Monday, November 19, 2007
The Impact of Industrialization in China
As many of you know, in March 2008 CMC is sponsoring a Symposium on China and Human Rights to dovetail with the Summer Olympics in Beijing. A major concern right now is the environmental impact of China's rapid industrial growth. This morning the New York Times published this in-depth analysis of the Three Gorges Dam.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Claremont Portside takes on genocide while the Claremont Independent takes on...liberalism
Take a look at the latest issues of the Claremont Portside and of the Claremont Independent and you'll notice something. The Portside, long been the disappointing alternative to the CI's raging conservatism, has gotten a lot better. It's well-organized, the articles are interesting, and the opinions conveyed are more dynamic than over-simplified politics.
The CI, on the other hand, is slacking. Many articles are out-of-date at the time of publication (a movie review from a summer film, an article on freshmen orientation) and few are engaging. The CI continues to rag on Civ 10 and oppose relativism and this issue they found some anonymous minoritiy students to complain that "race retreats" are segrationalist. None of this is terribly suprising or very interesting.
The Portside, while certainly making some standard "liberal" calls for justice, also engages in real debate and addresses issues that are more complex than simple binary politics allow. Thus Civ 10 is both commended and criticized. Teach for America's low retention rate is explored, but the conclusion doesn't write off the program. The Portside, while clearly on the left, at least engages the reader, whereas the CI either repels or reflects the reader's already established beliefs.
You may wonder what this all has to do with human rights and this blog in particular. I originally planned to post David Nahmias's Are We Stopping Genocide? piece but then realized that nearly all of the Portside's articles touch on issues of human rights. Aside from one article making fun of Bono, none of the CI's articles do.
The Independent's been coasting for too long as the best publication at CMC. The new Portside is not only a worthy opponent in quality writing, it has more relevant content and is a better reflection of the student body at CMC. Check out the Portside here. Nice job rockin' the boat, guys.
The CI, on the other hand, is slacking. Many articles are out-of-date at the time of publication (a movie review from a summer film, an article on freshmen orientation) and few are engaging. The CI continues to rag on Civ 10 and oppose relativism and this issue they found some anonymous minoritiy students to complain that "race retreats" are segrationalist. None of this is terribly suprising or very interesting.
The Portside, while certainly making some standard "liberal" calls for justice, also engages in real debate and addresses issues that are more complex than simple binary politics allow. Thus Civ 10 is both commended and criticized. Teach for America's low retention rate is explored, but the conclusion doesn't write off the program. The Portside, while clearly on the left, at least engages the reader, whereas the CI either repels or reflects the reader's already established beliefs.
You may wonder what this all has to do with human rights and this blog in particular. I originally planned to post David Nahmias's Are We Stopping Genocide? piece but then realized that nearly all of the Portside's articles touch on issues of human rights. Aside from one article making fun of Bono, none of the CI's articles do.
The Independent's been coasting for too long as the best publication at CMC. The new Portside is not only a worthy opponent in quality writing, it has more relevant content and is a better reflection of the student body at CMC. Check out the Portside here. Nice job rockin' the boat, guys.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Invisible Children Screening
7PM, November 15th, 2007
Bauer Forum, CMC
There will be a screening of the movie Invisible Children. The movie is about child soldiers in Northern Uganda. Following the movie will be a letter writing campaign to Senators.
Brought to you by the Peace & Social Justice Club.
Bauer Forum, CMC
There will be a screening of the movie Invisible Children. The movie is about child soldiers in Northern Uganda. Following the movie will be a letter writing campaign to Senators.
Brought to you by the Peace & Social Justice Club.
Human Rights Activities, Thursday/Friday
Documentary Film: Ghosts of Abu Ghirab
Thursday, Nov. 15, 2007
Balch Auditorium, Scripps, 7:30 PM
GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB provides an inside look at the abuses that occurred at the Iraqi prison in the fall of 2003. Award-winning filmmaker Rory Kennedy explores how, given the right circumstances, typical boys and girls next door can commit atrocious acts of violence. Kennedy begins tracing the path to Abu Ghraib with 9/11. Facing a whole new war on terror, the Bush administration justified intelligence gathering at any cost. The administration's decision to ignore the rules of the Geneva Conventions laid the groundwork for the abuse. The result? Heinous acts of torture heretofore associated only with the world's most repressive dictatorships. The now-infamous photos that emerged from Abu Ghraib represent only the tip of the iceberg, pointing to systemic abuse from Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan and beyond. These photos have come to redefine the United States--once considered a bastion of human rights--as a principal proponent of torture. Have we blurred the distinction between ourselves and terrorists in ways that will haunt our country throughout history? Powerful, restrained, and fiercely compelling, GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB demands that we examine our conscience as a nation.
For more information please call the Scripps College Humanities Institute (909) 621-8326, or visit our website http://www.scrippscollege.edu/campus/humanities-institute/index.php
Vegas Night hosted by BLiNK
Appleby Dorm, Claremont McKenna
Friday, November 16, 8:00 PM - 10:00 PM
BLiNK, a 5-c organization concerned with human rights in North Korea, is sponsoring a Las-Vegas themed awareness/fundraising event. Come with cash to "buy in", enjoy the games and prizes, do good AND have fun! Proceeds will go to a charity that has the most penetration into North Korea's conditions.
FMI: Visit Facebook, search BLiNK
Thursday, Nov. 15, 2007
Balch Auditorium, Scripps, 7:30 PM
GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB provides an inside look at the abuses that occurred at the Iraqi prison in the fall of 2003. Award-winning filmmaker Rory Kennedy explores how, given the right circumstances, typical boys and girls next door can commit atrocious acts of violence. Kennedy begins tracing the path to Abu Ghraib with 9/11. Facing a whole new war on terror, the Bush administration justified intelligence gathering at any cost. The administration's decision to ignore the rules of the Geneva Conventions laid the groundwork for the abuse. The result? Heinous acts of torture heretofore associated only with the world's most repressive dictatorships. The now-infamous photos that emerged from Abu Ghraib represent only the tip of the iceberg, pointing to systemic abuse from Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan and beyond. These photos have come to redefine the United States--once considered a bastion of human rights--as a principal proponent of torture. Have we blurred the distinction between ourselves and terrorists in ways that will haunt our country throughout history? Powerful, restrained, and fiercely compelling, GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB demands that we examine our conscience as a nation.
For more information please call the Scripps College Humanities Institute (909) 621-8326, or visit our website http://www.scrippscollege.edu/campus/humanities-institute/index.php
Vegas Night hosted by BLiNK
Appleby Dorm, Claremont McKenna
Friday, November 16, 8:00 PM - 10:00 PM
BLiNK, a 5-c organization concerned with human rights in North Korea, is sponsoring a Las-Vegas themed awareness/fundraising event. Come with cash to "buy in", enjoy the games and prizes, do good AND have fun! Proceeds will go to a charity that has the most penetration into North Korea's conditions.
FMI: Visit Facebook, search BLiNK
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Abuse of the Mentally Ill in Serbia: Akin to Torture
I found this article at the bottom of the international headlines on the New York Times website today. It's incredibly disturbing and reminiscent of Hitler's own view of the mentally ill. I put the pictures at the end so you can choose to not look at them if you can't stomach it.
BRUSSELS, Nov. 13 — A 21-year-old man with Down syndrome tied to a metal crib for 11 years. Children, naked from the waist down, left to eat and defecate in their beds. A 7-year-old girl with fluid in her brain left untreated “because she will die anyway.”
These are some of the allegations of abuse at Serbian state mental institutions and orphanages described in a report to be released Wednesday by Mental Disability Rights International, a group based in Washington that spent four years investigating the treatment of some of the 17,200 children and adults with disabilities in institutions in Serbia.
In the report, which is expected to be read closely by European Union officials who are assessing Serbia’s readiness to join the 27-member bloc, researchers concluded that “filthy conditions, contagious diseases, lack of medical care and rehabilitation and a failure to provide oversight renders placement in a Serbian institution life-threatening.” European Union officials said that such reports would be a basis for their assessments of a country’s record in upholding human rights, and of its readiness to enter the union.
The institutions investigated include the Kolevka, or Institution for Children and Youth, in Subotica; the Institute for Mentally Ill People, in Curug; the Institution for Children and Youth, in Kulina; the Special Institute for Children and Youth, in Stamnica; and psychiatric hospitals in Vrsac and Kovin, east of Belgrade.
Eric Rosenthal, executive director of the rights group, said the use of physical restraints on children for years at a time was the most extreme he had seen during 14 years as a disability rights advocate. He said there were no enforceable laws in Serbia regulating the use of such restraints.
“This is the most horrifying abuse I have seen on powerless children, who are tied to beds and unable to move,” he said. “This constitutes a clear case of torture.”
Vladimir Pesic, a Serbian government official dealing with disability issues, declined to comment, saying he had not seen the report.
Last week, the European Union gave pro-Western forces in Serbia a lift by supporting a deal that would accelerate Serbia’s joining the union by cementing closer economic and political ties. But the allegations of abuses could add to the hurdles Belgrade faces, which include its failure to arrest and turn over war crimes suspects indicted in The Hague and the uncertain future of the breakaway province of Kosovo.
Mr. Rosenthal said the extent of the abuse at mental institutions in Serbia was particularly egregious, given that countries had spent tens of millions of euros to help rebuild institutions in Serbia after the 1999 NATO-led war against the country, when it was led by Slobodan Milosevic.
“The mental institutions have been newly rebuilt with the help of the West, so the abuse is happening in clean, new buildings built with foreign money,” he said. “This tragedy could have been prevented.”
Laurie Ahern, an investigator who toured the Serbian mental institutions with a registered nurse, said she was most alarmed by the case of a man with Down syndrome, who was tied to his bed at Stamnica, an institution southeast of Belgrade.
When Ms. Ahern asked a nurse how long it had been since the patient had left the bed, the nurse replied, “Eleven years,” she said.
“There were rows upon rows of young people with Down syndrome,” Ms. Ahern said. “These children are mobile and can move around. But they are being left in metal coffins to lie there until the day they die.”
A dehydrated girl is tied to a crib at an institution in Kulina. A group says such problems could have been prevented.
BRUSSELS, Nov. 13 — A 21-year-old man with Down syndrome tied to a metal crib for 11 years. Children, naked from the waist down, left to eat and defecate in their beds. A 7-year-old girl with fluid in her brain left untreated “because she will die anyway.”
These are some of the allegations of abuse at Serbian state mental institutions and orphanages described in a report to be released Wednesday by Mental Disability Rights International, a group based in Washington that spent four years investigating the treatment of some of the 17,200 children and adults with disabilities in institutions in Serbia.
In the report, which is expected to be read closely by European Union officials who are assessing Serbia’s readiness to join the 27-member bloc, researchers concluded that “filthy conditions, contagious diseases, lack of medical care and rehabilitation and a failure to provide oversight renders placement in a Serbian institution life-threatening.” European Union officials said that such reports would be a basis for their assessments of a country’s record in upholding human rights, and of its readiness to enter the union.
The institutions investigated include the Kolevka, or Institution for Children and Youth, in Subotica; the Institute for Mentally Ill People, in Curug; the Institution for Children and Youth, in Kulina; the Special Institute for Children and Youth, in Stamnica; and psychiatric hospitals in Vrsac and Kovin, east of Belgrade.
Eric Rosenthal, executive director of the rights group, said the use of physical restraints on children for years at a time was the most extreme he had seen during 14 years as a disability rights advocate. He said there were no enforceable laws in Serbia regulating the use of such restraints.
“This is the most horrifying abuse I have seen on powerless children, who are tied to beds and unable to move,” he said. “This constitutes a clear case of torture.”
Vladimir Pesic, a Serbian government official dealing with disability issues, declined to comment, saying he had not seen the report.
Last week, the European Union gave pro-Western forces in Serbia a lift by supporting a deal that would accelerate Serbia’s joining the union by cementing closer economic and political ties. But the allegations of abuses could add to the hurdles Belgrade faces, which include its failure to arrest and turn over war crimes suspects indicted in The Hague and the uncertain future of the breakaway province of Kosovo.
Mr. Rosenthal said the extent of the abuse at mental institutions in Serbia was particularly egregious, given that countries had spent tens of millions of euros to help rebuild institutions in Serbia after the 1999 NATO-led war against the country, when it was led by Slobodan Milosevic.
“The mental institutions have been newly rebuilt with the help of the West, so the abuse is happening in clean, new buildings built with foreign money,” he said. “This tragedy could have been prevented.”
Laurie Ahern, an investigator who toured the Serbian mental institutions with a registered nurse, said she was most alarmed by the case of a man with Down syndrome, who was tied to his bed at Stamnica, an institution southeast of Belgrade.
When Ms. Ahern asked a nurse how long it had been since the patient had left the bed, the nurse replied, “Eleven years,” she said.
“There were rows upon rows of young people with Down syndrome,” Ms. Ahern said. “These children are mobile and can move around. But they are being left in metal coffins to lie there until the day they die.”
A dehydrated girl is tied to a crib at an institution in Kulina. A group says such problems could have been prevented.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Khmer Rouge leader arrested
From Al Jazeera
Police in Cambodia have arrested Ieng Sary, the former foreign minister and public face of the Khmer Rouge, along with his wife, the former social affairs minister of the Khmer Rouge government.
The couple are the third and fourth members of the Khmer Rouge regime to be taken into custody.
Reach Sambath, a spokesman for Cambodia's UN-backed genocide tribunal, said Ieng Sary and his wife, Ieng Thirith, had been brought to court on Monday according to a warrant issued by the tribunal.
Police had earlier cordoned off the street outside Ieng Sary's home in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, at about 5:30am.
Together with tribunal officials they spent about three hours inside the house before taking him away.
Ieng Sary's arrest had been widely anticipated as one of five unnamed suspects earlier listed by tribunal prosecutors.
An estimated two million Cambodians died of hunger, disease, overwork and execution during the Khmer Rouge's rule between 1975 and 1979.
Like other surviving Khmer Rouge leaders, the 77-year-old Ieng Sary who served as deputy prime minister as well as foreign minister, has repeatedly denied responsibility for any crimes.
In Bangkok, Thailand, for a medical check-up in October, Ieng Sary told The Associated Press: "I have done nothing wrong. I am a gentle person.
"I believe in good deeds. I even made good deeds to save several people's lives. But let them [the tribunal] find what the truth is."
According to a July 18 filing by the prosecutors to the tribunal's judges, Ieng Sary, "promoted, instigated, facilitated, encouraged and/or condoned the perpetration of the crimes" when the Khmer Rouge held power.
It said there was evidence of Ieng Sary's participation in planning, directing and co-ordinating the Khmer Rouge "policies of forcible transfer, forced labour and unlawful killings".
His 75-year-old wife participated in "planning, direction, co-ordination and ordering of widespread purges ... and unlawful killing or murder of staff members from within the ministry of social affairs", the prosecutors' filing said.
Critics of the UN tribunal say the process has been left too late and suspects may die before ever being brought before a court.
Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, died in 1998, while his military chief, Ta Mok, died in 2006.
Monday, November 5, 2007
McCain: GOP rivals are wrong on torture
JASON CLAYWORTH
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
November 5, 2007
Allison, Ia. — Republican presidential candidate John McCain called three of the frontrunners in his party inexperienced because he said they condone a torture technique.
He spoke specifically about waterboarding, a highly controversial military interrogation practice that the Arizona senator equates to torture.
“I think, very frankly, that those who are running for president who have never had any military experience or much national security experience like Rudy Giuliani, like Mitt Romney, like Fred Thompson,” McCain said to a crowd of about 30 people at Main Street Cafe. To say we ought to go ahead and do this waterboarding I think shows a fundamental misunderstanding of our national security.
McCain has taken Giuliani to task on waterboarding before. Last month, the former New York mayor said the question of whether waterboarding should be allowed depends on how the technique is defined and who's doing it.
McCain, a U.S. senator from Arizona, was tortured as a prisoner of war by the North Vietnamese military after his plane was shot down 40 years ago. He has been outspoken in his opposition to torture techniques and his belief that the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay should be closed.
Waterboarding is designed to simulate the sensation of drowning. While techniques vary, it often involves strapping a prisoner to an inclined board with feet above the head. A cloth is tied over the prisoner's face or used as a gag while water is poured over the face.
Justice Department memos, published last month by the New York Times, authorized head slaps, freezing temperatures and waterboarding while interrogating terror suspects. The memo was issued soon after former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales took over the Justice Department.
Article from the Des Moines Register, it can be found here.
The current administration, and many others in the Republican fold, has stood by while we lose our status as a nation that respects human rights. However, John McCain, a man with firsthand experience on the pain of torture, is showing Americans that both parties can respect the Geneva Convention. If dedicated legislators build bipartisan support to end the monstrous practice of torture, our troops and the ideals for which they serve will both be safer. As citizens, we need to make sure we vote with a conscience.
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
November 5, 2007
Allison, Ia. — Republican presidential candidate John McCain called three of the frontrunners in his party inexperienced because he said they condone a torture technique.
He spoke specifically about waterboarding, a highly controversial military interrogation practice that the Arizona senator equates to torture.
“I think, very frankly, that those who are running for president who have never had any military experience or much national security experience like Rudy Giuliani, like Mitt Romney, like Fred Thompson,” McCain said to a crowd of about 30 people at Main Street Cafe. To say we ought to go ahead and do this waterboarding I think shows a fundamental misunderstanding of our national security.
McCain has taken Giuliani to task on waterboarding before. Last month, the former New York mayor said the question of whether waterboarding should be allowed depends on how the technique is defined and who's doing it.
McCain, a U.S. senator from Arizona, was tortured as a prisoner of war by the North Vietnamese military after his plane was shot down 40 years ago. He has been outspoken in his opposition to torture techniques and his belief that the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay should be closed.
Waterboarding is designed to simulate the sensation of drowning. While techniques vary, it often involves strapping a prisoner to an inclined board with feet above the head. A cloth is tied over the prisoner's face or used as a gag while water is poured over the face.
Justice Department memos, published last month by the New York Times, authorized head slaps, freezing temperatures and waterboarding while interrogating terror suspects. The memo was issued soon after former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales took over the Justice Department.
Article from the Des Moines Register, it can be found here.
The current administration, and many others in the Republican fold, has stood by while we lose our status as a nation that respects human rights. However, John McCain, a man with firsthand experience on the pain of torture, is showing Americans that both parties can respect the Geneva Convention. If dedicated legislators build bipartisan support to end the monstrous practice of torture, our troops and the ideals for which they serve will both be safer. As citizens, we need to make sure we vote with a conscience.
Athenaeum Events for this Week
Is Judaism a Political Philosophy? Reflections on Spinoza, Strauss, and Levinas
OONA EISENSTADT
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2007
The Athenaeum is pleased to host Professor Oona Eisenstadt of Pomona College as the final speaker in the series on the political and Jewish thought behind the philosopher Leo Strauss. Professor Eisenstadt continues the exploration of the political theory to which Strauss contributed, and its intersection with modern Jewish theology. By looking at Strauss in the context of other Jewish philosophers, such as the French Jewish moral philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas and the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, Eisenstadt attempts to answer the question, “Is Judaism a political philosophy?”
Professor Eisenstadt holds the Fred Krinsky Chair of Jewish Studies and is assistant professor of Religious Studies at Pomona College, where she teaches about Jewish mysticism, religious ethics, and post-Holocaust philosophy. Eisenstadt received her undergraduate and doctoral degrees from McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, before moving on to postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Toronto and Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Her current research involves interdisciplinary approaches to Levinas’ postmodern philosophy, as referenced in her book, Driven Back to the Text: The Premodern Sources of Levinas’ Postmodernism, published in 2001.
Professor Oona Eisenstadt presents the final lecture in the series “Leo Strauss and Modern Jewish Thought,” planned in conjunction with Professor Gary Gilbert and co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights.
A Land Twice Promised
NOA BAUM
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2007
"An enemy is one whose story we have not heard"
-Gene Knudsen-Hoffman
It is difficult to read the news without feeling overwhelmed by stories of violence, loss, and sorrow stemming from the turmoil in the Middle East. At the center of that turmoil is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, characterized by a history of bloodshed, hatred, and revenge. The ongoing struggle has defied the efforts of the international community as well as parties on both sides to find a means of lasting peace. It has far-reaching implications for American foreign policy, national interests, and, most importantly, the lives of millions of people. In fact, if and how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be resolved is one of the most pressing issues facing the international community today. As part of the answer to that question, the Athenaeum welcomes storyteller Noa Baum’s unique insight into the complex of this problem.
For Noa Baum, storytelling is a source of great joy and healing. She was born and raised in Jerusalem, receiving a BFA in Theater Arts from Te-Aviv University. After a time as an actress with the Khan Repertory Theater of Jerusalem, Baum discovered the power of stories and creative drama and went on to receive an M.A. in Educational Theater from NYU, with an emphasis on Drama Therapy. Since 1993 she has trained with Kaya Anderson and the French based Roy Hart Theater, exploring the power and potential of the human voice. Baum has toured Israel and the United States as a performance artist, educator, and workshop leader, delivering a message of healing and change to adult and children artists alike. Her most recent one-woman show for adults, “A Land Twice Promised,” received a grant from the National Storytelling Network. The show developed from a heartfelt dialogue that Baum began with a Palestinian woman while living in the United States. Weaving together their memories and their mothers’ stories, Baum creates a moving testimony that illuminates the complex and contradictory history of emotions that surround Jerusalem for Israelis and Palestinians alike.
Noa Baum’s presentation at the Athenaeum is jointly sponsored by the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights at CMC and a Claremont community interfaith coalition.
Egyptian Police Jailed for Torture
from BBC News
Two Egyptian policemen have been jailed for three years each for torturing a bus driver during police custody.
The police officers filmed the sexual assault of Emad al-Kebir, 22, on a mobile phone. The footage eventually emerged on the internet.
The case is one of several notorious incidents of abuse by the security forces to be uncovered in Egypt, mostly driven by activist bloggers.
Mr Kebir, who was in court to hear the verdicts, welcomed the ruling.
"God is great! Thank God!" he said. "I regained my rights. I don't want anything more than that."
The police officers, Capt Islam Nabih and non-commissioned officer Reda Fathi, sexually assaulted Mr Kebir with a stick and hit him with shoes, a whip and a gun, the court heard.
Court officials said both men will appeal against the verdict.
Nation shocked
In January 2006, Mr Kebir was detained for attempting to stop an argument between his cousin and a policeman and suffered the assault.
Still image from Egypt 'torture' video
The graphic footage appeared on the web in November 2006
He was released without charge, but later arrested and jailed for three months after a judge found him guilty of resisting arrest.
This followed his attempts to complain to the authorities about his treatment.
In November 2006, several Egyptian bloggers posted a video of his assault and it also appeared on the video-sharing site YouTube.
The video, in which Mr Kebir is shown screaming on the floor while being abused with a stick, shocked the country, reports the BBC's Heba Saleh in Cairo.
Mr Kebir's release had already been ordered by a prosecutor when the assault took place.
The policemen, who filmed the ordeal themselves, circulated the footage in an attempt to intimidate others, our correspondent reports.
Torture 'endemic'
Human rights groups say the court decision to jail the policemen is a message to victims of torture, telling them they should break their silence and seek justice.
They agree with lawyers who assert that torture is endemic in Egypt because suspects are held incommunicado for long periods of time and police interrogations take place without counsel.
The Egyptian authorities reject this and have cited the arrest and trial of Mr Kebir's torturers as proof that they do not tolerate abuse.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
The Orphans Who Didn’t Need Saving
November 4, 2007
The World
The Orphans Who Didn’t Need Saving
By LYDIA POLGREEN
DAKAR, Senegal
IN 1890, King Leopold II of Belgium wrote to one of his colonial officials and asked him to set up orphanages in the vast African territory he ruled as his personal fief, the Congo.
The only problem with his plan was that there were no orphans. The concept scarcely existed in Congo or much of the rest of Africa. This is a continent where thousands of ethnic groups and cultures across a vast and diverse landscape nevertheless share basic traditions that dictate that a child whose parents have died is the responsibility of the broader family and community.
But Leopold’s problem was quickly solved — his men kidnapped boys from their families and dispatched them to the “orphanages,” where they received a bit of catechism, some military training and, if they were lucky, baptism.
Mostly, as recounted by the historian Adam Hochschild in his book “King Leopold’s Ghost,” the boys eventually became soldiers in Leopold’s vast native army, if they did not die in the long, harsh marches to the orphanages from their villages.
For Africans, Leopold’s orphan hunt, driven by relentless greed run amok in a colony he ravaged as his personal property, is only one particularly egregious example of a series of deep, and well-remembered, historical wounds.
That record helps explain the skepticism and outrage that greeted the efforts of a French charity, whose members were arrested last week as they tried to fly 103 children from Chad to France, to go hunting for orphans in the deserts between Chad and Sudan.
From the first days of European involvement in Africa, the West has helped itself to the continent’s children — as chattel to be worked like beasts of burden, as soldiers to bear arms against their own kin, or as souls needing salvation through civilization. Sometimes, as the example in Congo illustrates, they were all three.
But the scandal involving the French charity, Zoé’s Ark, is tangled in an even more complicated web, a modern one of apparently good intentions gone awry and of the perceived exploitation of the suffering of vulnerable people, and a profound cultural misunderstanding. The charity is not a well-known group like the dozens of experienced agencies that do lifesaving work in Darfur and eastern Chad. And it was operating far outside the normal boundaries of what established aid and human rights groups consider proper. Still, its experience shows how deeply angry Africans can become when Western “helpers” violate the continent’s own traditions and sense of sovereignty.
According to its Web site, Zoé’s Ark, which was started by a former fireman in France, was motivated by a sense of urgency.
In anguished language, the organization pointed to an obvious fact — the paralysis of international diplomacy in Darfur, in western Sudan, where an ethnic and political conflict has raged for four years, killing at least 200,000 and displacing 2.5 million. The Web site went on to say that something had to be done immediately to end the suffering of the most vulnerable children.
With heart-rending descriptions of children on the brink of death from starvation, violence and disease, the group raised money from French families to fly children out and place them — temporarily, it said — in French homes.
But it turns out that none of the 103 children are orphans in the traditional Western sense — foundlings with no place to go. Almost all were living with family members in villages, relatively well fed and cared for, according to the United Nations. The bewildered children cried as foreign reporters flocked to the orphanage in Abéché, Chad, where they were being temporarily housed late last week until they could be reunited with their families.
The children said they had been coaxed away from their families with sweets and cookies, according to Reuters, and a group of women claiming to be mothers of some children told a French cable news station that they had been told the children would be taken to Abéché for schooling, but that their families would still be able to visit them.
Zoé’s Ark seems to have run into the same problem that Leopold did: In many African societies finding a true orphan is not such a simple thing.
When details of the operation became known, high French officials, United Nations officials, and indignant French citizens, newspapers and child protection agencies sounded their disapproval of Zoé’s Ark’s actions. Jo Becker, child rights advocate at Human Rights Watch in New York, said that removing a child from his or her immediate surroundings might make sense only under circumstances like immediate risk of being forced into military service or a threat of immediate harm. “We would always say,” she said, “that the best place for children is in their community and with their families.”
To be sure, orphanages are full of children in cities across Africa, especially in countries where the AIDS pandemic has shattered entire extended families. And migration to cities has frayed some family bonds.
But many African countries, despite having a surfeit of children with dead or missing parents, have laws surrounding adoption that reflect a strong unease with the concept as it is practiced in the West. As a result, relatively few African children are adopted each year, especially compared with adoptions from Asia and eastern Europe.
Even the idea of Western adoptions sometimes seems to rankle. When Madonna adopted a young boy from Malawi last year, a fierce outcry erupted over whether she had followed proper procedures and whether the boy’s father had been duped.
In largely Muslim countries like Chad and Sudan, where Islamic law governs family matters, the entire Western concept of adoption is essentially forbidden by religious edict.
The current episode has a particular sting because Europe has been writing increasingly stringent rules to keep Africans from migrating there, culminating most recently in a new French law that in some cases requires DNA testing to get visas for family members. Taking a planeload of children away in secret while thousands of Africans drown in the Atlantic seeking to migrate to Spain strikes many Africans as hypocritical.
“What message is the transaction sending?” demanded an editorial in the African Executive, an online business magazine. “Will Zoé’s Ark transport the 201 million Africans facing extreme hunger to Europe? Africa must vehemently resist this humiliation. If Zoé’s Ark is serious on the African plight, let it press Europe to open its borders to African migrants, grant African professionals jobs without discrimination, drop its barriers against African goods and allow Africa to export finished products.”
But accusations of hypocrisy can cut both ways. Chad’s president for the last 17 years, Idriss Déby, abandoned his usual reticence with the international news media to deliver sound bites to the reporters who swarmed to Abéché.
He called the situation an outrage, and speculated that perhaps Zoé’s Ark planned to sell the children to pedophiles. Burnished cane in hand, he walked awkwardly among the scrawny boys and girls. It is hard to say when this former military dictator last paid so much attention to Chad’s children.
Despite the country’s burgeoning oil industry and increased foreign investment, especially from China, Chad’s 1.9 million children under the age of 5, like most of those taken by Zoé’s Ark, are among the most defenseless in the world against disease, hunger and death. One-fifth won’t make it to their fifth birthdays, according to Unicef statistics, mostly because of treatable diseases like malaria, measles and diarrhea. More than 40 percent will be stunted from hunger. Like millions of other impoverished children across Africa, they are waiting patiently for some kind of rescue.
source: New York Times online (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/weekinreview/04polgreen.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin)
The World
The Orphans Who Didn’t Need Saving
By LYDIA POLGREEN
DAKAR, Senegal
IN 1890, King Leopold II of Belgium wrote to one of his colonial officials and asked him to set up orphanages in the vast African territory he ruled as his personal fief, the Congo.
The only problem with his plan was that there were no orphans. The concept scarcely existed in Congo or much of the rest of Africa. This is a continent where thousands of ethnic groups and cultures across a vast and diverse landscape nevertheless share basic traditions that dictate that a child whose parents have died is the responsibility of the broader family and community.
But Leopold’s problem was quickly solved — his men kidnapped boys from their families and dispatched them to the “orphanages,” where they received a bit of catechism, some military training and, if they were lucky, baptism.
Mostly, as recounted by the historian Adam Hochschild in his book “King Leopold’s Ghost,” the boys eventually became soldiers in Leopold’s vast native army, if they did not die in the long, harsh marches to the orphanages from their villages.
For Africans, Leopold’s orphan hunt, driven by relentless greed run amok in a colony he ravaged as his personal property, is only one particularly egregious example of a series of deep, and well-remembered, historical wounds.
That record helps explain the skepticism and outrage that greeted the efforts of a French charity, whose members were arrested last week as they tried to fly 103 children from Chad to France, to go hunting for orphans in the deserts between Chad and Sudan.
From the first days of European involvement in Africa, the West has helped itself to the continent’s children — as chattel to be worked like beasts of burden, as soldiers to bear arms against their own kin, or as souls needing salvation through civilization. Sometimes, as the example in Congo illustrates, they were all three.
But the scandal involving the French charity, Zoé’s Ark, is tangled in an even more complicated web, a modern one of apparently good intentions gone awry and of the perceived exploitation of the suffering of vulnerable people, and a profound cultural misunderstanding. The charity is not a well-known group like the dozens of experienced agencies that do lifesaving work in Darfur and eastern Chad. And it was operating far outside the normal boundaries of what established aid and human rights groups consider proper. Still, its experience shows how deeply angry Africans can become when Western “helpers” violate the continent’s own traditions and sense of sovereignty.
According to its Web site, Zoé’s Ark, which was started by a former fireman in France, was motivated by a sense of urgency.
In anguished language, the organization pointed to an obvious fact — the paralysis of international diplomacy in Darfur, in western Sudan, where an ethnic and political conflict has raged for four years, killing at least 200,000 and displacing 2.5 million. The Web site went on to say that something had to be done immediately to end the suffering of the most vulnerable children.
With heart-rending descriptions of children on the brink of death from starvation, violence and disease, the group raised money from French families to fly children out and place them — temporarily, it said — in French homes.
But it turns out that none of the 103 children are orphans in the traditional Western sense — foundlings with no place to go. Almost all were living with family members in villages, relatively well fed and cared for, according to the United Nations. The bewildered children cried as foreign reporters flocked to the orphanage in Abéché, Chad, where they were being temporarily housed late last week until they could be reunited with their families.
The children said they had been coaxed away from their families with sweets and cookies, according to Reuters, and a group of women claiming to be mothers of some children told a French cable news station that they had been told the children would be taken to Abéché for schooling, but that their families would still be able to visit them.
Zoé’s Ark seems to have run into the same problem that Leopold did: In many African societies finding a true orphan is not such a simple thing.
When details of the operation became known, high French officials, United Nations officials, and indignant French citizens, newspapers and child protection agencies sounded their disapproval of Zoé’s Ark’s actions. Jo Becker, child rights advocate at Human Rights Watch in New York, said that removing a child from his or her immediate surroundings might make sense only under circumstances like immediate risk of being forced into military service or a threat of immediate harm. “We would always say,” she said, “that the best place for children is in their community and with their families.”
To be sure, orphanages are full of children in cities across Africa, especially in countries where the AIDS pandemic has shattered entire extended families. And migration to cities has frayed some family bonds.
But many African countries, despite having a surfeit of children with dead or missing parents, have laws surrounding adoption that reflect a strong unease with the concept as it is practiced in the West. As a result, relatively few African children are adopted each year, especially compared with adoptions from Asia and eastern Europe.
Even the idea of Western adoptions sometimes seems to rankle. When Madonna adopted a young boy from Malawi last year, a fierce outcry erupted over whether she had followed proper procedures and whether the boy’s father had been duped.
In largely Muslim countries like Chad and Sudan, where Islamic law governs family matters, the entire Western concept of adoption is essentially forbidden by religious edict.
The current episode has a particular sting because Europe has been writing increasingly stringent rules to keep Africans from migrating there, culminating most recently in a new French law that in some cases requires DNA testing to get visas for family members. Taking a planeload of children away in secret while thousands of Africans drown in the Atlantic seeking to migrate to Spain strikes many Africans as hypocritical.
“What message is the transaction sending?” demanded an editorial in the African Executive, an online business magazine. “Will Zoé’s Ark transport the 201 million Africans facing extreme hunger to Europe? Africa must vehemently resist this humiliation. If Zoé’s Ark is serious on the African plight, let it press Europe to open its borders to African migrants, grant African professionals jobs without discrimination, drop its barriers against African goods and allow Africa to export finished products.”
But accusations of hypocrisy can cut both ways. Chad’s president for the last 17 years, Idriss Déby, abandoned his usual reticence with the international news media to deliver sound bites to the reporters who swarmed to Abéché.
He called the situation an outrage, and speculated that perhaps Zoé’s Ark planned to sell the children to pedophiles. Burnished cane in hand, he walked awkwardly among the scrawny boys and girls. It is hard to say when this former military dictator last paid so much attention to Chad’s children.
Despite the country’s burgeoning oil industry and increased foreign investment, especially from China, Chad’s 1.9 million children under the age of 5, like most of those taken by Zoé’s Ark, are among the most defenseless in the world against disease, hunger and death. One-fifth won’t make it to their fifth birthdays, according to Unicef statistics, mostly because of treatable diseases like malaria, measles and diarrhea. More than 40 percent will be stunted from hunger. Like millions of other impoverished children across Africa, they are waiting patiently for some kind of rescue.
source: New York Times online (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/weekinreview/04polgreen.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin)
Friday, November 2, 2007
Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics essay contest
The Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics essay contest has been won by both CMC and Pomona students in the past. Information is below and can also be found here: http://www.eliewieselfoundation.org/
THE ELIE WIESEL PRIZE IN ETHICS
ESSAY CONTEST 2008
GUIDELINES
AWARDS:
First Prize - $ 5,000
Third Prize - $ 1,500
Second Prize - $ 2,500
Two Honorable Mentions - $ 500 each
ELIGIBILITY:
Registered undergraduate full-time juniors or seniors at accredited four-year colleges or universities in the United States during the fall 2007 semester.
SUGGESTED ESSAY TOPICS:
What does your own experience tell you about the relationship between politics and ethics and, in particular, what could be done to make politics more ethical?
Articulate with clarity an ethical issue that you have encountered and analyze what it has taught you about ethics and yourself.
Carefully examine the ethical aspects or implications of a major literary work, a film or a significant piece of art.
Clearly analyze the relationship between religion and ethics in today's world.
How does a recent political or cultural event shed light on the ethics of rebellion/revolution?
WHAT THE READERS LOOK FOR:
Clear articulation and genuine grappling with an ethical dilemma
Thoroughly thought-out, tightly focused essays
Adherence to guidelines and carefully proofread essays
Originality and imagination
Eloquence of writing style
Intensity and unity in the essay
ESSAY FORMAT:
In 3,000 to 4,000 words, students are encouraged to raise questions, single out issues and identify dilemmas.
Essays may be written in the formal or informal voice, but most importantly, an individual voice should be evident in the essay.
The essay may be developed from any point of view and may take the form of an analysis that is biographical, historical, literary, philosophical, psychological, sociological or theological.
Essay must be the original, unpublished work of one student. Only one essay per student per year may be submitted.
Essay should be titled, typed in 12-point font in English, double-spaced with 1" margins and numbered pages.
Submissions will be judged anonymously. Hence, no name or identifying references (i.e. your name, school, or professor) should appear on the title page or in the manuscript. Our office will put a code on your essay.
FACULTY SPONSOR:
Any interested professor at the student's school may act as a Faculty Sponsor.
Students entering the contest are required to have a Faculty Sponsor review their essay and sign the Entry Form.
Faculty members should only endorse thought-provoking, well-written essays that fall within the contest guidelines.
SUBMISSION OF MATERIALS:
Please submit three (3) copies of your essay (one (1) copy paper-clipped and two (2) stapled).
In addition, be sure to enclose a completed Entry Form (signed by both you and your faculty sponsor).
Include a letter on school stationery from the Registrar's Office, verifying your eligibility (see above).
Entries must be postmarked on or before December 7, 2007. No faxed or e-mailed entries will be accepted.
Please note that due to the volume of entries, no materials will be critiqued or returned.
CONTEST DEADLINE: DECEMBER 7, 2007
Please complete the submission checklist on the Entry Form and send all materials together to:
THE ELIE WIESEL PRIZE IN ETHICS
THE ELIE WIESEL FOUNDATION FOR HUMANITY
555 MADISON AVENUE – 20TH FLOOR, NEW YORK, NY 10022
TELEPHONE: 212-490-7788 www.eliewieselfoundation.org
THE ELIE WIESEL PRIZE IN ETHICS
ESSAY CONTEST 2008
GUIDELINES
AWARDS:
First Prize - $ 5,000
Third Prize - $ 1,500
Second Prize - $ 2,500
Two Honorable Mentions - $ 500 each
ELIGIBILITY:
Registered undergraduate full-time juniors or seniors at accredited four-year colleges or universities in the United States during the fall 2007 semester.
SUGGESTED ESSAY TOPICS:
What does your own experience tell you about the relationship between politics and ethics and, in particular, what could be done to make politics more ethical?
Articulate with clarity an ethical issue that you have encountered and analyze what it has taught you about ethics and yourself.
Carefully examine the ethical aspects or implications of a major literary work, a film or a significant piece of art.
Clearly analyze the relationship between religion and ethics in today's world.
How does a recent political or cultural event shed light on the ethics of rebellion/revolution?
WHAT THE READERS LOOK FOR:
Clear articulation and genuine grappling with an ethical dilemma
Thoroughly thought-out, tightly focused essays
Adherence to guidelines and carefully proofread essays
Originality and imagination
Eloquence of writing style
Intensity and unity in the essay
ESSAY FORMAT:
In 3,000 to 4,000 words, students are encouraged to raise questions, single out issues and identify dilemmas.
Essays may be written in the formal or informal voice, but most importantly, an individual voice should be evident in the essay.
The essay may be developed from any point of view and may take the form of an analysis that is biographical, historical, literary, philosophical, psychological, sociological or theological.
Essay must be the original, unpublished work of one student. Only one essay per student per year may be submitted.
Essay should be titled, typed in 12-point font in English, double-spaced with 1" margins and numbered pages.
Submissions will be judged anonymously. Hence, no name or identifying references (i.e. your name, school, or professor) should appear on the title page or in the manuscript. Our office will put a code on your essay.
FACULTY SPONSOR:
Any interested professor at the student's school may act as a Faculty Sponsor.
Students entering the contest are required to have a Faculty Sponsor review their essay and sign the Entry Form.
Faculty members should only endorse thought-provoking, well-written essays that fall within the contest guidelines.
SUBMISSION OF MATERIALS:
Please submit three (3) copies of your essay (one (1) copy paper-clipped and two (2) stapled).
In addition, be sure to enclose a completed Entry Form (signed by both you and your faculty sponsor).
Include a letter on school stationery from the Registrar's Office, verifying your eligibility (see above).
Entries must be postmarked on or before December 7, 2007. No faxed or e-mailed entries will be accepted.
Please note that due to the volume of entries, no materials will be critiqued or returned.
CONTEST DEADLINE: DECEMBER 7, 2007
Please complete the submission checklist on the Entry Form and send all materials together to:
THE ELIE WIESEL PRIZE IN ETHICS
THE ELIE WIESEL FOUNDATION FOR HUMANITY
555 MADISON AVENUE – 20TH FLOOR, NEW YORK, NY 10022
TELEPHONE: 212-490-7788 www.eliewieselfoundation.org
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