Nguyễn Diệu Hương
(dieuhautotbung)
Thành viên danh dự
:x Have you ever heard about human rights movements? Do you know that human rights is one of the most heating topics in any United Nation 's conference? Both the Declaration of Independence of the United States and Vietnam mention human rights as "certain unalienable rights". Although every country in the world commits to promote human rights, there are still disagreements on this issue.
Amnesty International is a non-government organization whose members have lobbied governments, armed groups, corporations and others to promote and protect human rights. On November, the 8th, 2003, Amnesty International Northeast Regional Conference took place in Boston University. I was one of 400 members from colleges, high schools and other organizations to attend the conference.
In the opening panel, Mr. James Walsh gave a speech on Human rights, civil liberties and the war on terrorism. He is now a professor at Harvard University. His speech was really amazing as it provided a different point of view on the war on terrorism. He analyzed 10 myths after the 9 /11 event. Below are some of them.1. People tend to think that terrorism is new. Actually, it has been a serious problem since the Cold War.
2. It is not true that all terrorists are the same. There are hundred of motives for terrorism to occur.
3. Sadam Hudsen was involved in 9 /11. This is absolutely wrong. The U.S has not given any evidence to prove its assumption.
4. The U.S government has tried to convince its people about the close relation between Sadam and Al Qaeda. This is not true.
5. There are 5000 members of Al Qaeda in the U.S. In fact, the number is much smaller. There are not many people who are actually real members.
6. Most terrorism is against the U.S. Everyday there are lots of terrorists' attacks happening in other countries.
7. The U.S is now fighting against terrorism. No, they are not. The war on Iraq is not against terrorism.
Then I joined the workshop on Women's human rights campaign. We focused on several cases such as the girl child soldiers in the DRC, the disappearance or deaths of 370 women in Chihuahua state in Mexico.
In the afternoon, I took part in the workshop on North Korea (one of the most popular workshops). In this workshop, I had different point of view with the speaker and I raised my idea. The speaker had little information from North Korea to support his statement that food is being used as political weapon in North Korea. He said that the normal people in North Korea had less food than the military, that the government was willing to let their people die of hunger than abandon their power... He demanded action from the U.S to provide food. I personally think that North Korea don't accept the food aid from the U.S because of unreasonable conditions along with the food aid. :|
Though I don't totally agree with all the cases that Amnesty is focusing on, I am very interested in being its member especially in the campaign for women's rights. The way they provided information in the conference was very touching, impressive. The video sreening, the movies, cartoons really had a profound impact on every one in the room. :x
The official song of Amnesty this year is "Imagine" by John Lenon. Imagine there are no borders, no wars, no tears.. You may say I am a dreamer. But I am not the only one. It is high time we did something to stop human rights violation all over the world. So join us today and take action!
For further information, you can visit the website: www.amnesty.org
