Biographies
Afghan Woman Shedding Burka
Since September 11th, 2001, the world has learned of the horrific suffering and repression endured by Afghan women. However, it was a story that the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) had for years been risking lives to tell. Working for social justice since 1977, this organization of women faced a formidable challenge with the institution of extreme fundamentalist rule. Smuggling cameras under their burkas at grave personal risk, RAWA documented public executions, floggings, amputations, and other Taliban abuses, its website often representing the only account of this information available to journalists.
Additionally, RAWA provided an underground network of services to a desperate population of women forbidden to work, banned from education, and sequestered in homes with blackened windows. Clandestine schools taught girls to read and write in dark basements, mothers learned handicrafts to earn money to feed their children, and mobile medical teams provided health care to women who could neither leave their home nor legally speak to a male doctor. For these and lesser offenses, numerous Afghan women were publicly flogged, stoned, or executed, while countless others lingered in solitude and isolation, self-labeled as the "living dead."
If RAWA's message was received by the world before September 11th, it was not accompanied by the action they sought. Chekeba Hachemi, president of the non-profit “Afghanistan Libre" reflected that the global community "trivialized the agony of the Afghan women by likening it to comparable pain that others have suffered. That," she insists, "was a huge mistake."
The unveiling of this Afghan woman is representative of the simplest rights and freedoms that so many of us enjoy, but which might be unattainable by women and people living under more repressive regimes.
Algerian Villager
Since 1992, more than 100,000 people have died in an armed conflict that has devastated Algeria. Though the death toll began to subside towards the end of the decade, armed groups, security forces, and paramilitary militias killed more than 2500 people in the year 2000. While many of the dead were members of warring factions, hundreds of civilians, including children and even entire families, were routinely murdered in individual attacks, massacres, and indiscriminate bomb explosions, some overtaken in their own homes.
Many of the attacks took place in rural areas outside of the main cities. This woman explains how attackers shot and stabbed to death at least 200 in her village. The Algerian government has provided little hope of justice for victims or their families, as widespread amnesty or exemption from prosecution for members of armed groups became standard practice with the passing of the 1999 "Law on Civil Harmony.”
In the initial six months following its institution, over 5000 members of armed groups surrendered voluntarily with the promise of immunity from prosecution or reduced sentences. Many reports indicated immediate release of those who surrendered and certificates of exemption from prosecution granted within days, leaving the likelihood of satisfactory investigations into alleged crimes and victims' complaints extremely remote.
Bubi
Ethnic Bubis, the indigenous people of Equatorial Guinea's Bioko Island, have faced discrimination since the country's independence from Spain in 1968. However, nothing could prepare them for the systematic repression and torture that followed a deadly 1998 attack by radicals on a Bioko Island military barracks. The 500 arrests that followed the incident only hint at the grave human rights violations that occurred throughout the nation, as security forces beat Bubis in the street, raped women in their homes, or looked on while angry mobs did the same.
In Bubi villages, homes were razed and commercial goods bound for market destroyed. Arrests were made of those even loosely affiliated with Bubi political groups. Beaten with rifles, mutilated with razor blades and denied access to medical care, many detainees suffered atrocious deaths from their injuries. Others were reportedly rendered unconscious from beatings, and then revived for further torture. Women, often held as hostages in the hopes of flushing out male relatives, suffered all of these torments as well as sexual abuse and public humiliation.
A trial of 110 Bubis was widely considered to be unfair, as most of the 85 convictions were based on forced confessions. Approximately 70 of those tried were sentenced to prison terms of up to 25 years, and another fifteen given death sentences that were later commuted to life in prison. However, given the likelihood that many of the convicted will succumb to the harshness of prison conditions, Amnesty International considers their sentences nothing more than a slow execution.
In its 2006 Human Rights Report on Equatorial Guinea, the US State Department reported that, as in previous years, Bubi face continued intense harassment from the military. Bubi who refused to hand over harvests, money, or land, were prone to beatings and shootings.
Death Corridor Guard
The death penalty is considered by most civilized nations as a cruel and inhuman punishment. As of 2015, it had been abolished de jure or de facto by 140 nations. However, the death penalty continues to be commonly applied in other nations. China, Iran, Pakistan and the United States and Iran are the most prolific executioners in the world. Indeed, the US is one of only six countries which executes people who were under 18 years-old at the time they committed their crimes.
In April 1999, the United Nations Human Rights Commission passed the “Resolution Supporting Worldwide Moratorium On Executions.” The resolution called on countries which have not abolished the death penalty to restrict its use, including not imposing it on juvenile offenders and limiting the number of offenses for which it can be imposed. Ten countries, including the United States, China, Pakistan, Rwanda and Sudan voted against the resolution. Each year since 1997, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights has passed a resolution calling on countries that have not abolished the death penalty to establish a moratorium on executions.
The United States is the only NATO country that practices capital punishment, and it does so in a manner that is widely considered to be inconsistent and racially biased. With the advent of DNA testing, the number of individuals exonerated after sentencing is so high that some states have imposed a moratorium on executions pending re-evaluation of the system.
As of September 2022, 27 states still allowed executions as the ultimate form of American “justice.”
Faraj Sarkouhi
Faraj Sarkouhi, former editor-in-chief of the Iranian socio-literary journal Adineh, was detained by authorities and held incommunicado after trying to board a Berlin-bound flight from Tehran's Mehrabad Airport in November 1996. Following inquiries from groups such as the international fellowship of writers, PEN, he reappeared after seven weeks of intensive interrogation that included beatings and death threats. Arrested again in late January 1997, he was held for nine months before being convicted at trial of "slandering the Islamic Republic" and sentenced to one year in prison.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry denied requests by Amnesty International to send a delegate to observe the proceedings, as well as similar requests by the group to enter Iran for fact-finding, trial observations and government talks have been denied since 1979. Freedom of statement has been particularly threatened in Iran in recent years. In 2000, police detained at least 34 journalists, writers and human rights defenders, and 12 of these were sentenced to prison terms following what were widely suspected to be unfair trials. In the same year, 30 publications were ordered closed or suspended. Faraj Sarkouhi and other signatories of the "1994 Declaration of 134 Iranian Writers," calling for freedom of statement and an end to literary censorship in Iran, have benefited from the international scrutiny that his case has drawn. Released from prison in 1998 and finally reunited with his family in Germany, he serves as an enduring figure for journalistic freedom in Iran.
Gjergj Komnino
Gjergj Komnino spent 25 years in an Albanian prison for "anti-Communist crimes" before fleeing to Italy to seek asylum. He died in 1996, at the age of 76, while awaiting a decision on his claim. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: "Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution". However, the general right to seek and to enjoy asylum has not always translated into the individual right to be granted asylum. Many states have continually exhibited an unwillingness to agree to international edicts that would impose responsibility in asylum situations. While some individuals may be sent immediately back to the persecution they fled, other may be kept waiting in uncertainty for years until a decision is made. In 1997, the Italian Government forcibly returned almost 300 asylum-seekers to Albania, despite severe political and social unrest in that country, and imposed 60-day residency limits on those it harbored. During his own wait for asylum, Gjergj Komnino wrote this poem:
Who breaks an important promise
Who does not keep his word
He also breaks his conscience
And breaks his happiness.
Irma Flaquer
Those who knew Irma Flaquer could point to any one of her outspoken denunciations of the Guatemalan government as the one that had placed her in irreparable danger. Yet Irma’s belief that she could affect change within the system, combined with her refusal to be silenced as a journalist, kept her publishing the column "Lo Que Otros Callan" (“What Others Keep Quiet”) for 22 years.
Flaquer had been the subject of death threats, surveillance, assault and at least one attempt on her life as a result of her expositions of political repression, government and military corruption, and human rights violations in the daily newspapers La Hora and La Nación.
On October 16, 1980, at the age of 42, her destiny finally caught up with her. The day before she was to flee to Nicaragua, she was abducted from a street corner near her home, never to be seen again. Her son, Fernando Valle, age 24, was also murdered in the attack. Some believe the crime resulted from a conspiracy amongst military, police, and government leadership. The threat of repercussions, however, led Flaquer's family, as well as the media, to cease their calls for an investigation.
Because of an amnesty for felonies committed before 1985, no conviction can now be made in her murder. The quest for truth endures, however, as she was but one of many who had persevered despite the institutional violence that even today continues to threaten Guatemalan journalists and human rights defenders, a community that has been aptly described as “living under siege.”
Orton Chirwa
In 1958, Orton Chirwa was among the high-ranking members of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) to choose Hastings Banda as its leader. It was a decision that would eventually cost him his freedom, and ultimately, his life.
Upon gaining its independence in 1964, Malawi saw Banda become the country's first ruler, though not in the democratic manner envisioned by the MCP. Banda, who quickly declared himself president for life, ruled in a dictatorial style wrought with oppression and abuse. Like many other former MCP members who opposed Banda's regime, Chirwa quickly resigned from his appointed position as Attorney General and Minister of Justice and left the country.
In Tanzania, Orton Chirwa founded the Malawi Freedom Movement, while his wife Vera attended law school in London. The couple lived in exile for over a decade until abducted from Zambia by Banda's security forces in 1981 and incarcerated in Malawi. Following a trial in which they were allowed neither defense lawyers nor witnesses, both Orton and Vera Chirwa were convicted of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment. Held under harsh conditions that included torture and mistreatment, the couple saw each other only once during their confinement until Orton Chirwa died in prison in 1992. Subsequent pressure from domestic groups and the international community brought about the release of Vera Chirwa in 1993.
Though Banda was replaced in a 1994 election, government oppression has not ceased in Malawi, where state-sponsored violence, ethnic intolerance, and suppression of free speech still persist. Vera Chirwa too persists, a leading activist for the rights of women and children, who continues her fight despite the battles lost along the way. In 2004, Vera Chirwa became Malawi's First female presidential candidate, and though she didn’t succeed, her struggle has inspired many to continue the fight for human rights and dignity.
Shaka Sankofa
Based on the testimony of a single eyewitness, Shaka Sankofa, formerly Gary Graham, was sentenced to death for a 1981 murder in Houston, Texas. Despite the complete absence of physical evidence, a court-appointed attorney that presented virtually no defense and the fact that Sankofa was a juvenile at the time of his arrest, Governor George W. Bush and the Texas court of appeals ignored the pleas of an international community and the state of Texas executed Sankofa on June 22, 2000. Maintaining his innocence throughout the process, Sankofa fought his executors to the end, necessitating an "extraction team" to remove him from his cell, and several guards to strap him to the gurney on which he would receive the lethal injection.
The state of Texas has accounted for more than one-third of all executions since the nationwide reinstatement of the death penalty in 1977. In addition, Texas has executed at least seven juveniles and six inmates with mental retardation, and is six times more likely to put to death an African-American convicted of killing a white than the reverse. The United States is the only NATO country that practices capital punishment, and it does so in a manner that is widely considered to be inconsistent and racially biased. With the advent of DNA testing, the number of individuals exonerated after sentencing is so high that some states have imposed a moratorium on executions pending re-evaluation of the system.
Albanian Refugee
In 1999, more than one million ethnic Albanians either fled Kosovo or were forcibly removed by Serbian troops. Though neighboring states sheltered most, like this woman in Macedonia's Stenkovec refugee camp, arrival in refugee camps was just one more step in a treacherous journey.
Once a self-governing federal unit of Yugoslavia populated largely by ethnic Albanians, Kosovo was stripped of its autonomy in 1989, under the regime of Slobodan Milosevic. The Serbian government carried out systematic oppression of Albanians, including school closures, massive lay-offs in state-run facilities and blatant violations of basic human rights. In 1998, full-scale violence erupted when government security forces were deployed to fight the growing guerrilla movement in the countryside.
The brutality and destruction of these raids left survivors stripped of their homes and families, and in fear for their lives. Nearly one million Albanians left Kosovo that year in a mass exodus. Refugees often arrived at camps physically exhausted and in poor health after trekking for several days under harsh conditions. Others fared even worse, victims of rape or violence from security forces, or having desperately crossed minefields to reach their freedom.
By the spring of 1999, Macedonia’s refugee camps were overflowing, housing tens of thousands of people in cramped, unsanitary quarters, and facing the prospect of turning people away. Hundreds of thousands of refugees eventually returned to Kosovo following Milosevic’s surrender to NATO – but left to rebuild their homes, their government and their lives, their return seemed less of a homecoming, and more of an arduous new beginning.
Dalai Lama
The Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, has been lauded worldwide for his philosophy and practice of peace, non-violence, universal responsibility and compassion. Called upon at age 16 to assume full political power after China's invasion of Tibet in 1949, the Dalai Lama has since been working with government and religious leaders worldwide, mostly while in exile, to bring peace and democracy to the Tibetan people.
In 1990, his leadership ushered in the establishment of a democratic government for Tibet, with the election of 46 parliament members following voting by exiled Tibetans from over 30 countries. The "Charter of Tibetans in Exile" pledged the commitment of the new government to the freedoms of speech, belief, assembly, and movement. In 1992, he set up guidelines for the constitution of a future, free Tibet in which all of his historical and political authority would be transferred to a democratically elected president.
The Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for his non-violent struggle for the liberation of Tibet, and received recognition for his concern for global environmental problems and his message of peace and understanding. "Universal responsibility", he contends, "is feeling for other people's suffering just as we feel our own."
In January 2009, he noted that in his view the worldwide economic crisis was the result of unlimited greed, a lack of transparency and lies. Stressing that media has a very important role to play in the given situation, the spiritual leader said, “We write as if there is no future but it is also important to show that 'yes', there is a future.” The media must play a more positive role in making and shaping the world.
Filep Karma
Yusak Pakage
Filep Karma and Yusak Pakage are serving long prison sentences for their participation in a peaceful flag-raising ceremony in Abepura, Papua province on 1 December 2004. The two men, along with other Papuans, took part in a peaceful ceremony in which the Morning Star flag, a symbol of Papuan independence, was raised in commemoration of the declaration of Papuan independence in 1962. The commemoration is celebrated annually by some Papuans. Approximately 200 people took part in the ceremony, and hundreds more local people watched from the edge of the fields.
When the flag was raised, police advanced on the crowd, firing warning shots and beating people with batons. Police also beat a human rights monitor from the Institute for Human Rights Study and Advocacy (ELSHAM), who was trying to photograph the police attack on the crowd.
Filep Karma was arrested at the site of the ceremony. Police reportedly beat him and stomped on him during transportation to the police station. A group of about 20 people were later arrested at the police station when they went to protest over Filep Karma’s arrest. This group was subsequently released, except for Yusak Pakage, who remained in detention with Filep Karma. The two men were later charged with rebellion for their role in organizing the event.
Filep Karma and Yusak Pakage have staged hunger strikes during their detention, to protest over their ill-treatment, and over the legality of the charges against them. Filep and Yusak are reportedly both Christians who believe in non-violence. Filep studied Social and Political Sciences while Yusak reportedly studied Theology and Law. Upon his arrest, Yusak was pursuing a Master’s Degree at the Theological College, Walter Post, in Jayapura.
Ngawang
When the Chinese invaded and forcibly annexed Tibet in 1949, assurances were made that there would be no restrictions placed on religious freedom. In fact, the "Seventeen Point Agreement," which Tibet was compelled to sign in 1951, included a formal pledge to respect the state's religious traditions.
In the more than half-century that has followed, the Chinese government has not only flagrantly reneged on that promise, but has launched a targeted campaign of "re-education" aimed principally at Tibet's 46,000 monks and nuns. Chinese "work-teams" systematically occupy monasteries and nunneries for months at a time, forcing religious leaders to study the communist party's policy on religion.
Those unwilling to denounce the Dalai Lama face harsh repercussions, including expulsion from the nunnery or monastery. Increasing restrictions at the beginning of this century saw the expulsion of 9800 religious practitioners and the closure of at least two institutions. In addition, monks and nuns make up more than two-thirds of all known Tibetan political prisoners. Some are incarcerated for years for small acts of resistance, such as displaying a photo of the Dalai Lama.
In the face of this extreme religious persecution, an increasing number, like Ngawang, choose to make the dangerous journey across the Himalayan Mountains, through Nepal and into exile in India. ManyTibetan refugees are arrested on the Tibet/Nepal border and forcibly returned by Nepali officials.
Sowore Omoyele
Sowore Omoyele checked into the Bellevue-NYU Program for Torture Survivors in 1999 to treat the lingering effects of an unknown substance forcibly administered to him during one of his eight arrests by the Nigerian security police. Though the 1994 incident would result in health problems that still lingered years later, Omoyele continues to describe each detention as a chance to "spread the message" and "earn converts".
The message to which Omoyele has dedicated his life is the establishment of democracy and human rights in his native country of Nigeria. Forced to witness the rape of his cousin and the murder of his half-brothers and their mother during a ransack of their village by military police when he was just ten years old, Omoyele became an outspoken voice of opposition as a college freshman and refused to be silenced. Protesting rampant corruption in the government, and the failure of the international community, including the United States, to see past the monetary interests associated with Nigeria's crude oil production, Omoyele continued to organize Nigeria's youth despite being labeled a "threat to national security" and living under constant threat to his safety.
Vowing not to leave Nigeria until some semblance of democracy existed, Omoyele eventually departed in 1999 to seek medical treatment, following the election of President Abunsanjo. However, he is quick to emphasize that basic needs such as health care and running water continue to elude the Nigerian people, and that corruption amongst government officials, especially concerning relationships with large oil companies, persists despite the change in regime.
In 2006, he founded Sahara Reporters in a small room in Manhattan. Since then, it has published over 5,000 stories and has a massive followership within and without Nigeria. He was arrested as recently as January 2017 for his advocacy. "If you want justice," he asserts, "you have to fight for it."
Leonardo Miranda
The Lenca people of Montaña Verde, Honduras have struggled for years with local landowners over the title to territory that the Lencas claim as ancestral communal lands. Their fight for communal land titles and protection of the natural resources has placed them in direct opposition to landowners and their powerful allies in Gracias who want to use the disputed land for cattle ranching, logging, or coffee bean cultivation.
On January 8, 2003, Leonardo Miranda, a Lenca rights activist affiliated with the Civic Council of Indigenous and Popular Organizations, (Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Indígenas Populares), was arrested in Planes and accused of an array of offenses, including the killing of a man named Juan Reyes Gómez. Many of the charges were dropped due to lack of evidence, leaving only battery and murder, charges that Miranda claimed were false. Miranda stated that he was tortured in detention in an attempt to compel him to confess. Following a trial in which defense witnesses were not permitted to testify, he was sentenced in December 2003 to 25 years in prison for murder, based largely on statements by prosecution witnesses that were contradictory and not supported by evidence.
Thankfully, international pressure helped free Leonardo Miranda on August 15, 2006, following a decision by the Honduran Supreme Court in June that acquitted Leonardo of the 2001 murder for which he was wrongfully imprisoned.
Vanessa Ledesma Lorena
Vanesa Lorena Ledesma was arrested in Córdoba, Argentina, on 11 February 2000. Five days later she was dead. A police report recorded that she had died as a result of a ''cardiac arrest''. However, an autopsy revealed that her body showed signs of torture including indications that she had been beaten while handcuffed; severe bruising to the feet, arms, back and shoulders were recorded. There also appeared to be a discrepancy of at least a day between the actual time of death and that recorded by the police responsible for her detention.
Vanesa Lorena Ledesma, a 47-year-old transvestite whose legal name was Miguel Angel Ledesma, was an active member of the United Transvestites Association of Córdoba. She was detained in a bar during a fight and charged with damaging the bar. At the police station she was segregated from other prisoners; apparently the reason given for holding her in incommunicado detention was not to protect her, but to avoid other detainees having to share a cell with a ‘sick’ person.
Lesbian, gay and transgendered people continue to be the victims of harassment and discrimination at the hands of the Argentine police. Provincial legislation, which allows the police to detain people for acts that are not criminal offenses, has frequently been used to detain transvestites, transsexuals, gay men and lesbians. There are concerns that these powers of detention have facilitated torture or ill-treatment.