Mois : juin 2006

Index June 2006

Ronald V. Dellums – USA

He says as Major-elect: “We can solve the problems of Oakland. We can be a great city.” And: “I accept this responsibility with honor, humility, optimism and idealism,” Dellums said. “We can solve the problems of Oakland. We can be a great city.” (See People’s Weekly World).

He said: « What am I ducking about? I am equal to you intellectually, I am equal to you as a human being. I respect you, you respect me. And in an honest discourse in a free and open society, I have to have the right to step up and define who I am. What gives you the right to define who I am? I am not here to judge you, who are you to judge me? And if we’re going to deal with each other in a free and open society with a legitimate exchange of ideas in the marketplace, then I cannot put myself in a second-class role to you to allow you to assume the capacity to even think that you could judge me. So if I’m not going to judge you and you don’t judge me, now there are two equals in discourse. So I don’t accept the labels that you place upon me. And if there are other people out there who are wondering what all these labels are about, let me tell you who I am. » (See the whole interview on berkeley interview).

He was legislating for the people, as a U.S. Representative from California from 1971 until 1999.

See also R.V.Dellums Homepage.

Ronald V. Dellums – USA

The contest between Dellums and De La Fuente — Oakland’s longtime City Council president — triggered a debate over Oakland’s civic identity and a referendum on the eight-year tenure of outgoing Mayor Jerry Brown. While race per se was not an issue, class was. A housing and development boom under Brown forced out many lower-income residents, mainly African Americans, while more middle-class residents moved in. The result was an expanded tax base that boosted business activity in Oakland, but simultaneously left many lower-income residents feeling excluded. For poorer residents, Oakland is in crisis, with violent crime increasing and the schools in state receivership.

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Erzsebet Turos – Romania

She is one of the 1000 women proposed fort the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

She says: « Considering the disastrous situation of care when I first started working here, we have made progress and to me the future looks optimistic. »

Erzsebet Turos – Romania

She is working in the Psychiatric Hospital Borsa.

Erzsebet Turos has worked as a general practitioner in a psychiatric hospital in Borsa in Cluj county, Romania, for several years. When Dr. Turos arrived, the hospital was pure horror and passive euthanasia was repeatedly taking place. Dr. Turos is highly appreciated by the 230 patients for her care and help. She has instituted occupational therapy and social activities where before there were none. Since December 2002, she has been cooperating with the German association Beclean e.V, which was founded by the staff of a psychiatric hospital in southern Germany to provide help to Romania.Erzsebet Turos has been working in the psychiatric hospital in Borsa for the past nine years. When she started to work, there were 215 chronic psychiatric patients with different diagnoses: schizophrenia, alcoholism, epilepsy and dementia. For these patients there were only two doctors: a psychiatrist who is also the general director of the hospital and another general physician, a woman who left the hospital shortly after Dr. Turos arrived. Since then, no other physician has come to work in Borsa.
The hospital is in an old castle, which belonged before the Communist era to a family of barons. It is the only chronic psychiatric hospital in Cluj county.

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Nang Charm Tong – Burma

Linked with our presentation of A Petition.

She says: « I told myself I had to do my best because I was the voice of the people and their suffering. I almost cried during the presentation, and time was so short, and my voice was shaking … » (Read on UNPO).

Read here about the World Pace Forum 2006 in Vancouver.

Nang Charm Tong – Burma

At age 16, Nang Charm Tong began working with human rights groups, interviewing sex workers, illegal migrants, HIV patients and rape victims. The following year, she spoke in Geneva on their behalf—and still speaks, in four languages, with the poise and confidence of a mature woman. (Read this long article on TIME).

Forum aims to give peace a chance – Thousands of delegates to spend five days in Vancouver discussing global challenges. (Read this article on NATIONAL).

She is one of the 1000 women proposed fort the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

Nang Charm Tong’s parents were so concerned for her safety in Burma that they sent their daughter across the border into Thailand at the age of 6, where she grew up in an orphanage – never to return home to Shan State. Over the years, atrocities against the Shan and other ethnic minorities by the Burmese military regime have produced a steady flow of refugees across the border. Nang Charm Tong, as witness to these women and children, began to advocate for their rights as a teenager. Now, at 23, she is a veteran activist and a winner of the 2005 Reebok Human Rights Award. (Read more on Christian Science Monitor).

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William Blum – USA

William Blum is an author and critic of United States foreign policy. A former State Department employee, he left in 1967 due to his opposition to the Vietnam War. His work devotes substantial attention to CIA interventions and assassination plots. Blum describes himself as a socialist and has supported Ralph Nader’s presidential campaigns. From 1972 to 1973 Blum was in Chile, where he reported on the Allende government’s « socialist experiment ». In the mid-1970s, he worked in London with ex- CIA and KGB agent Philip Agee and his associates. Agee wrote a scathing critique of CIA operations in his book Inside the Company: CIA Diary. (See wikipedia).

He writes: If you flip over the rock of American foreign policy of the past century, this is what crawls out … invasions … bombings … overthrowing governments … suppressing movements for social change … assassinating political leaders … perverting
elections … manipulating labor unions … manufacturing « news » … death squads … torture … biological warfare … depleted uranium … drug trafficking … mercenaries … It’s not a pretty picture. It is enough to give imperialism a bad name … (See this on his Homepage).

William Blum – USA

« It was in the early days of the fighting in Vietnam that a Vietcong officer said to his American prisoner: « You were our heroes after the War. We read American books and saw American films, and a common phrase in those days was ‘to be as rich and as wise as an American’. What happened? » An American might have been asked something similar by a Guatemalan, an Indonesian or a Cuban during the ten years previous, or by a Uruguayan, a Chilean or a Greek in the decade subsequent. The remarkable international goodwill and credibility enjoyed by the United States at the close of the Second World War was dissipated country by country, intervention by intervention. » William Blum. (See Third World Traveler).

See also: Biography and more.

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Hanif Kureishi – England & Pakistan

Linked with our presentation of Freud’s Requiem.

He says: « When I was growing up, the idea of anyone writing about my life, or about people like me, was inconceivable. Asians, and particularly those who had migrated to or grown up in Britain, were a kind of anti-subject matter ». Hanif Kureishi, a literary godfather to a generation of British Asians, has now written a memoir of his own father. Sukhdev Sandhu meets the writer who saved him from adolescent despair. (Read this very long article on the Telegraph).

Hanif Kureishi – England & Pakistan

Excerpt: … Not only is Kureishi very cute, but very open about his relationships with
other men. Many of his books have autobiographical elements. One of my
favorites, « The Buddha of Suburbia » was made into a four hour movie
staring Naveen Andrews (from The English Patient) as the Karim, the
protagonist of the novel who falls in love with his male punk rocker
friend from school. An interesting aside is that Kureishi attended school
in England with a young man named William Broad who later changed his name
to Billy Idol … (Read more about his book: My son, the fanatic).

Excerpt: … His book The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) won the Whitbread Award for the best first novel, and was also made into a BBC television series with a soundtrack by David Bowie. The book Intimacy (1998) created some controversy. The story includes a man leaving his wife and 2 young sons, for he feels physically and emotionally rejected by his wife.

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Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls – Fiji

She is one of the 1000 women proposed fort the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

She says: « The main objective of femLINKpacific is to bring the stories of our women and their communities to the forefront, to help promote peace and reconciliation in multi-ethnic Fiji ».

Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls – Fiji

She works for the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), and the National Council of Women (NCW).

Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls (38) gained national prominence in Fiji by organizing, through the National Council of Women, a daily prayer vigil when government leaders were held hostage for 56 days during the 2000 coup. She now produces the monthly e-news bulletin « FemLINKpacific, » originally to give voice to women affected by the coup and a quarterly magazine « femTALK 1325 » covering women’s peace initiatives and post-conflict needs in the region and advocating for UN Security Council Resolution 1325 implementation. She also runs FemTALK 89.2FM, a monthly mobile women’s community radio service. Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls works to share Fiji women’s stories with the rest of society in the hope that her community-centered initiative, femLINKpacific, will not only increase awareness of critical social, political and economic issues, but also serve as a channel for promoting peace and national reconciliation. She takes a very hands-on approach in all aspects of the work, including developing and strengthening partnerships with other women’s organizations and like-minded NGO and civil society organizations.

Questions and Answers on Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls’s work:

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Laila Lalami – Morocco

Linked with our presentations of some of her texts on our blog for Humanitarian Texts: Exile and the Kingdom, and Love and Betrayal in Colonial Africa, and also The Cult of the Ethnic Autor).

She says: « These days, being a Muslim woman means being saddled with what can only be referred to as the « burden of pity. » The feelings of compassion that we Muslim women seem to inspire emanate from very distinct and radically opposed currents: religious extremists of our own faith, and evangelical and secular supporters of empire in the West ». (Read this whole long article on The Nation).

She says also: « I was writing before getting married and becoming a parent, but it’s true that it becomes a challenge to find the time to write. I’m fortunate that I have a supportive spouse and I’m also extremely disciplined, so it all works out ». (See this interview by Dan Wickett on 6/20/2005).

Laila Lalami – Morocco

The picture that emerged from the Casablanca attacks was the kind of cliché that drives conservatives to hysterics. The bombers — all young men, all single, all unemployed or hustling for jobs — came from the sprawling slum of Sidi Moumen, just outside the city. Sidi Moumen is home to 200,000 people squatting in shacks with corrugated tin roofs. There is no running water. Trash pick up is sporadic and open sewage makes its way down dirt alleys. Unemployment is sky high. In addition, the bombers were recent recruits to Islamic fundamentalism; some had been going to the underground mosque at Si Larbi for only a few months.

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Guadalupe Mejía Delgado – El Salvador

Linked with our presentation of FEDEFAM – Fighting Against Forced Disappearances.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed fort the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

She says: “Hope also feeds us. Not the hope of the foolish, but the other one”.

Guadalupe Mejía Delgado – El Salvador

She works for the Comité de Familiares de Víctimas de las Violaciones de Derechos Humanos de El Salvador Marianella Garcia Villas (Codefam).

She is a woman of the countryside, affable and sensible. Who could guess that behind her serene appearance there is a personal history of pain and loss? Defender of human rights for 22 years, her courage and determination have allowed her to open the doors of prisons and military barracks, achieving freedom for people who were opposed to the regime, during the Salvadoran Civil War (1980-1992). 13 years after the signing of the peace agreement, she still works for justice and truth, asking, “Where are the missing people?” She is Guadalupe Mejía, an untiring seeker of peace.

Guadalupe Mejía is a rural woman, born and raised in the canton of La Ceiba, in the municipality of Las Vueltas, in the administrative district of Chalatenango, in the North of El Salvador. She married Justo Mejía, when she was barely 17 years old. With him, she found love, and their nine sons and daughters were born as a product of that love.
Justo was a farmer, politically and socially aware, who taught her a way of life that she would never abandon: to defend life in the midst of a poor and repressed society. When he was murdered in November of 1977, Guadalupe continued the fight that he had begun. “Justo is my conscience”, she would say.

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Achta Djibrine Sy – Chad

Linked with the presentation of Intermón Oxfam.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed fort the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

Goes with ‘Assuming Authority‘.

She says: « Since I was a child, I have always had a dream: that one day I shall build a big house where all unfortunate people can live and enjoy life. »

Achta Djibrine Sy – Chad

She works for Intermón Oxfam (IO); for Groupe informel de réflexion et de recherche action feminine (GIRAF); and for Said-Al-Awine (Women’s Union).

Achta Djibrine Sy (born 1962) obtained her first degree in Management and Economics from the University of N’Djaména. She is Intermón Oxfam Representative in Chad and has been advocating women’s work to be visible, regardless of their ethnical and religious background. She encourages women to gain self-confidence and to pool their labor to bring about peace in Chad. Thanks to her splendid efforts, women who were very poor some years ago are now self-dependent and are even able to give loans to others.At the beginning of civil war in Chad in 1979, Achta Djibrine Sy was a 17 years old high school student. Despite the abrupt instability of the country, she succeeded in getting her baccalaureate and Bsc in Management and Economics from the University of N’Djaména in 1989. A year before completing her Bsc program, she worked with a group of women, who were affiliated with international organizations in the country, to form an interactive assembly called “Groupe informel de réflexion et de recherche action feminine” (GIRAF), which is an informal group of research about women issues.

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