Human+Rights

  __**HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS**__   __INTRODUCTION__ by AshlyJon Yates What exactly are human rights? Human rights are natural, basic rights that every citizen in any country, religion, race, or culture is entitled to. Under any circumstances, all individuals are entitled to their own certain basic rights. Which include certain rights guaranteed by the laws of a country and political rights. The most basic right is the right to life and physical safety. Human rights are the enunciation of the need for justice, tolerance, mutual respect, and human dignity in all of our activity. Rights allow us to express the idea that all individuals are part of the scope of morality and justice. Protecting human rights ensures that people recieve decent and humane treatment. Violating human rights denies the individual's basic moral entitlements. Ways of typically violating human rights can be shown through genocide, torture the citizens, slavery, raping the women nand sometimes the men. The women were forced to become sterile, or used in medical experimentation, and the citizens suffered by starvation. The basic violation of human rights is massacre and starvation of entire populations.

Many people have been hurt or killed; which is an ongoing issue that is trying to desperately be stopped by the UN and many other countries throughout the world .user:Harley6        Ethiopia has very poor records of human rights due to their government. It does not respect the basic human rights of many of its citizens. Police and security forces have harassed, despotically and illegally detained, tortured, and in some cases, killed members of the political party, demonstrators, and suspected rebellions rebelling against the leadership of a political party. Thosands of suspects remain in custody without charge, and lengthy court decisions continue to be a problem. The conditions of the prisons are very poor.Prison conditions are very poor. The government often ignores ciitizens' privacy rights and laws regarding search warrants. It also continues to restrict freedom of the press and limits freedom of assembly. Continuously, violating and discriminating against women still occurrs. user:Harley6 Somalia is extremely poor in their human rights. Violating human rights is a serious problem due to the unstable political situation in the country. Since President Mohamed Siad Barre fled the country in 1991Somalia has not had a central government. Justice is enforced by both police forces and factional militia, both of which have committed many human rights violations in the past. Kidnappings by militia groups to obtain ransom money is another way they violated human rights. Violence and discrimination against women, including genital mutilation, is common. The United Nations has listed Somalia as a country in which the use of child soldiers exist.user:Harley6 Praised for its progressive human rights records at times, the United States has been criticized for for some of its polocies and practices at others. Within the United States, human rights are determined by the judiciary. The United Nations and the drafting of the Universal Declaration of the Bill of Rights, the United States was the central country of the Human Rights creation. Some critics(in both friendly and hostile countries) have criticized the U.S. Government for supporting alleged serious human rights abuses, including torture, legal rendition and Cold War assassination. During times of war and crisis, human rights in the US are typically restricted. user:Harley6   user:ThisIsLame By Sierra Morasca To fully understand Tibet's situation, you have to know the importance of the Dalai Lama, and who he is. To the Tibetan people, the Dalai Lama is a holy man--their spiritual and political leader. They believe him to be the 'current' incarnation of a long line of holy Buddhist monks. There have been thirteen other Dalai Lamas before him. However, times have changed from the first one to recent times. China has controlled Tibet since 1951--and the to the Tibetan people, the situation is not favored. There was an agreement between China and Tibet, called the Seventeen Point Agreement, which affirms China's <span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">sovereignty over Tibet officially. However, even though both China and Tibet's government signed the document, the Tibetan Government in Exile says that the agreement was 'thrust' upon them with the threat of 'arms'. In measures to fix the problem, The Dalai Lama met with the Prime Minister of India, Nehru, in the middle 1950s to urge India to pressure China into giving Tibet an 'autonomous government', meaning an independent government that is not subject to control from the outside. Nehru, not wanting to get involved, encouraged the Dalai Lama to work on the Seventeen Point Agreement Tibet had with China. It was found that this could not be done, and in 1959, after a failed uprising and the collapse of the Tibetan Resistance Movement, the Dalai Lama left for India where he created the Tibetan Government in Exile. With him he took 80,000 refugees. <span style="DISPLAY: block; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; TEXT-ALIGN: left"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"> The human rights violations in Tibet have been going on for quite some time. The Dalai Lama, questioned in 1996 about what's going on in Tibet, said, "Chinese have tightened restrictions on us in the monasteries and in the schools and universities." Fast forward to 2008, and not much has changed. Authorities are beating monks, confiscating pictures of the Dalai Lama, and forcing monks to attend classes full of propaganda which praises the Communist Party. The Chinese government has an ongoing house-to-house raid of innocent civilians of Tibet. The unsuspecting people, including all former political prisoners, have been arrested, and some--especially youth-- get severe beatings by the armed forces. All families can do is helplessly plea at security forces upon seeing their sons and loved ones being beaten and dragged away. Why is China treating Tibet so badly? In order to deter the independence of the Tibetan people. How are they doing this? The Dalai Lama commented in 1996: "The monks are obliged to sign a five-point statement: they must be against the Dalai Lama, accept the Chinese's own Panchen Lama and promise not to listen to Tibetan radio broadcasts from overseas..." And things have only gotten progressively worse. In 2001, Chinese troops occupied the largest Tibetan monastery and forced thousands of nuns and monks to denounce the Dalai Lama. More recently, in March 2008, at least 99 Tibetans have been killed in a week due to unrest, 19 of them shot dead in protests in China's western Gansu province. 12 of the 99 were killed at a rally held by Buddhist monks. China blames the unrest on Tibet's spiritual leaders, the Dalai Lama. The irony in that is the he is committed to non-violence. What is almost the saddest thing is how people in America, myself included, came to know about this very serious problem. The Olympics, which are taking place this time in Beijing, China. Suddenly, the world saw what the world had been avoiding. Though the media, we all heard these stories of human rights violations we had not known. Protesters waited for the torch and tried to extinguish it, and countries are considering not participating. Five groups "claiming to represent tens of thousands of exiled Tibetans are planning a march from India into Tibet" before the Beijing Olympics this year in order to shed light on China's rule in Tibet. The Dalai Lama himself has an opinion on this matter, and took action by asking all nations to use the forthcoming Olympic Games to pressure the Chinese to uphold the Olympic ideals of freedom of speech and equality. <span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif">China refuses being in the wrong, and they are doing what they can to cover what they have done. The Dalai Lama does not encourage countries to not participate in the Olympics, but he does believe in peaceful protests. However, I leave you with this question. Do we really want to support the violence and unjustness of the Chinese government? At least three basic human rights have been taken from these people: The freedom of religion, the freedom of speech, and the right to live. <span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif">It is time America lends a hand to Tibet. user:ThisIsLame
 * __TIBET__**

__**Recent Genocide and Organizations Helping**__ By Catherine Lozano

In Africa, there have been many genocides, such as the genocide in Ethiopia. In Ethiopia, genocide has just recently come to a final and complet end. As a result, there has been over one million people dead in just famine alone and another 700,000 peasants were tortured and killed along with nearly 2,000 people because they were "assoiciated" with the Red Terror, political opponents of Mengistu Haile Mariam. Mengistu Haile Mariam was the ruling dictator of Ethiopia at the same time of the genocide. The famine in Ethiopia was a huge factor as to why many do not like Mengistu, they believe that he did not do anything to help the people dying from starvation on his own land. He was charged and found guilty of the Ethiopian Genocide and crimes against humanity on December 12, 2006. He was a strong believer in Marxism-Leninism, which was an idea that was very popular with many nationalists and revolutionaries during his time, 106 Derg officials were accused of genocide during this time, and some were sentenced to death. This Marzist leader was given the death penalty, but was soon overturned and was just given a sentence of life in Ethiopia prison in January 2006. The sentence of Mengistu Haile Mariam is one of the closing chapers of the genocide in Ethiopia, but the story of the Ethiopians is not yet finished, there are still those who will live through this experience for the rest of their lives.

There are many organizations helping out with Ethiopia and her struggles. Some organization help out with some of the children still having difficulties with their own rights. UNICEF is one of those kinds of organizations fighting for the rights of children in Ethiopia. THis organization and others like it help keep Ethiopia from reforming to it's old ways. Another helpful organization is CARE. CARE helps those not only in Ethiopia, but all over the world. Also CARE helps fight global poverty by stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS. The organization that we chose to lend our hands in aid to is Amnesty International, which is an organization that helps stop human rights violations globally. user:cat2010 External source for Amnesty International: www.**amnesty**.org/user:ThisIsLame By Riley Lambertsen
 * __Trafficking__**

Another violation of natural rights comes in the form of human trafficking, which Wikipedia defines as “the recruitment, transportation, or receipt of people for the purpose of exploitation”. (Wikipedia) Simply put, this means that any time human beings are taken, transported, and/or received against their will for abusive purposes; it is classified as human trafficking. There are many subcategories to this topic, but perhaps the most heartbreaking of which is sex trafficking. It is a vile practice that degrades and dehumanizes females around the globe, and needs to be stopped. Sex trafficking, otherwise known as the sex trade, is a huge issue that concerns the entire world. The victims are as diverse as you can imagine. They are not just one race or one age group; they are all different. Sex traffickers do not discriminate against their victims. They choose their victims purely by how easy it is to acquire them and what the client wants. The girls are obtained through a multitude of ways. They are quite typically shanghaied using fraud, coercion, and deception. (Wikipedia) Of course, often times the victims are just plain old abducted. Different methods include promises of: a good job, false marriage proposals (a.k.a. mail order brides), or a better education. For example, //Natalya, a single mother of two little girls is told by her female neighbor of a good job waitressing in the Ukraine.(Natalya lives in Eastern Europe, and also provides for her ill brother.)The neighbor offers to get her the job and arrange the trip for her, for a fee of course. Natalya accepts in the excitement of a better life for herself and her family. Upon arriving, she discovers that the bar owner is a pimp and her neighbor has sold her into sex trafficking. Her passport is taken and she is locked in a crowded room with about twelve other women. Her trafficker violently rapes her, stating that he must “try out the goods” first. Soon she is being forced to perform lewd acts for up to a dozen men per day. Within a few months, Natalya can’t even remember who she used to be.// (soroptimist) This is just one example. The victims come from all walks of life, but usually they come from poor backgrounds in third world countries. Mostly this is because the judicial systems there are not as harsh or as developed and it is easier to get away with illegal trafficking. Another bonus for the traffickers is that parents that can no longer afford to support their children may give/ sell their daughters into slavery. These parents are not completely cruel- most don’t fully realize the danger they are placing their children in. The family is more often than not under the impression that they are actually //helping// their children, because they are told that the girls will receive shelter, protection, and a good education. The parents are told that once the kids work off the family’s debt they are free to leave and start their own lives. The parents have no idea that they have just personally signed their daughters’ death sentences. Sadly the problem is not a simple case of goods guys versus bad guys, and the solution is more difficult than just sending letters to a representative in congress. The issue is complex and hidden behind years of secrecy. Young girls and women are being forced and tricked into sexual slavery everyday throughout the world. It is utterly tear- jerking to read about innocent females being abused physically, emotionally, and mentally. This predicament is so hard to remedy because it’s almost impossible to identify it. Sex trafficking is such a massive industry because the crime is carefully hidden, and the victims are silent. The tortures that trafficking victims are put through are unspeakable. Pimps normally “condition” the girls through atrocious ordeals. They use techniques like physical abuse, starvation, rape, force- feeding drugs, confinement, and threats to their family and close friends. The women suffer from severe physical and emotional injuries. Their bodies endure broken bones, traumatic brain injuries, vaginal/ anal tearing, concussions, STDs, substance addictions, sterility, and unwanted pregnancies. There are also extreme emotional/ mental effects. These include acute paranoia, hatred of men, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, depression, and suicidal tendencies. The victims who have experienced the most tend to experience traumatic bonding. This is where the victim is abused so much by their attacker that they become grateful that their traffickers allow them to live, and consequently become emotionally attached to them. (The campaign) The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime recently reported that Asia has the highest number of transnational traffickers. This was closely followed by central, southeastern, and Western Europe. Hilary Clinton said in 1997, “It is a violation of human rights when women are trafficked, bought and sold as prostitutes.”(Coalition) In 2003, President George Bush made an address to the United Nations saying, "The victims of the sex trade see little of life before they see the very worst of life- an underground of brutality and lonely fear." (Zero Tolerance)It is thought that over 40 million women are being trafficked world wide. The US alone is spending upwards of 117 million dollars on anti- trafficking policies. Thankfully, there are many groups and organizations dedicated to fighting this cause. Specifically catering to sex trafficking is the TVPA. TVPA is the Trafficking Victims Protection Act that the United States passed in 2000. It watches the global human trafficking records and cracks down on law enforcement to protect the victims. Apparently its working because the number of women trafficked into the US each year fell from 50,000 in 2001 to 20,000 in 2003! In 2003, John Ashcroft stated, "We have made great progress, but each heartbreaking tale of injustice compels us to do even more." (Zero tolerance).

The most difficult part about the whole issue for me, personally, is the solution. Reading and learning about the trials these women go through is an emotional experience. It is close to impossible to hear the facts and stories, and not be affected by it. You feel the need to get out there and do something to stop the it. The problem is that sex trafficking is not a dilemma that can be solved by writing to congress or making fliers. It is not only a global market, but it is so powerful that it can remain on top even when the whole business is taking place undercover. This is impressive and shows how deeply rooted the abuse goes. There is no clear- cut action or decision that will magically alter the way thing are. We decided to just raise money for our action, even though we knew that we wouldn't be making a ginormous difference. user:smiley_riley

__Editorial__ by Sierra Morasca Human rights violations are always subjective. What’s wrong? What’s right? What are your standards? How can a person really stand up and say, “Genocide is wrong, and must be stopped.”? Do we have that right? My answer is, we do. It has to do with faith, and it has to do with the ‘golden rule’. What we believe, and what we are brought up to believe, defines how we react to so-called injustices. How would we feel if our loved ones were taken away without a second thought by a government put in place only to destroy our entire race? Would we be okay with torture in prison, and no fair trials? How would we feel if we were guilty until proven innocent? And would we want your help? This is how I define a human right. A right we should all, regardless of stature and location, age or race, orientation or class, be entitled to. We here in the US are fortunate, the US Declaration of Independence protects us, but nobody is perfect. People try in the United Nations to make everybody protected, but then why are there still problems? Why don’t we recognize them? I believe we have the duty to help, as we would want to be helped. And trust me, we would. user:ThisIsLame __Our Action:__ We have, as of this minute, not finished our action piece yet. We are raising money by holding a bake sale on Monday in front of Vons grocery store. The signs are already created and ready. Our group is going to be selling brownies, cupcakes, cookies, cake, and soft pretzels. It will be fun and we are hoping to make a good deal of money. We are going to donate the proceeds to a program called Amnesty International. Amnesty International is one of the biggest contibutors to the cause.They cover almost every type of violation of human rights imaginable. It is a wonderful association, and one that we are grateful to be affiliated with. Hopefully, the money will help someone who needs it most!

Dorothy Thompson once said, "Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding; and that there is always tomorrow." user:smiley_riley

SIERRA'S WORK CITED

Agloe, Tsering. "Mass Abductions in Midnight Raids by Chinese Security Forces in Lhasa." __Canada Tibet Commitee__. 3 June 2008. 3 June 2008 <[|http://tibet.ca//en/newsroom/wtn/1143>.] August, Oliver. "Chinese Troops Seize Tibetan Monastery." __Times of London__. 20 July 2001. 16 May 2008 <http://elibrary.bigchalk.com/libweb/elib/do/document?set=search&groupid=1requestid=1Chinese_troops_seize_Tibetan_Monastery>. Kristof, Nicholas D. "Fed Up with Peace." __Big Chalk Elibrary, New York Times__. 18 May 2008. 21 May 2008 <http://elibrary.bigchalk.com/libweb/elib/do/document?set=search&groupid=1requestid=1>. Morrison, Donald. "ASIA: Our Way of Life is Changing." __TIme International__. 11 Apr. 1996. 21 May 2008 <http://elibrary.bigchalk.com/libweb/elib/do/document?set=search&groupid=1&requestid=co>. "Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama." __Wikispaces__. 3 June 2008 <[|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenzin_Gyatso,_14th_Dalai_Lama>.] "Tibetan Activists Begin March From India to Tibet to Protest Chinese Rule." __Voice of America News__. 10 Mar. 2008. 21 May 2008 <http://elibrary.bigchalk.com/libweb/elib/do/document?set=topic&groupid=1requestide=co...>.

RILEY'S WORK CITED


 * "Fact Sheet: Sex Trafficking." __U.S.__ __Department of Health and Human Services__. 10 Nov. 2004. Administration for Children and Families. 2 June 2008 http://www.acf.hhs.gov/trafficking/about/fact_sex.html.
 * "Human Trafficking." __Wikipedia__. 3 June 2008. 5 June 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trafficking_in_human_beings.
 * Katayama, Lisa. "Sex Trafficking: Zero Tolerance." __MotherJones__. 4 May 2005. Foundation for National Progress. 4 June 2008 <[|http://www.motherjones.com/news/dailymojo/2005/05/sex_trafficking.html>.]
 * Levine, Andrew. "Captive Daughters Recieves Grant." __Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation__. 11 June 2008. 4 June 2008 http://www.gatesfoundation.org/GlobalHealth/Pri_Diseases/OtherInfectiousDiseases/Announcements/Announce-247.htm.
 * "The White Paper: the New Face of Slavery." __Soroptimist__. Soroptimist International of the Americas. 1 June 2008 <[|http://www.soroptimist.org/whitepapers/wp_womentrafficking.html>.]