"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
"Truth-tellers arrive at the United Nations, unite to confront dictatorships." - The Geneva Summit
Geneva Summit for Democracy and Human Rights 2018
Yesterday at the United Nations Human Rights Council a group of human rights defenders and victims of repression gathered to denounces what is going on in their respective countries. Today, beginning at 9:00am and for entire day these activists will be gathered along with hundreds of registered participants to attend and participate in the 10th edition of the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy. Watch it here over live stream, and get involved providing your commentary, questions and hashtags over social media. Please use the hashtag #GS18 and #GenevaSummit so that your comments can be readily found and share the live stream link with others.
Over the past couple of days have taken a look back to the beginning when the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy came into existence and also speculate on its future. Today will look at some of the highlights from yesterday, from around the world and look forward to commenting over twitter during the event. Former Venezuelan prisoner of conscience Antonio Ledezma tweeted: "Three years ago I was forcibly abducted for thinking differently from the narco-regime of Venezuela.I will not stop my struggle to defend the freedom and human rights of our Venezuelan brothers." UN Watch highlighted the plight of Cuban prisoner of conscience Eduardo Cardet. Venezuela
Hace 3 años me secuestraron a la fuerza por pensar diferente al narco-régimen de Venezuela. No detendré mi lucha por defender la libertad y los derechos humanos de nuestros hermanos venezolanos #GS18pic.twitter.com/BAaxK6rVpB
"Tomorrow we'll hear from our human rights heroes. It is this whole handful of 'troublemakers' who are keeping the boat of the entire humanity afloat. We should be grateful to these heroes who remind us that dictators are bound to fail."
—Yang Jianli #GS18https://t.co/r2xoVHgsFkpic.twitter.com/1opIDSC3wh
"As Vladimir Bukovsky once noted, it’s a remarkable feature of Russian history that even in the absolute darkest periods of repression and propaganda you always find people who are willing to stand up against tyranny — and that’s what we see today.”
—Vladimir Kara-Murza @UN#GS18pic.twitter.com/5PnzrSA7pX
Sophia Hopperger: "The empty chair on this panel is dedicated to Eduardo Cardet. ... Dr. Cardet was sentenced to 3 years in prison on trumped up charges. ... Today we say to Dr. Cardet we have not forgotten you." #GS18#Cubapic.twitter.com/Po1pRCZfrt
"When we planned our country's economic development, we had the strategic objective of our Revolution in mind. It was not planned for economic development [to be] solely an end in itself. There are some who have forgotten that the sole basis of our revolutionary struggle was the ideology and politics which we follow..."- Mengistu Haile Mariam (1987)
Mugabe flanked by Army Chief Chiwenga delivers speech at State House in Harare /AP
Robert Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since 1980, is in the midst of a power struggle within the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU–PF) he co-founded in Zimbabwe in 1987 and the military. Officially, ZANU–PF has a socialist ideology. The party maintains a politburo and a Central Committee. During the 1970s and 1980s Mugabe self-identified as a Marxist-Leninist but re-branded himself a socialist following the collapse of the East Bloc and the Soviet Union, but his close relationship with the Castro regime continued. The 93-year old attended Fidel Castro's funeral last year and reflecting on the Cuban dictator's death said "I have lost a brother."
Close Allies: Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe
Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe for 37 years, and is refusing to resign, but within the ranks of his fellow party members and the military are demanding for an end to his rule. Events in Zimbabwe are being followed closely in Cuba, and also in Ethiopia.
In
the weeks immediately after the June 2008 presidential elections in
Zimbabwe, AIDS-Free World received an urgent call from a Harare-based
organization. The human rights activists were overwhelmed with reports
from women associated with the opposition party, Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC), who had been raped by members of President Robert
Mugabe’s ruling party, ZANU-PF, in a vicious campaign to intimidate
voters and emerge victorious in the presidential election. In response,
AIDS-Free World undertook a series of investigative trips to the region
with teams of lawyers to interview survivors of this violence. What
emerged from the testimony was a brutal, orchestrated campaign of rape
and torture perpetrated by Mugabe’s ZANU-PF youth militia, agents of
Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organization (CIO), and people who
identify themselves as veterans of the liberation war (known as war
veterans) affiliated with ZANU-PF. The exceptionally violent rapes, as
described by women from every province of Zimbabwe, were often nearly
fatal. Survivors’ terror was prolonged by fears that their attackers
were among the 15% of adults infected with HIV in Zimbabwe.
Mugabe may have stopped calling himself a Marxist Leninist after the implosion of the USSR but the use of terror to maintain power continued long after and he protects his friends who have the same ideology.
There is an international communist movement that operates as a network. Fidel Castro on April 3, 1977 met in East Berlin with Erich Honecker about the need to help the revolution in Ethiopia and talked up Mengistu Haile Mariam, an emerging new Marxist-Leninist leader.Fidel Castro celebrated the initiation of the Red Terror on February 3, 1977 in Ethiopia: "Mengistu strikes me as a quiet, serious, and sincere leader who is aware of the power of the masses. He is an intellectual personality who showed his wisdom on February 3. […] The prelude to this was an exuberant speech by the Ethiopian president in favor of nationalism. Mengistu preempted this coup. He called the meeting of the Revolutionary Council one hour early and had the rightist leaders arrested and shot. A very consequential decision was taken on February 3 in Ethiopia. […]Before it was only possible to support the leftist forces indirectly, now we can do so without any constraints."
Fidel Castro lounging with Mengistu Haile Mariam, in Ethiopia in 1977
During 1977-78, a conservative estimate of over 30,000 Africans perished as a result of the Red Terror unleashed in Ethiopia by the communists and their Cuban allies. Amnesty International concluded that
"this campaign resulted in several thousand to perhaps tens of
thousands of men, women, and children killed, tortured, and imprisoned."
Sweden's Save the Children Fund lodged a formal protest in early 1978 denouncing the execution of 1,000 children, many below the age of thirteen, whom the communist government had labeled "liaison agents of the counter revolutionaries."
Fidel and Raul Castro were both deeply involved in sending 17,000 Cuban
troops to South Africa in assisting Mengistu in consolidating his rule
and eliminating actual and potential opposition. The last Cuban troops
did not leave Ethiopia until 1989 and were present and complicit in the
engineered famine that took place there. In 1990 traveling on a train
through East Germany on my way to Prague, I spent some time speaking with
an Ethiopian economist who told me how Cuban troops would round up
starving Ethiopian farmers when they got close to the cities, with grain
stores, and drove them back out into the countryside to starve. Donald R. Katz in the September 21, 1978 Rolling Stone article "Ethiopia After the Revolution: Vultures Return to the Land of Sheba" gave the following description of the wave of terror and repression unleashed by Mengistu.
"Toward the middle of last year [1977], Mengistu pulled out all the stops.
"It is an historical obligation," he said then, "to clean up vigilantly
using the revolutionary sword." He announced that the shooting was about
to start and that anyone in the middle would be caught in the cross
fire. In what came to be known as the "Red Terror," he proceeded to
round up all those who opposed the military regime. According to Amnesty
International, the Dergue killed over 10,000 people by the end of the
year. One anti-government party, mostly made up of students and
teachers, was singled out as 'the opposition.'"
Africa Watch (the precursor to Human Rights Watch’s Africa Division)
analyzed Ethiopian counter-insurgency operations in this period and
found that they followed a four-pronged approach: i) the forced
displacement of much of the civilian population into shelters and
protected villages; ii) military offensives against people and economic
assets outside the shelters; iii) the sponsoring of insurgent groups
against the WSLF and Somali government; and iv) attempts to promote the
repatriation of refugees.23
In December 1979, a new Ethiopian military offensive, this time
including Soviet advisors and Cuban troops, “was more specifically
directed against the population’s means of survival, including poisoning
and bombing waterholes and machine gunning herds of cattle.”24
Raul Castro and Fidel Castro with ally Mengistu Haile Mariam
"Comrade
Cubans, I can recall those days of December 1977 and January 1978 when
we said farewell to the first Cuban internationalist combatants who were
leaving for Ethiopia. [...]Eighteen months later we have returned to a
Ethiopia which is victorious be cause of its combative sons' heroism and
the support of international solidarity, as Comrade Mengistu stated 2
days ago. Moreover, it is also an already powerful Ethiopia. Tuesday's
popular parade confirmed the enormous popular support for this
revolutionary change. Yesterday's military parade tells us of the degree of organization and discipline achieved by the combative
and courageous fraternal Ethiopian people. The rapid revolutionary
offensive of the Ethiopian and Cuban troops practically annihilated the
enemy. [...]Ethiopian brothers, together with you we have fought and we
have won. Together with you we are ready to fight again and to win
again. Together with you we pledge: Fatherland or death, we shall win!"
The last few years of the Cuban government's
collaboration with the Ethiopian communist regime were particularly
brutal, and reminiscent of Stalin's treatment of the Kulaks in the
1930s. During the 1984-85 famine in northern Ethiopia, which shocked the conscience of the world and led Bob Geldof to organize the 1985 international rock concert "Live Aid," Cuban troops, following the lead of their ally, made the famine worse
by refusing to allow food to be distributed in areas where inhabitants
were sympathetic to opposition groups and engaging in a policy of
"forcibly resettling people."
Charles Lane of The Washington Post in the December 1, 2016 article "Castro was no liberator" described how "the last Cuban troops did
not leave Ethiopia until September 1989; they were still on hand as
hundreds of thousands died during the 1983-1985 famine exacerbated by
Mengistu’s collectivization of agriculture." Mengistu was forced out of power in 1991 and fled to Zimbabwe.
In an interview published in 2003 by Riccardo Orizio in his book, Talk of the Devil: Encounters with Seven Dictators, Mengistu defended his actions in Marxist-Leninist terms, "I'm a military man, I did what I did only because my country had to be saved from tribalism and feudalism. If I failed, it was only because I was betrayed. The so-called genocide was nothing more than just a war in defence of the revolution and a system from which all have benefited."
Mengistu was found guilty of genocide in Ethiopia on December 12, 2006, and was sentenced to life in prison in January 2007. He was sentenced to death in absentia on May 26, 2008 following an appeal. Mengistu currently resides in Zimbabwe under the protection of African dictator Robert Mugabe. Question now arises that if Mugabe is forced to resign, will the new government turnover the now 80-year old war criminal to Ethiopian authorities to face justice?
Communist networks will defend Mengistu because the mass killings and manufactured famine that caused over a million deaths in Ethiopia was done "in defense of the revolution." In the same manner that Fidel Castro defended the revolution in Cuba in the early 1960s exterminating Cuban peasants who resisted the imposition of communist rule, with the critical help of 400 Russian advisors. This approach of mass murder and genocide to consolidate total power was carried out by Lenin and the Bolsheviks a century ago in Russia. On August 11, 1918 in a telegram sent to his communist comrades Lenin laid out the need to impose terror by setting an example: "1.You need to hang (hang without fail, so that the people see) no fewer
than 100 of the notorious kulaks, the rich and the bloodsuckers. 2. Publish their names. 3. Take all their grain from them. 4. Appoint the hostages — in accordance with yesterday’s telegram. This needs to be done in such a way that the people for hundreds of versts around
will see, tremble, know and shout: they are throttling and will throttle the
bloodsucking kulaks. Telegraph us concerning receipt and implementation. Yours, Lenin. PS. Find tougher people."
Mengistu's monstrous actions in Ethiopia was not an aberration but the faithful fulfillment of the guide book for a Marxist-Leninist to achieve and maintain power. This is the real reason why Robert Mugable protected this war criminal and odds are that if the new rulers of Zimbabwe are Marxist Leninists, like their predecessor they will continue to do so. Otherwise they would all be subject to being hauled before international courts for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The talk today is of
globalization, but we must state that unless there is global solidarity,
not only human rights but also the right to remain human will be
jeopardized. - Oswaldo Paya, European Parliament, December 17, 2002
Ideas have consequences and the rejection of Havel's ideas began back in 2014 when Czech deputy foreign minister Petr Drulák argued that a "foreign policy with its stress on human rights was wrong and harmful." This abandonment of human rights did not begin with Cuba but in February of 2015 when the European Union lifted sanctions on the Robert Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. This was followed in February of 2016 with lifting sanctions on the Alexander Lukashenko regime in Belarus. This is the continuation of a decline in human rights around the world that has been going on for over a decade. Empowering and appeasing dictators had terrible consequences in the 20th century and this mistake is being repeated in the 21st century. The case of North Korea should be a cautionary warning for those advocating this approach.
This latest retreat from a human rights centered policy occurred while Amnesty International has issued two urgent actions in the space of a week on human rights activists on hunger strikes in Cuba protesting harassment, intimidation and arbitrary imprisonment. On Sunday 50 Ladies in White ( EU Sakharov Prize laureates) were arbitrarily detained to prevent them attending Mass and peacefully marching for the release of Cuban political prisoners. Ignoring all this and the murder of 2002 Sakharov laureate Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and youth leader Harold Cepero of the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) on July 22, 2012 and the imprisonment of the current MCL leader Eduardo Cardet is a sad testament to the current political climate where the worse are full of passionate intensity and those who know better pay lip service to human rights while legitimizing murderous dictatorships in Zimbabwe, Belarus and Cuba.
If the members of the European Parliament were serious about human rights in Cuba they would immediately suspend the newly announced agreement, because the provisions on human rights are being violated by the Castro regime.
NED honors young leaders from Zimbabwe, Russia,Pakistan, and Cuba
Glanis Changachirere,Vera Kichanova,Gulalai Ismail, Rosa María Payá (for Harold Cepero) Photo taken from a tweet by Vera Kichanova
4:00 p.m.
Panel Discussion
"Our Democratic Future: the role of youth in advancing democracy"
5:30 p.m.
Reception and Award Presentation
Caucus Room 345, Cannon House Office Building
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED)’s 2013 Democracy Award
will highlight the important role that youth are playing in advancing
democracy in the world today. In this, its 30th anniversary year, NED
will honor three outstanding young people who are working in
extraordinarily challenging environments to create a democratic future
in their respective countries. The Endowment will also make a
posthumous award to a fourth young democrat whose life was cut short in
the midst of his struggle.
The 2013 Democracy Award honorees are:
Gulalai Ismail, 26
Ismail
is founder and chairperson of Aware Girls, a young women-led
organization that seeks to provide a leadership platform to young women
and girls of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in northwest Pakistan. She
has more than 10 years of experience working on leadership development
for girls and young women; addressing gender based violence;
encouraging peace and pluralism; promoting and protecting human rights;
and striving to bring women in to the political mainstream.
Vera Kichanova, 22
Kichanova
was elected in March 2012 as a municipal deputy in Moscow’s Yuzhnoye
Tushino district. As a member of the municipal council she fights for
more transparency on the part of the local authorities. Kichanova is an
avid journalist and civic activist who has been arrested for her
outspoken defense of democratic principles.
Glanis Changachirere, 30
Changachirere
is the founding director of the Institute for Young Women Development
(IYWD), which encourages marginalized young women in farming, mining,
and rural communities to participate in Zimbabwean politics. IYWD has
played an important role in calling for peaceful, democratic elections,
and the need to guarantee space for the participation of all
Zimbabweans in the political system, including the prevention of gender
based violence.
Harold Cepero, (1980-2012)
Cepero
was the leader of the youth wing of Cuba’s Christian Liberation
Movement (MCL), the group that organized the Varela project -- a citizen
petition movement that called for a popular referendum to establish
the foundation for a democratic system in Cuba. With more than 25,000
Cubans publicly signing the petition, the Varela Project became one of
the most creative challenges to the country’s totalitarian rulers. On
July 22, 2012, Cepero was killed in a suspicious car crash along with
Cuba’s most prominent democratic activist and founder of the MCL,
Oswaldo Payá. Rosa María Payá Acevedo, another young leader of the
MCL and the daughter of Oswaldo Payá, will accept the award on behalf
of Cepero and the Christian Liberation Movement.
The Cuban transition wears a skirt, its rhythm is marked by so many women who will achieve a more inclusive, maternal, free country :-) - Yoani Sanchez, on twitter March 8, 2012
"Tyrants with pathological cravings for power have organized campaigns of rape since ancient times, from Troy to Nanking and Sierra Leone to Cyprus, from East Pakistan to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and beyond. And yet, everyone ever convicted of orchestrating mass rape could be crowded into a single holding cell." - AIDS Free World, 2009
IACHR: Complaints of Attacks on Women Human Rights Defenders in Cuba Credit: Juan Manuel Herrera/OAS
Laida Carro of the Coalition of Cuban-American Women summed up the purpose of their testimony: "We came to reiterate before the IACHR that it is inacceptable that in our hemisphere women who defend fundamental rights are discriminated against and subjected to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment."
Janisset Rivero, of the Directorio Democrático Cubano highlighted a troubling trend stating that "Since 2011 a considerable increase in the practice of stripping naked, hurling sinuous words and sexual threats against the Ladies in White."
It is a troubling trend because at least two of the Castro brothers allies, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, and the late Muammar Gaddafi of Libya have both used rape as a political weapon to terrorize women from participating in the political process. It appears that Cuban state security is testing similar tactics in order to see how the international community reacts and with each non-reaction push the envelope further.
In the weeks immediately after the June 2008 presidential elections in Zimbabwe, AIDS-Free World received an urgent call from a Harare-based organization. The human rights activists were overwhelmed with reports from women associated with the opposition party, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), who had been raped by members of President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party, ZANU-PF, in a vicious campaign to intimidate voters and emerge victorious in the presidential election. In response, AIDS-Free World undertook a series of investigative trips to the region with teams of lawyers to interview survivors of this violence. What emerged from the testimony was a brutal, orchestrated campaign of rape and torture perpetrated by Mugabe’s ZANU-PF youth militia, agents of Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organization (CIO), and people who identify themselves as veterans of the liberation war (known as war veterans) affiliated with ZANU-PF. The exceptionally violent rapes, as described by women from every province of Zimbabwe, were often nearly fatal. Survivors’ terror was prolonged by fears that their attackers were among the 15% of adults infected with HIV in Zimbabwe.
Cuban women are in the vanguard of political change in the island and like the women in Zimbabwe are now a target of an entrenched and brutal dictatorship that is willing to do anything to remain in power. The world ignored Mugabe's brutalization of women in Zimbabwe and this led to the systematic use of rape as a political weapon against female human rights defenders and political activists. Trends in Cuba point to the possibility that the same tragic outcome could be repeated if the international community does not speak out early and often against the violence visited against Cuban women by the dictatorship on the island.
"They can either kill us, put us in jail or release them. We will never stop marching no matter what happens." - Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, Ladies in White founder (February 13, 1948 – October 14, 2011)
To say that uprising in Libya and Syria is a foreign plot is an insult to people who are fighting for their freedom
On Tuesday, in a joint statement, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez denounced what they called the West's “imperialist aggression” in Libya and Syria.
It is a wonder they did not try and get Cuba’s retired President Fidel Castro or Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe to endorse their condemnation. They would have certainly obliged. Back in March, Castro’s verdict on the Libyan uprising was that it was an American plot. Just over a week ago Mugabe called NATO “a terrorist group” because of its airstrikes against Qaddafi’s forces.
The notion that the uprisings in Syria and Libya are a Western plot is not merely a gross distortion of the truth; it is a vicious slap in the face of ordinary Syrians and Libyans. They are the authors of the uprisings, not the Americans or the French or the British. The hundreds of thousands of Libyans who rose up against Qaddafi's iron grip on power and the young Libyans fighting, and dying, to free their country did not do so because of a foreign plot. They did so because they wanted to be free and were inspired by the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. They took their destiny into their own hands. It has been the same for the hundreds of thousands who have taken to the streets of Syria's cities, willing to die for freedom and, in some cases, doing so. The suggestion that they are agents in a plot devised by NATO and the CIA is an insult to them and the memory of the thousands who have been killed.
In any event, if it were an American plot, it was one for which the Americans should be congratulated for getting their Middle East policies right for a change and doing something that was genuinely in tune with mass public sentiment.
The fact that men like Chavez trot out this lie says everything about them and their politics and nothing about reality. They have a world view that is hopelessly outdated — a world divided into thieving imperialists and, battling against them, anti-colonialist liberation movements led by themselves. That has long gone. The world has moved on. But it is a vision these dictators are desperate to retain. It is their justification for their dead hand on the levers of power.
The same was said by the ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak of the protests in Egypt before he fell; they were organized by outsiders, he said. Qaddafi and Assad have come up with different villains behind the opposition to them — they accuse hard-liners — but the thinking is the same. They need someone to blame for the crisis and refuse to admit they are the problem.
For all their populist rhetoric and their glorification of their “people's struggle” against “imperialism,” it is their own people that the likes of Chavez, Ahmadinejad, Qaddafi and Assad fear their most. So they come up with nonsense about foreign or terrorist plots.
No one is taken in. The Syrians and the Libyans, like the Egyptians and the Tunisians beforehand, know that their uprisings are their alone, not something cooked up in the Pentagon. Others may support them, morally or with money or even arms and air raids, but the Arab Spring is a genuine Arab affair. Those who have to pretend otherwise show how little they understand the momentousness of what is happening.
President Tafadzwa Mugwadi of Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU) Arrested
According to a ZINASU Media Release on September 22, 2010, President Tafadzwa Mugwadi was arrested and is being held at the Harare Central Police Station. Mugwadi was summoned to the station for charges related to street writing by an unknown student group, with such slogans on walls as “education is not for sale” and “ZINASU lives.” The writings were a method of protest utilized by the youth, indicative of feelings expressed by many young people in Zimbabwe.
High education costs in Zimbabwe is a serious issue for many young people, whose fees range from US$200-800, while their parents may make a salary of only US$150. ZINASU reports of government cover ups regarding failure to finance education, citing lack of funds as a major cause. Despite such government claims, ZINASU reports that at a recent UN meeting Zimbabwe officials were given allowances of $250 per day.
The President of ZINASU had been in hiding after his home was searched by suspected security forces a few nights before his arrest. According to Mugwadi’s neighbors, the men were responding to his “defamatory utterances” that were made by the ZINASU President on ZTV’s Hot Seat program on September 7th. The men who investigated his home were angry at his remarks regarding the ZRP as a violent organ of the state because of its well known hostility to young activists and students working for democracy in the country.
Hostility toward students has escalated in the country, as seen in the killings last week of two students at Bindura University of Science and Education. University security had attempted to stop the students from graduating, since tuition fees had not been paid in full. Mugwadi and ZINASU have been publicly criticizing the actions of the government. The arrest of Mugwadi must not go unnoticed.
The World Youth Movement for Democracy calls on the international community to join in a voice of solidarity, in support of Mugwadi and his student activism. Please help by contacting the Zimbabwean embassies and voicing your concern. Call for Mugwadi to be released so he may continue his critical work!
For more information on Tafadzwa Mugwadi and ZINASU:
Good Morning and welcome to the 2nd Geneva Summit for Human Rights, Tolerance and Democracy. My name is John Suarez. I am a human rights activist and the International Secretary of the Cuban Democratic Directorate. The Cuban Democratic Directorate is part of a civic nonviolent resistance movement that defends pro-democracy activists, human rights defenders, and members of independent civil society from the abuses of a 51-year old communist dictatorship. We publish an annual human rights report on Cuba as well as Steps to Freedom - our last two issues are available here - it is an exhaustive accounting of opposition and independent civil society activities inside of Cuba.
On behalf of the co-organizers, an international coalition of more than 25 human rights NGOs I am both honored and humbled to welcome all who have come near and far to join us today here at the Geneva International Conference Center directly across from the United Nations Human Rights Council which is now in session and all those joining via web cast from around the world.
The first Geneva Summit coincided with the Durban Review and the second summit takes place now in tandem with the main annual session of the UN Human Rights Council.
Summit organizers are honored to have human rights heroes Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa, the former presidents of the Czech Republic and Poland as co-chairs of the Geneva Summit's Honorary Committee. As we gather here and many of us are also watching, listening, and participating in the Human Rights Council session across the way and are witnessing some of the worse systematic human rights abusers exerting undue influence and power over the Council and the session. In some cases silencing victims from speaking and frustrating human rights activists I think back to both of our co-chairs.
In Czechoslovakia in the 1970s, Vaclav Havel was a dissident play write followed by secret police, imprisoned for his beliefs and in Poland Lech Walesa, an electrician working at the Gdansk shipyards before being fired in 1976 for his activities as a shop steward would later be followed and frequently detained for his independent labor activism. All this at a time when the world was convinced that these repressive communist states would go on forever.
Both have said much that is relevant to the challenges that we face today:
Months after the Warsaw Pact invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia crushing the Prague Spring and the idea of Socialism with a human face. Vaclav Havel wrote a letter to the overthrown Czechoslovak Communist Party chairman Alexander Dubcek in August of 1969 in which he stated: "Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance." That in one sentence describes the evolution of dissident movements in Communist states and their impact in shaking up a seemingly all powerful totalitarian state creating cracks in its edifice and over time tearing it down.
By 1983 Lech Walesa had played an important role in organizing labor strikes that brought the Polish communist government to the negotiating table where for the first time in a communist state an independent labor union - Solidarity - was legally recognized - only to face repression and attempts to destroy it through Martial law, but by 1983 through great repression Martial law was formally lifted but repression continued. This was the year when Walesa won the Nobel Peace Prize. He was not allowed to attend the award ceremony in Oslo but Walesa's wife Danuta was able to go in his place and read his acceptance speech in which he explained what motivated this movement: "We are fighting for the right of the working people to association and for the dignity of human labour. We respect the dignity and the rights of every man and every nation. The path to a brighter future of the world leads through honest reconciliation of the conflicting interests and not through hatred and bloodshed. To follow that path means to enhance the moral power of the all-embracing idea of human solidarity."
Through a combination of great courage, persistence, patience, civic nonviolent resistance, international solidarity, and a little luck both of these men played a crucial role in seeing that repressive totalitarian regimes in their respective countries were brought to an end without democrats engaging in bloodshed against their oppressors and today in both of their countries they and their countrymen are free to travel, express themselves, associate freely, and enjoy all those rights that many in the West have long taken for granted. Looking around the room and seeing human rights defenders from Azerbaijan, Burma, China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Tibet, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. Activists that today live in societies where fundamental human rights are systematically denied and abused. They share with Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa the real knowledge of living in countries that are not free and where exercising your fundamental human rights is an act of defiance and great courage.
One objective of the 2010 Geneva Summit is to give voice to victims of the world’s worst human rights abuses and a second objective is to empower those who suffer repression under closed systems of government. The program over the next two days addresses both these goals whether they will be accomplished is up to all of us. It is a tall order because the global human rights situation is deteriorating.
In Iran, the contested June election sparked an unprecedented wave of state-sponsored violence and repression. Thousands of peaceful protesters were beaten, arrested, tortured, and killed. One of them Neda Agha-Soltan, age 27, was shot and killed on June 20, 2009 during the protests denouncing election fraud. Her fiancé, Caspian Makan, is with us here today, and will address the Summit tomorrow. Neda’s death was captured on video and in those terrible moments reflected the great crime committed by the Iranian government against the people of Iran. Official numbers place the number of killed at 36 during the protests but the opposition places the dead at 72. In 2009 at least 270 people were hanged and in 2010 at least 12 so far. 4,000 have been arrested including journalists and reformist politicians.
In China, according to Amnesty International "...a minimum of 7,000 death sentences were handed down and 1,700 executions took place" in 2009. Chinese Dissident Liu Xiaobo was arrested on June 23, 2009 and charged with “inciting subversion of state power” for co-authoring Charter 08, a declaration calling for political reform, greater human rights, and an end to one-party rule in China that has been signed by hundreds of individuals from all walks of life throughout the country. On December 25, 2009 Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years in prison and two years' deprivation of political rights. The Beijing High Court rejected his appeal on February 11, 2010.
In North Korea, the Communist regime continues to deny all basic freedoms to its citizens. According to Amnesty International opposition of any kind is not tolerated. According to reports, any person who expresses an opinion contrary to the position of the ruling party faces severe punishment, and so do in many cases their families. Unauthorized assembly or association is regarded as a "collective disturbance", that is punishable. Religious freedom, although guaranteed by the constitution, is in practice sharply curtailed. There are reports of severe repression of people involved in public and private religious activities, through imprisonment, torture and executions. Many Christians are reportedly being held in labour camps.
In Sudan, the regime of Omar al-Bashir continues to kill thousands of innocent people with impunity. On 24 November, three prominent human rights defenders were arrested in Khartoum: Amir Suleiman, Abdel Monim Elgak and Osman Humeida and tortured in custody before being released. Amnesty International considered the three individuals to be prisoners of conscience who were detained solely because of the peaceful exercise of their rights to freedom of expression and association.
In Zimbabwe, elections were followed by a wave of human rights violations that resulted in at least 180 deaths, and at least 9,000 people injured from torture, beatings and other violations perpetrated mainly by government forces. About 28,000 people were displaced from their homes.
In Burma, Nobel Peace Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi who won the last free election held in Burma in 1990 whose results were ignored by the ruling military junta who then imprisoned her unjustly. Last years sham trial by the military junta to extend her imprisonment has caused major damage to the process of national reconciliation and indicates that the upcoming 2010 elections in Burma will be a farce.
In Cuba, the communist regime continues to systematically deny Cubans there human rights, Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, mentioned here at the Summit last year was abducted by Cuban State security and beaten to stop her and Claudia Cadelo another blogger from attending a performance art happening celebrating nonviolence. On International Human Rights Day government organized mobs assaulted the Ladies in White as they marched for the release of Cuba's prisoners of conscience. At least 24 Cuban patients died of exposure at Mazorra, a government hospital in January of this year and when Amnesty International prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo initiated a water only hunger strike to demand that prisoners be treated decently in December of 2009 prison officials responded by taking away his water for more than two weeks when he was already extremely weak trying to break his spirit and failed but contributed to his death on February 23rd.
In Venezuela, the government response to those Venezuelan citizens protesting against the Chavez regime shutting down independent media outlets is to denounce those using twitter and text message as terrorists; police firing tear gas at students and a call for government supporters to prepare for battle. In the midst of all this President Hugo Chavez continues to demonize the opposition and welcomes into his ranks a high ranking Cuban official: Commander Ramiro Valdez, "a historic leader of the revolution" to address the energy crisis in Venezuela currently suffering power outages. Valdez is the Vice President of the Council of State and Minister of Communications in the Cuban government. He doesn’t know much about electricity but knows how to set up the repressive apparatus of a totalitarian police state which is what he did in Cuba. Ironically, the man Hugo Chavez does not want to visit Venezuela with much experience in electricity is Lech Walesa who he has barred from entering the country. In addition to being an electrician Lech Walesa knows a thing or two about defending human rights and democracy. A skills set that Mr. Chavez views as a threat. At the same time a Spanish court offers an insight into terrorism in Venezuela but twitter/text messages sent by students are not the object of the inquiry but Mr. Chavez’s ties with terrorist groups ETA and the Colombian FARC and apparent plans to assassinate the Colombian head of state.
Regrettably, the chief international body charged with protecting human rights is failing to live up to its mission to stop these and other abuses. The Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council—as acknowledged in a recent report by 17 of its 47 member states, supported by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the International Commission of Jurists—falls short in its handling of country situations, in the efficiency of the process involved in highlighting violations, and in its reactivity to crisis situations. Strong politicization of the Council, driven by bloc-based voting patterns, has led to inaction in face of atrocity and abuse. We saw this sad spectacle last week within the Council, first with the secretary general of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights denying the documented and rampant instances of torture, executions, and mass detentions of Iranians followed by the Cuban Foreign Minister’s speech who echoing his Iranian colleague also denied Cuba’s horrible human rights record and to add insult to injury went on to blame the United States for the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo as well as slander the deceased Cuban prisoner of conscience as a criminal.
Little wonder that the March 1st magazine issue of Newsweek contains an article titled “The Downfall of Human Rights.” The article highlights Freedom House's report "Freedom in the World," released in January, and reveals a global decline in political freedoms and civil liberties for the fourth year in a row, the longest drop in the almost 40 years that the survey has been produced.
In his 1986 Nobel Acceptance speech writer, activist, and holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel issued a challenge not only to activists but to people everywhere challenging us all when he said: "I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
Amidst all the documented evils of the past year there is hope. The rise of citizen journalists, social networks, twitter, and cell phones able to document these atrocities and show them to the world is a response to Elie Wiesel's call not to remain silent to speak out and denounce repression. We've seen its impact across the world. This meeting has a focus on internet freedom, and it is necessary because the enemies of freedom recognize this technology as a profound enemy to maintaining monopoly control over information which for totalitarians is a pillar of their power.
New opportunities exist, and human rights defenders need to brainstorm and collaborate to improve activism and to offer a counterbalance to the collaboration and coordination of repressive regimes and movements. The international stage can be used to put a spotlight on the world’s worst abusers. We saw it this last week when 30 NGOs from this Summit called on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to intervene on behalf of Cuban human rights defender Nestor Rodriguez Lobaina barred by the Cuban dictatorship from attending this meeting. The Cuban ambassador protested loudly when Hillel Neuer of UN Watch raised the matter in an interactive dialogue with the High Commissioner, but Nestor on the other hand was grateful that you spoke up for his human rights.
The Geneva Summit seeks to offer dissidents and human rights activists from around the world a global platform and forum to share their personal struggles, their fight for freedom and equality, and their vision for how to bring change. This past week we saw with action how it can be done and how much it upsets those who would prefer that we remain silent. Let us make sure that the victims of human rights violations receive the solidarity of people of goodwill and that the abusers be given cause to be shamed by their actions and to change there ways.
Ismail
is founder and chairperson of Aware Girls, a young women-led
organization that seeks to provide a leadership platform to young women
and girls of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in northwest Pakistan. She
has more than 10 years of experience working on leadership development
for girls and young women; addressing gender based violence;
encouraging peace and pluralism; promoting and protecting human rights;
and striving to bring women in to the political mainstream.
Kichanova
was elected in March 2012 as a municipal deputy in Moscow’s Yuzhnoye
Tushino district. As a member of the municipal council she fights for
more transparency on the part of the local authorities. Kichanova is an
avid journalist and civic activist who has been arrested for her
outspoken defense of democratic principles.
Changachirere
is the founding director of the Institute for Young Women Development
(IYWD), which encourages marginalized young women in farming, mining,
and rural communities to participate in Zimbabwean politics. IYWD has
played an important role in calling for peaceful, democratic elections,
and the need to guarantee space for the participation of all
Zimbabweans in the political system, including the prevention of gender
based violence.
Cepero
was the leader of the youth wing of Cuba’s Christian Liberation
Movement (MCL), the group that organized the Varela project -- a citizen
petition movement that called for a popular referendum to establish
the foundation for a democratic system in Cuba. With more than 25,000
Cubans publicly signing the petition, the Varela Project became one of
the most creative challenges to the country’s totalitarian rulers. On
July 22, 2012, Cepero was killed in a suspicious car crash along with
Cuba’s most prominent democratic activist and founder of the MCL,
Oswaldo Payá.
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