Hate Crimes on Long Island

Earlier this month there was a tragic incident that occurred here on Long Island, close to home. It was a horrific reminder that sometimes human rights violations occur right in our own neighborhoods. And if we tolerate it in our own neighborhoods, would we really care about human rights violations around the world?

The victim of the incident was a 36 year-old man from Ecuador, brutally beaten and stabbed by 7 white teenagers. The reason? The teenagers were in search of someone "Mexican" to beat up. Based on the color of his skin, he was tracked down and murdered in a blatant racist hate crime. It is terrible that these teenagers deliberately isolated someone who was culturally different, not to mention their obvious stereotyping.

But this is not the first hate crime committed on Long Island. There have been various others, mostly targeted towards a growing Hispanic population on an island that happens to be in close proximity to one of the most diverse cities in the U.S. (New York City). As several people mentioned tonight in a vigil to remember and celebrate the life of Marcelo Lucero (the Ecuadorean man who lost his life tragically), how can such tragedies occur in a country that has elected its first African-American president? [Read the full story here.]

It leads me to ponder the words of one of the faculty who spoke earlier this evening: how are we contributing to a culture of inaction, rhetoric, and silence? Are we? And what are the consequences of that? Privately we may shake our heads in disbelief, but what do we do publicly to challenge those norms of inaction, of words that become rhetoric but ring hollow in the wake of the silence that follows? How do we change all this and teach the next generation about the value of human beings regardless of their skin color, their shape, their language, their culture, their religion, or their gender?

Something else that rang in my head this evening was the words "never again".... The president of our university echoed those in her remarks; but where have we heard them before? We heard them echoed after the Rwandan genocide - that "never again" will the world standby as genocide occurs. I am tempted to think that is yet more rhetoric, falling from lips to floor in silence and inaction as we look around us, not just here on Long Island but in the U.S. and in the world as more atrocities happen. And yet again the communities stand by and do nothing because of no personal vested interest or gain. It is no wonder the next generation still has yet to learn the value and dignity of human beings.....

Where do you stand? And how will you play your part? I hope that I can answer these questions for myself and attempt to transform inaction to action, rhetoric to meaningful dialogue, and silence into voice. Be a voice, be a neighbor, be a friendly look or hello, be involved, and be a part of transforming our communities.

Civilians in Darfur still suffer

Civilians in Darfur still continue to suffer, despite UN military intervention there. Human Rights Watch reported that the UN military forces are still not able to protect the civilians who are trying to return to some sort of normal semblance of life. There have been at least 40 civilians killed in recent fighting between the government-backed army and the rebel forces, according to the Human Rights Watch report. Darfur still suffers, and we in the west are still sitting idly by.... Have you seen anything about Darfur in the U.S. media? Does anyone push for peace in Darfur in our government? What do the presidential candidates say about this? We sit idly by when we need to push our governments to contribute to a stronger resolution for peace in this region. It has been too long, and yet there has been no real action taken.

Add your voice here to urge the next president to take action. They need 20,000 more voices by Election Day.

U.S. Presidential Elections

Some issues (not exhaustive but what come to mind right now) I think we need to think about as elections draw near:

• What are the candidates' stand on Darfur?
  
• What are their records for human rights related activities?
  
• Do their VP picks have the same stand on Darfur and human-rights issues?
  
• What do they consider the "middle class"?
  
• Are they really looking out for the interests of a majority of the American people or just the wealthy few?
  
• What about their stand on the Iraq war which is affecting too many people at this point?
  
• Are the candidates really considering what issues we face as Americans, or are they obstinately pursuing a one-sided view of how things must be?
  
• Do they understand what goes on in working class families and what struggles are occurring, or do they only espouse they do and yet live lives of great comfort that 6-figure salaries can so lushly afford?
  
• Do they realistically and seriously consider the issues facing educators and education today or are they still interested in the privatization of education and pushing "No Child Behind" theories that fall apart at the state level - but that's okay with them because that's really the states' business anyway?
  

Maybe this seems out of place in some ways to post on a blog such as this, but I feel that it is important to think about. We are a voice - a voice not only that speaks out, but also that will be raised in support of a new leader of the United States come November. We need to think about our choice, not just related to our personal interests, but the well-being and harmony of the majority of the "people" (I say a majority because the rich and wealthy don't find themselves in the same situation the rest of us do). Not only that, but we Americans need to understand that the choice we make come November impacts the rest of the world as well..... So I encourage you to think about it.

This isn't an election where so-called "moral" issues are at stake; this is an election where our very real and practical future is at stake. It is about how to decrease the ever-widening income gap between the rich and the poor; it is about how to bring social justice to the table; it is about living in harmony not false superiority with our global community; it is about embracing more than the elite; it is about taking a stand and making sure the United States isn't frowned upon with disgust and it is about so much more. I think these are the very real and sobering sort of "moral" issues we really need to consider. The rest of the world is holding their breath, hoping that we will make the right choice on November 4th. I hope we can too.

Security and Safety: Georgia

The war between Georgia and Russia started late summer and it has been three weeks since Russia agreed to withdraw their troops. But what of the people? So the big boys decided they're no longer going to bully on the playground; but do they think of what they've left behind? Do they care? Apparently not. Security has continued to deteriorate in Georgia; safety of the people in the Gori District bordering South Ossetia is in jeopardy. The people need to be protected.... They should not be victimized or tortured because of someone else's political agenda....

See the Human Rights Watch article here, which describes some of the incidences of violence occurring in this area.

Human Rights and Social Welfare

I have been away from my blog for a while but I realize that being a voice for others does not stop with this blog. It doesn't stop when I'm a student nor does it stop when I am in South Africa at a conference. As a student in Social Welfare, I realize it should not stop at all. I am inspired and stirred when I hear certain people speak, and in conferences like the one I am at, I see the atrocities humanity has committed in the name of self-interest, pride, policy, and economics. I see ideologies that have held people captive and have downtrodden the powerless. I see language and policies that have re-colonized those that we thought were now "free" from colonization. And to this topic, I can only be humbled that I was able to present my paper on some of that "language" and ideology at this conference - the 34th Biennial Congress of the International Association of Schools of Social Work.

I realize how human rights is such an integral part of social work and social welfare, but more than that - it should be a part of our general society and world view. However, though that should be the case, in actuality it is so little. So I am re-assessing, re-assessing how I want to spend the rest of my school years beyond what I do. Studies are important, but it is also important to be involved, to speak out, to pursue things, and to care about those who are weak, who do not have a voice, who are oppressed, who are taken advantage of. As a student of social welfare, do I really want to spend my time behind my books and theorizing in my classes or do I want to combine that with an actual carrying out of those principles and values my discipline have? I think I choose the latter because then I would be a true student of social welfare - believing in social justice and social action and carrying out those beliefs in a world that I'm such a part of.

And to my readers - whoever you may be; human rights is not just left to lawyers (and now to social workers/social welfare people) but it is something that everyone in every profession should take up. Everyone can play a part in human rights no matter their profession or their position. To me I have noticed while spending some days here in South Africa, the most basic part of human rights that we can carry out on a day-to-day basis is treating those whom society has deemed to be at a "lower" status than us with dignity and grace. I am not perfect nor are those around me, but I have seen how it can become ingrained in us -- our manner of dignity and grace towards others or the lack thereof; and I am conscious - conscious of my mistakes, my failures to do so, and my promises to do better. Won't you join me too in this human rights movement of a smaller scale, and be a voice?

Freedom to Vote

What does it mean to be free to vote? In the U.S. as presidential elections draw near, not only are there 2 party candidates, but there are also slots on the ballot where you can write in the candidate of your choice should you feel that neither of the 2 candidates are your choice for the president. But in the elections that took place in Zimbabwe, there was only 1 candidate - this after an election whose results were controversial, hidden, and ultimately disregarded. Not only that but violent incidents occurred related to the support of the current government's opposition. A country cannot be expected to rise if its people are restricted.

Amnesty International reports on the related Human Rights concerns in Zimbabwe; click here to see their report.

More from other sites:

CNN, BBC, and Human Rights Watch.

To Add to the Tragedy in China....

As if the tragedy we have seen in the news in the wake of the earthquake in China is not enough, Human Rights Watch researcher and analyst Kay Seok writes about another group of children suffering from the loss of a parent....and a group of children whose suffering has flown below the media radar.

China shares a border with North Korea and in a city in the Jilin province, there are many children who have North Korean mothers. And yet, these children cannot even be registered and given a legal identity because their mothers are North Korean refugees. If their mothers are discovered, they will be separated from their children and repatriated. If these women return to North Korean they face a lot of persecution, as if the fact that they are separated from their children is not persecution enough. There have been more attempts to crackdown on these refugees as the Beijing Olympics draw closer....

Despite China's international obligation towards refugees, as well as their law that declares that all children regardless of their legal status are entitled to nine years of free and mandatory education, schools demand evidence that children are legally registered in the country..... So parents are unable to get any services for their children as well as basic education. If they want to, the mothers have to leave...or risk getting caught and repatriated.

For more on this injustice refer to the article written by Kay Seok here.

Tragedy in China

As China mourns its victims, so too I mourn those who lost their lives in this earthquake and its aftermath.....It is too much to speak of in words.....the pictures you have seen on the news, on the internet convey more than this blog post ever could. CNN 360's podcast had a clip of the search for survivors as they dug through the rubble of a school. I could scarcely breathe.... So this blog post ends here.....as I think of those children, those victims, those families, communities, and villages that have suffered in the wake of this disaster....

BBC's news on China's mourning....

Cyclone and Related Disasters in Myanmar

I hope that you have been watching the news and seeing what has happened, and is happening, in Myanmar even as I blog. A cyclone recently devastated the country, and as if that is not enough of a disaster in and of itself, the government has been restricting, if not refusing, international aid. While they have been allowing some sort of aid in slowly and little by little, it is not enough. To add insult to injury, there are also some aid that the government has confiscated and is handing out with attached propaganda. Not only that, but today, the military junta has pressed on with the voting for a constitutional referendum - even in the midst of this disaster recovery! It is terrible that in the midst of human suffering, politics are stopping a large part of this relief - and from within the country that suffers, rather than from without!

More stories about this situation can be found on BBC's Burma Cyclone news page here.

Call on the Burmese government to take action now in distributing humanitarian aid to the victims of Cyclone Nargis by visiting the Amnesty International Action Center here.

Food for thought

Rising food costs affect people around the world, not just us here in the U.S. For most of us here in the U.S. it means shelling out a couple more dollars each time we shop or go and eat. For those who live on less than $2 a day, it means a whole lot more. It means hunger for days and dire situations.

And ultimately, those who are young suffer these consequences. NPR has been looking at such consequences - Haiti was today's story. Click here for the whole story.

What can be done? I'm not sure, but I do know that the first step is awareness. So here I am again, blogging as I ponder this situation....

Human Rights and the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The human rights movement is a significant movement around the world and there are always snippets of human rights violation news stories we can catch a glimpse of when we watch the news or read the papers. But human rights is more than the snippets we see.

This year is the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and I think it behooves us to examine what this declaration of human rights states as to our entitlements as human beings on this earth, regardless of ethnic background, socioeconimic status, gender, age, religious beliefs, or any other "categorization".

View the declaration, and see what exactly it states. This is an overview, listing the preamble and the articles of the declaration.

Not too long ago, I attended Social Work Day at the UN, and the opening remarks were focused on human rights. Human rights permeates every corner of our society, and the human rights movement is not solely, as I thought, the work of lawyers. It is the work of everyone, and as someone studying social welfare, the remarks made that day reminded me of that.

Just because we live in the U.S. does not mean that there are no human rights violations here. There are human rights issues with virtually every country. We are not exempt from what goes on in other places nor do we live in a society where those violations do not affect us. So let us be cognizant of that and be involved in the human rights movement that belongs to us, not just lawyers or activists or "them".

Child Labor in Lebanon

Lebanon - a country I visited in 2005 and have fallen in love with has been plagued with long-running political impasse....and as a result, its people have been suffering. Among the suffering are children - some who are as young as 8 years old.... Some estimate the number of child workers in Lebanon to be about 100,000. These children work out of necessity and because situations are worsening due to the political deadlock in the country.

While Lebanon has signed the international convention in 2001 to take measures to curb the worst forms of child labor, there has been no government to implement and enforce these regulations. In the meantime, children are working - painting, welding, and hammering - because their families need money. Some have not been in school for several years. It is a serious and critical situation.

Read the BBC article.

Chocolate - Bittersweet

While my consumption of chocolate has diminished over the years and as I opt more for dark chocolate versus milk chocolate, I am still a huge chocolate lover. And the chocolate industry has billions of ardent fans. Think of the huge amounts of chocolate sold over Valentine's Day; and as Easter comes upon us, those chocolate eggs; and of course, who can forget Halloween? Chocolate is everywhere. Among us friends, it's a stress-reliever too and sometimes a sinful indulgence. But it slips my mind, quite often, that most things chocolate are made from cocoa. Reading a friend's blog and then doing a bit of searching myself, I was reminded of something I have read about in the past, and it makes me think twice about that bar of dark chocolate sitting on my kitchen counter....

A large part of the chocolate industry's cocoa comes from the Ivory Coast (or Cote d'Ivoire) on the continent of Africa. About 70% of the world's cocoa beans are in fact grown in that country. Some of those cocoa farmers employ children - children who are younger than 13. The situation is a conflicting one as these children, who would rather not be working and going to school instead, are sent out to the fields because of the poverty their families face. While US lawmakers and international human rights groups worked to eradicate this problem, it is far from being eradicated in the villages of the Ivory Coast.


Here is a link to a recent article summarizing a recent follow-up by US lawmakers. And here is the original article that I read on my friend's blog called "Chocolate's Bittersweet Economy". You should go to this article because you'll see all the pictures that accompanied the article....

Here's an excerpt from the article by Christian Parenti:
"Outside the village of Sinikosson in southwestern Ivory Coast, along a trail tracing the edge of a muddy fishpond, Madi Ouedraogo sits on the ground picking up cocoa pods in one hand, hacking them open with a machete in the other and scooping the filmy white beans into plastic buckets. It is the middle of the school day, but Madi, who looks to be about 10, says his family can't afford the fees to send him to the nearest school, five miles away. "I don't like this work," he says. "I would rather do something else. But I have to do this."

Sinikosson, accessible only by rutted jungle tracks, is a long way from the luxurious chocolate shops of New York and Paris. But it is here, on small West African farms like these, that 70 percent of the world's cocoa beans are grown - 40 percent from just one country, Ivory Coast. It's not only the landscape that is tough. Working and living conditions are brutal. Most villages lack electricity, running water, health clinics or schools. And to make ends meet, underage cocoa workers, like Madi and the two boys next to him, spend their days wielding machetes, handling pesticides and carrying heavy loads.

This type of child labor isn't supposed to exist in Ivory Coast. Not only is it explicitly barred by law - the official working age in the country is 18 - but since the issue first became public seven years ago, there has been an international campaign by the chocolate industry, governments and human rights organizations to eradicate the problem. Yet today child workers, many under the age of 10, are everywhere. Sometimes they're visibly scarred from their work. In the village of Lilo a young boy carrying a machete ambled along a road with a bandaged shin. He said he had cut his leg toiling in a cocoa patch."

Corporations and Human Rights? An oxymoron?

Sometimes we consumers think that corporations are just large entities out there that serve our consumption needs. Not only do they cater to our needs but they also provide jobs and keep the economy going. True; they do all these things. BUT corporations are also conglomerates that provide filter for our policies in this country as well as funnels through which the global economy operates. So what's wrong with that, one may ask?

More than we dare to think about. Human Rights Watch in conjunction with NYU School of Law's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice recently conducted an investigation and published a report on their website concerning business practices and the effect on human rights around the world. Here is the actual Human Rights Watch article entitled Business: Rights at Risk in the Global Economy. The full report can be found in pdf form on the CHRGI's website under "Full Report".

Corporations are entities that are sometimes given the rights of "individuals" and yet when they create problems or disregard the effects they have on individuals around the globe, all of a sudden they refuse to become liable or responsible for these problems. I think if they demand to be given the rights akin to an individual, they should also be held accountable as such and accept the due consequences when they mess up.

For the sake of profit, often individuals - particularly those who have no power or are "marginalized" as some would put it - are the ones who suffer the most. We often think that it's violence, poverty, diseases, or natural disasters that create suffering for these people; but the underlying causes of suffering can also be attributed to economic inabilities or what I think of as economic oppression by these corporate giants who are eager to calculate their profits at the end of every year.

We must raise our awareness and realize that the U.S. is a part of this - the government that caters to special interest groups and allows social welfare policy to be filtered through the lens of corporation and business elites, the government that is so fragmented that it cannot bring to light these issues and do something about them, and the capitalist influence and consumerism that hold us captive and play a large part in feeding the increasing inequality between rich and poor not just abroad but in the U.S. as well.

And for what profit, really? A well-oiled global economy that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer, and leaves those in the middle either running to catch up with the rich or running to stay ahead of the poor? Is that the sort of future we want to leave our children?

Somalia

Somalia - another country in Africa that is in crisis.... More specifically, its people are in crisis. We have been hearing stories in the news about Kenya, Uganda, Chad, and various other countries as they have been in the news on and off. But I do not recall seeing Somalia in the news.

BBC's article titled it the "forgotten crisis" and you can see the article here. According to this article, the crisis in Somalia appears to be dire and at the core of that situation are the children - the most vulnerable when conflicts arise. 15000 children's lives are at risk if emergency aid does not arrive in the next 2 weeks; people are suffering from lack of sanitary water supplies; and 60% of the population has fled the capital city of Mogadishu. UNICEF declares it to be the worst place for children when all indicators are taken into consideration.

Here's a photo essay - a glimpse into the life of people in Somalia - from the International Rescue Committee.

And here are some more stories on the situation in Somalia:

IRIN Africa: One woman's story

IRIN Africa: The Plight of Internally Displaced Persons

Women Victimized in Armed Conflict

It has been a while since I posted and though time has passed and a new year has come, the need for heightened awareness of human rights issues is greater than ever. We all look to the new year as a fresh start and hope for new and good things. I hope then that we can look at this year as a fresh new start to heightened awareness of the human rights issues that continue without any consideration of the holidays or the new year, unfortunately.

Today my post is about women being victimized in armed conflict. Unfortunately, women become brutalized in situations of armed conflict, particularly currently in the DR Congo, Sudan, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Kosovo, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. But these brutalities do not just happen during wartime; brutalities and crimes against women happen even in refugee camps where women have come to find refuge from the outside situation. This is atrocious. The very places that they have come to find shelter and safety are the places where they are being brutalized, sexually and physically. And then when they try to return to their homes, they're victimized.

Even after the war in Afghanistan, women are still being victimized - particularly those outside Kabul, and being denied their basic rights to participate in the rebuilding of their country. Women in Iraq continue to face sexual violence and abduction so they keep away from work and schools.

Take a look at the Women's Rights work by the Human Rights Watch organization, here.