to “squash out terrorism”. However, as Ben Franklin noted during the birth of our nation, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
The advancement of democracy throughout the world has always been uneven, and fraught with setbacks and false miracles. The last few years have demonstrated this powerfully.
Latin America is becoming, overall, more democratic. This is good news, but lamentable anti-democratic tendencies in Venezuela and elsewhere warrant close watching.
Democracy in Africa is a mixed bag, with failed states and entrenched poverty proving to be as much, if not more, of an obstacle to democratisation as authoritarian regimes. In countries such as the Democratic republic of Congo, free elections have not increased security. What Africa needs most at this time is not a rapid proliferation of free elections (which could actually do far more harm than good), but rapid stabilisation, regional cooperation, and pro-poor economic development.
In Asia, the minority of democracies seem stable for now, but so do the majority of non-democratic regimes. The Saffron Revolution in Burma failed to cause the collapse of that country’s brutal junta, despite the unfathomably brave actions of its long-suffering citizens. Pakistan has just been put under martial law, with opposition activists and lawyers being rounded up en masse and independent media severely curtailed. China, the region’s fastest rising power, continues to be a powerful refutation of the oft-espoused idea that market liberalisation naturally brings greater freedom for ordinary people.
The same can be said for Russia, where civil society has been marginalized in the public sphere and repeatedly bludgeoned by the ever more anti-democratic policies of the Government of President Vladimir Putin.
Democracy is ailing in Russia’s "Near Abroad" as well, with Central Asia dominated by authoritarian regimes of varying degrees of brutality, and the Caucasus region remaining volatile, and largely un-democratic. Just the other day, it became clear that the OSCE will not be able to effectively monitor Russia’s upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections, and may have it’s election monitoring activities restricted or curtailed altogether in countries such as Armenia, increasingly swayed more by Russia’s anti-Western line than the European Union’s promises of closer ties.
If liberal democracy is entrenched anywhere, it is in Western Europe. But, even there, the forecast is not uniformly blue skies and sunshine. The rise of right wing parties is posing unprecedented social and political challenges in relatively tolerant countries (such as Switzerland and Belgium) and even the most tolerant, such as the Netherlands.
And now we come to the United States and Canada, to the majority Anglophone democracies North America. Canada, democracy-wise, falls more in line with Western European states than it’s nearest southern neighbor. With strong and independent institutions and a dynamic multi-party legislature, Canada isn’t perfect by any means, but its system is open, self correcting, and self-improving.
Tragically, this is no longer so in the United States. Eight years of unrelenting, unpunished corruption and law-breaking have badly damaged the United States’ democracy in reputation and in practice. Public faith in the legislative and executive branches are at historic laws. The Department of Justice, with its long string of corruption scandals and reputation for politically-tainted policy, can lamentably be now seen as neither as a pillar of the rule of law nor an independent branch of government. But the problem is even more severe than that: with more and more evidence surfacing of Justice Department officials –from the Attorney General on down– collaborating in criminal actions by the Bush Administration, the Justice Department itself is becoming the country’s most destructive underminer of the rule of law. To these alarming realities, American civil society has been slow to react, but rule of law organisations, most prominently the Center for Constitutional Rights and ACLU, are now, at this very late stage, working to together to strike back hard at the administration that has turned what was a flawed liberal democracy into something unrecognizable to its own citizens and the people of the world.
