This post is about how important is the fight against human rights violations and the fight for justice. The people must understand that this fight is not only for the victims, but for all citizens, for democracy, for a free future, for the belief in the citizenship's empowerment, in short for the most basic principles the humankind has fought in the last centuries. And this fight should be fought for all, because the consequencies of a unpunished serious human rights violation could become tragic, the violations could rapidly to spread and together with other kinds of violations become a dystopian society for the people. In this fight for justice, some victims has had only reasons for tears, they are still, after of several years, waiting for some reason to smile. They are waiting for justice and while it have not been delivered, there is not reason to smile. The injustice can not last forever. This post is a summary of two articles. The first with the title above was published at ttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/sep/21/humanrights1. The second was published at http://www.theadvocatesforhumanrights.org/human_rights_basics
Sixty years ago, in the wake of the Holocaust, the United Nations ( U.N.) issued its Universal Declaration of Human Rights (U.D.H.R.) proclaiming 'the basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled. In this review special to mark the 60th anniversary, we look at the progress made since 1948, and detail the tragic cost of failure. Here, we talk to five people fighting for human rights. 1) Marjorie Ojule, 32, Ugandan refugee, now a trustee of Women for Refugee Women in the U.K. - In Uganda I was active in opposition politics at a grassroots level: working in my village, helping women to know their rights and teaching them reading and writing. I was detained twice. The horror that I experienced in there, you would not wish that on anyone, not even your enemy. I was tortured, I was raped, I was burnt with cigarettes, I was cut with razors, eletric shocks: all the horrible things you think you can think of to get information from someone. Eventually I escaped and came to England. It was scary but I would be in this tortured for some time, and I just wanted to be able to breathe fresh air again. The child I have now is out of rape and at first I did not want to keep her, I wanted to put her for adoption. When I arrived in 2002, they took me to the hospital: I was malnourished, I was dehydrated. After six months I was going to counseling and it made me a strong person, I was feeling myself and I realised this child was part of me. I got tired of sitting at home so I started looking for charities and it was through Women for Refugee Women that I met Natasha. I've been public speaker ever since, telling my story and telling the stories of other women who can not speak English. It felt like therapy as well: when there is a place where you can explode with anger and say 'why the government do this?' It feels good afterwards. Everyone ask me, 'oh Marjorie, how did you manage to deal with all these things?' I would say the work I do with you keeps me busy. I've been to the House of Commons. I stood up and spoke. Natasha tells me I am amazing and I say, 'I am amazing because of you'. That makes me cry because if it was not for people like that I could not have had that power. I am so grateful to them. 2) Hollman Morris, 40, Colombian journalist, winner of the 2007 human rights watch defender prize - My seven-year-old daughter asked me 'Daddy, why do you only interview sad people?' She had just seen one of my shows where I talked to victims of Colombia 's conflict but I explained to her they are not just sad, they also have dreams, hope and dignity. The people I interview are the voice of the 'other' Colombia, a Colombia that you do not see in most media, a Colombia that some people wish did not exist. I knew from when I set out to be a journalist that my job was to show their stories. I defined my role as a journalist because I decided that I had to find out how people were being slaughtered and nothing happened in this country. That has always meant problems for me with all the armed actors in the Colombian Conflict. Since 1997 there have always been death threats from one group or another. Around the same time my wife Patty told me she was pregnant. We fled to Spain with the help of an Amnesty International programme for human rights defenders. After a year we came back to Colombia. Our job as journalists is to look after people's rights. In a way we are guardians of human rights. We may not be the activists who put out urgent action notices every day. But our work as journalists is to write, publish and denounce when there is a violation of any fundamental right. My generation has never seen a day of peace in Colombia. What I want is through journalism is to try to build a better country for my children so that they can live in peace. 3) Zmitser Dashkevich, leader of Youth Front, Belarus - I was arrested in September 2006 and charged with 'organising and participating in the activity of an unregistered NGO'. After six weeks in detention and on trial I was sentenced to one-and-a-half years in prison. At the time I was leader of Youth Front, which is a Christian organisation of young people in Belarus. It is an independent political and social force which is in stark opposition to President Alexander Lukashenko, the last dictator in Europe. Lukashenko has openly praised Stalin and we believe his politics are leading to the moral degeneration of Belarussian society. On six occasions we have tried register our organisation but every time our application was refused. In 2006 lukashenko understood that he was losing power, because the younger generation, despite all the ideology and repression did not support him. We were holding protests against falsification of the vote. So he introduced a law making it illegal to participate in the activities of an unregistered organisation. I was the first to be prosecuted. So I was sent to prison. very soon I started receiving hundreds of letters of support every day. They came from Belarussians, and from members of human rights groups from all over the world. Activists also sent thousands of letters to the government. The government had paint us oppositionists as marginal group on the payroll of the CIA. But when the prison guards saw all my letters, they said:' Wow, the people are really behind this guy.' They started to understand the gap between the propaganda and the reality. As a direct result of the huge campaign of public solidarity I was released two months early and returned to lead Youth Front. 4) Odette Mupenzi, victim of Rwanda genocide - I realised being a Tutsi was not considered good by some people when I was 11, because I had a teacher who picked on us, saying we had funny faces. Then in 1990, the majority Hutus killed many Tutsi intellectuals in a stadium near where I lived. After that, I knew we were in danger, but I did not expect what was coming. In January 1994, my family stopped sleeping at home because we thought we would be taken away during the night. When the genocide began in April, we fled to a religious seminary. The next day, lots of people turned up with machetes, guns and axes. Many of us hid in a classroom. They put a gun to my face and shot me. I could hear people praying, then there was silence, everyone was dead. The next thing I remember was waking up in hospital. I've been fighting for life ever since. An ONG helped me get treatment in Switzerland. I first met human rights group Aegis Trust when it set up a genocide memorial in Kigali in 2004. I was very ill at the time, my bones were iinfected and i was living in morphine. In 2006, I came to England. I've had metal bones put in my jaw, and skin taken from my side and put in my face. I can eat with a spoon and fork. Now, I feel alive again. I do not want to go back to Rwanda. I want to live in a country where I do not have to look over my shoulder all the time. 5) Ignatius Warghana, 25, Indonesian activist - I was imprisoned when I was 20 years old, due to my involvement in the National Student League for Democracy. In January 2003, the President increase fuel and eletricity prices, so mass demonstrations took place across Indonesia. We held a demonstration in Jakarta and it ended with a performance n which we burnt pictures of the President. the police surrounded us and one of my friends was captured. He was blindfolded and they threatened him, saying they would shot him and throw his body in the sea. When we went to the police station to find him, they arrested met too. They put me in a cell that they called 'the tiger cage', it is like when you are in the zoo and you see animals in a cage. Every trial the president's supporter came and threatened me and my lawyer. In April 2003, I was sentenced to three years. I was put in a cell they called the dry cell because there is no water. There was a prisoner, a member of the President's party, who fought me every week. It was not really a fight because they were so many and I am only one. Amnesty International is familiar with the Indonesian movement and it made a greeting-card campaign, sending cards to me and to the Indonesian President. I counted more than 4,000 letters. they made me feel better and gave me hope but, they meant that the prison officer was careful with me. I was there for two years and seven months. The most significant factor in keeping my spirits up was the campaign. When I got letters from children in the U.K. I could not believe that they were aware of me and were doing something about it. The first thing I did when I was released was demonstrate outside the prison because even though we got a new president, he has continued repressive policies against activists. Prison is a bad memory but I got a lot of lessons from it. I'm going to study human rights and politics at York University. This is what I live for, this struggle.
human rights are standards that allow all people to live with dignity, freedom, equality, justice and peace. Every person has these rights simply because they are human beings. Human rights are essential to the full development of individuals and communities. Many people view human rights as a set of moral principles that apply to everyone. Human rights are also part of international law, contained in treaties and declarations that spell out specific rights that countries are required to uphold. Human rights reflect the minimum standards necessary for people to live with dignity. Human rights give the people the freedom to choose how to live, how they express themselves, what kind of government they want to support, among other things. Human rights also guarantee people the means necessary to satisfy their basic needs, such as food, housing, and education, so they can take full advantage of all oportunities. Finally, by guaranteeing life, libert, equality, and security, human rights protect people against abuse by those who are more powerful.
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