Young human rights activists from four corners of the globe will
be honored on campus today.
The activists, from Russia, Mexico, Liberia and Burma, will be
given Reebok’s Human Rights Award. The award, given to
activists under age 30, includes a $50,000 grant to each recipient
that will be awarded at a ceremony at Royce Hall today.
Zarema Mukusheva, one of the award recipients, worked at a
television station until it was shut down by the start of civil war
in Chechnya. She then started to film atrocities that occurred
between the Russians and Chechens.
Mukusheva was filming a mass grave site when she was approached
by someone who worked for Memorial, a human rights group based in
Russia. She was asked to share her footage and soon became a member
of the organization.
“We try to maintain neutrality at all times,”
Mukusheva said through a translator, referring to how her group
films atrocities committed by both sides.
Memorial works mostly through written media, and the filming is
done on Mukusheva’s own initiative.
“I document mass graves that are discovered,
demonstrations of locals whose families have been taken away and
arrested, testimonies of people who lived through events,”
she said. “The camera is the greatest perceived enemy by
authorities.”
On the other side of the world, Carlos Perez Rojas is using the
same tool to battle the injustices he has witnessed in southern
Mexico.
Rojas said he trains the indigenous people of southern Mexico to
document alleged human rights violations perpetrated by the Mexican
military.
Rojas said through a translator that human rights improvements
were promised to the indigenous people of Mexico but were reneged
when the North American Free Trade Agreement forced Mexican laws to
make resources on their lands available to transnational
companies.
Though NAFTA worsened the situation, “it’s not like
things were wonderful before,” he said.
The push in the Chiapas region for autonomy has made the area a
continuous conflict zone because the Mexican government does not
recognize local authorities.
Rojas has also worked on documentaries that record the alleged
sexual violation of two women by the Mexican military and a peasant
ecologist imprisoned for defending his lands.
Another award recipient, Aloysius Toe, grew up as a part of the
poverty-stricken class of Liberia, shining shoes while he attended
school.
Civil war broke out while Toe was a teenager, until dictator
Charles Taylor took power and started what Toe called a
“period of violence and harassment of critics of the
government.”
Taylor closed down human rights organizations, exiled
journalists, and shut down any rebel operation, Toe said.
It was then that Toe was moved to legally challenge the
government to release the dissidents, organizing the Movement for
the Defense of Human Rights. He said he was in the middle of
planning a protest when he received intelligence that the
government was going to arrest him.
“I slept somewhere else that night, and 19 armed soldiers
with rifles entered my house and abducted my wife,” he
said.
Though his wife was released, Toe refused to run, deciding to
“test the commitment of the government to the rule of
law” and turned himself in.
Toe was charged with treason but escaped when Taylor was ousted
from power. He currently works for economic equality in Liberia,
where he said there is still a huge divide between “ruling
class” Americo-Liberians (descendents of American freed
slaves) and the indigenous Liberians.
Ethnic divisions are at the heart of Charm Tong’s
humanitarian work as well. Tong is a Shan, one of seven major
ethnic minorities in Burma. Tong cites “forced relocation at
gunpoint and sexual violence” as just some of the atrocities
that face this ethnic group. The relocation leads many Shan to
neighboring Thailand, but Tong said the Thai government often
refuses to grant them refugee status. Shan was sent to an orphanage
on the Thai/Burma border when she was six.
“My parents sent me there because they saw no future for
me at all,” Tong said.
Tong helped found the Shan Women’s Action Network to work
to end the alleged atrocities of the Burmese military against women
and children.
“A 17-year-old girl was seven months pregnant, hiding in
the jungle, when she was … gang-raped from 10 in the morning
until 4 p.m.,” Tong said. This is just one example of the
many atrocities that stem from Burmese military, she said.
Tong also founded a school ““ the School for Shan State
Nationalities Youth ““ to educate the Shan living in refugee
camps.
The Reebok Human Rights Award ceremony will be held at Royce
Hall at 5:30 p.m.