Mois : janvier 2008

Index January 2008

Munir A. Malik – Pakistan

Linked with Interview with Munir A. Malik, Jan. 13, 2008 (had been published on AHRChk.org Hong Kong) and with AHRC.

Munir A. Malik (Munir is also spelled Muneer) is a very prominent Pakistani lawyer.He is the former President of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) of Pakistan.He was the leader of the legal defense team of Chief Justice of Pakistan … Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry when the latter was illegally dismissed by general Pervez Musharraf … (wikipedia).

He says: « it was quite a sad instance that Army was victimizing its own masses rather than cross border enemies … (full text, Jan. 24, 2008).

Watch the videos:

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Munir A. Malik – Pakistan

Some latest articles where Munir A. Malik is named:

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Ayse Düzkan – Turkey

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

Ayse Düzkan, born in 1959, is one of the first feminist activists and writers in Turkey and has been active in various campaigns for women’s rights: in the peace struggle after 1990, as a journalist on war crimes and women’s issues among the Kurds, with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) on the Peace Train from Helsinki to Beijing, and the Peace Tent in the NGO Forum in 1995. She has been in and written about post-war Bosnia and Albania, as well as the Women in Black in Serbia and the Balkans. And she has also been active against the war in Iraq.

Listen her in turkish on the video: Sisli Direnis evi imza gunu, 9.05 min, December 27, 2006.

She is also a political heroe.

Ayse believes peace is possible only through struggle. She hopes to find a future where women are not oppressed and exploited, and she hopes to find equality, freedom, and justice in that future.

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Ayse Düzkan – Turkey

She works for the Women’s Foundation for Culture and Communication,
and for Pazartesi (Monday newspaper).

Ayse Duzkan started working in a trade union of health workers after she finished high school. The next year she started as a journalist on labor issues in a daily which was closed down after the coup d’etat in Turkey in 1980.

She was arrested, tortured, and imprisoned for several months. In 1984 she joined the first feminist group in Turkey and is one of the founders of the feminist movement there, always active in the movement and in various related campaigns.

She is one of the founders and writers of the first feminist magazine in Turkish, Feminist. She was also founder of Pazartesi, a feminist monthly that has been published for ten years. Ayse has also worked in the women’s peace movement in Turkey, and on building contacts with women who work for peace in other countries.

In 1995, she went to the NGO Forum in Beijing via the Peace Train organized by the Women’s League for Peace and Freedom. She participated in many conferences for peace in Turkey, many organized by women.

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Pervin Buldan – Turkey

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

Pervin Buldan’s political life began when her husband was murdered on 3 June 1994. This killing alerted her to the dirty war waged in Turkey. She first joined the Saturday Mothers, the relatives of those who had disappeared. She then worked at Mag-der, an association to assist these relatives, which was subsequently closed by the state. In spite of many difficulties, Yakay-der, the Center of Support and Solidarity for the Family Members of Forcibly Disappeared People was founded in 2002, and Pervin became president. She is also the mother of two children.

She says: « Our struggle is hard and full of sorrow. But there are instances that give so much power and hope. These moments let us stand up again after having fallen down ».

Listen her speak on this turkish video: DTP’li vekilin arabasıyla uyuşturucu ticareti, 3.03 min, January 02, 2008.

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Pervin Buldan – Turkey

She works for The Center of Support and Solidarity for the Family Members of Forcibly Disappeared People (named on Amnesty International),
/Yakay-der.

She was born on 6 November 1967 in the southeastern province of Hakkari, Turkey. There she grew up, went to school and started to work as an official in the local government administration department. At the age of 19, she married her cousin Savas Buldan. The couple moved from the eastern part of the country to the western metropolis of Istanbul in 1990, where Pervin Buldan was a full-time housewife. There, Pervin’s husband became a well-known Kurdish businessman, who was well liked because of his willingness to help oppressed people. One year later, Pervin’s first child, Necirvan, was born.

In 1993, her life turned into chaos after the former Prime Minister of Turkey, Tansu Ciller, made a speech declaring that the government had a list of businessmen supporting the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) whom they would hold accountable. After that speech, Savas received a series of threatening telephone calls. The period of “killings by unidentified murderers” against businessmen, including Savas Buldan, began.

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Laila Iskandar – Egypt

Linked with Community and Institutional Development CID.

For Laila Iskandar, founder and managing director of the Community and Institutional Development group (CID), that opportunity came in the form of an empty shampoo bottle. Multinational cosmetic companies were frustrated that empty bottles of their products were being filled with bogus material, then resold as the real thing with the labels still intact. Who was doing the refilling? The garbage collectors, of course … (full text).

Watch the videos:

STUDY ON SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT OPTIONS FOR AFRICA, PROJECT REPORT, Final Draft Version.

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Laila Iskandar – Egypt

Egypt: where and who are the world’s illiterates? (2005).

She writes: They have living memories of the horror of evictions and a city that never regarded their work as valuable. In 1974, the choice to settle deep in the ‘belly’ of the Mokattam hills was made consciously and collectively in order to avoid further eviction. They have never stopped serving the city at great financial and personal cost. Let me enumerate some of these costs:

  • unremunerated labour (they were never paid for the service of climbing up and down multi-storey buildings in Cairo);
  • gruelling work (especially for the women who have to sort the garbage by hand);
  • harsh living conditions and a lack of education and health care.

… (full text).

Visions of zero waste around the world.

Laila Iskandar and her Community and Institutional Development group (CID) took home the Schwab Foundation’s honor for Social Entrepreneur of the Year in Egypt. We look at how she and her fellow nominees are setting out to change the economy as we understand it today … (full text).

The Urban Poors as Development Partners.

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Lucía Willis Paau – Guatemala (1959 – x)

Lucía Willis Paau was battling against cancer, she has passed away. Sorry, I found no where indicated any date.

She was one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

She was a Guatemalan woman, the worthy heiress of two great ancestral cultures: the Maya Q’eqchi (direct descendents of the Mayans) and the Garífuna (descendents of former African slaves). During her life, Lucía Willis Paau (46) had played many roles: nurse’s aide, researcher, social worker, mother, and defender of human rights. From her mother, she learned to fight. She had faced poverty, discrimination and marginalization, but she never forgot her origins. Lucía had an unbreakable fighting spirit. She weaved her life with threads of work and hope.

She said: « My life is hope ».

She said also: “If one wants to overcome adversity, one must make sacrifices”.

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Lucía Willis Paau – Guatemala (1959 – x)

She worked for Foundation of the Mayan Woman of the North (Funmmayan).

Forged through constant effort, persistence and sharing an interest in women’s causes, Lucia Willis Paau was a blend of two ancestral cultures: the Maya-q’eqchí’ (direct descendents of the Mayans) and the Garífuna (descendents of former African slaves that lived on the island of San Vicente in the Lower Antilles, during the 17th and 18th centuries; afterwards, they populated the Atlantic coast of Central America).

She went through many difficulties during her childhood. Her father, Stanley Willis, died when she was very young; her mother, Josefa Paau, had a great influence on Lucia’s development. From her mother, Lucia learned the responsibilities of managing a household, how to care for the animals and the crops, how to gather firewood, carry water, make tortillas, wash clothes, and cook. She also learned how to weave the cloth that she sold in the market.

The Mayan-q’eqchí’ culture was prevalent in her development. Her grandmother and her mother passed on the values that are reflected in all aspects of her life – organizational, philosophical, spiritual, and social; the respect for sacred places, for older people, for women and for harmony with nature and the universe. “She told me that when a woman could not make tortillas, she had to make tortillas at night, in front of grandmother moon and ask for help to make round tortillas. From the stars, one can ask them to guide us to find our gifts: our talents and our destiny.”

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Angie Zelter – England

Linked with Trident Ploughshares TP.

Angie Zelter is a British peace activist who founded Trident Ploughshares, which seeks to disarm nuclear submarines in Great Britain through nonviolent means. Since the mid-1990s she has been arrested more than 100 times and more than 2200 arrests have occurred all around the world after Trident Ploughshares actions. These arrests help to bring media attention to the cause of nuclear disarmament in order to raise public awareness about the issue. Trident Ploughshares has also presented legal actions to show that nuclear weapons and nuclear armed submarines are a violation of many international laws. Angie Zelter is the author of the 2001 book, « Trident on Trial: the case for people’s disarmament » and that year her organization received the Right Livelihood Award (often referred to as the Alternative Nobel Prize) “… for providing a practical model of principled, transparent and non-violent direct action dedicated to ridding the world of nuclear weapons”. She is a Betterworld-heroe.

She says: « I had people in the village who would cross the road rather than speak to me and others who would tell me to go back to Russia ». (edp24).

Trident Ploughshares campaigner Angie Zelter said: « These women are very long-standing campaigners who have devoted a huge amount of their lives to protesting all over the UK, at huge cost to themselves. They command a huge amount of respect ». (full text, January 10, 2008.

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Angie Zelter – England

She founded the group Trident Ploughshares to challenge Britain’s deployment of nuclear weapons (and she) describes her work as a peace activist in Britain and the Palestinian territories. (the 12 principles).

She quotes: « Our planet is dying – both spiritually and physically. Fear, aggression and greed, narrow-minded national interests and immature dominance and control over others is a common theme in most countries. However, there are more and more people who define themselves as global citizens, who know that life is intimately interconnected, and that we can never be fully human whilst others continue to suffer, and who know that love, justice and nonviolence is the very essence of life. And what gives me hope is the very many different ways in which ordinary people are taking responsibility. They are creating the changes needed to pass beyond war and injustice, control and dominance and towards a free, just, loving, and diverse world ». (Betterworld heroe).

One stop shop for justice – JUSTICE in Inverclyde is set to undergo its biggest overhaul in decades, with extra court room, extra powers and the return of the High Court, Jan. 7, 2008.

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Walden Bello – Philippines

Linked with Transnational Institute, with Foreign Policy in Focus FPIF, and with The Climate Corporation.
Walden Bello (born 1945) is a left-wing author, academic, and political analyst. He is a professor of sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines, as well as executive director of Focus on the Global South. Born in Manila, Philippines, he became a political activist following the declaration of Martial Law by Ferdinand Marcos on September 21, 1972. In 2003, he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award; describes him as « one of the leading critics of the current model of economic globalisation, combining the roles of intellectual and activist. »[1] Bello is also a fellow of the Transnational Institute, based in Amsterdam and is a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus. (wikipedia).

See his personal website.

Little photogallery and more.

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Walden Bello – Philippines

European Commission ploughs ahead with irresponsible agrofuels push, 25/01/2008.

He writes: The American fast food diet and the meat eating habits of the wealthy around the world support a world food system that diverts food resources from the hungry. A diet higher in whole grains and legumes and lower in beef and other meat is not just healthier for ourselves but also contributes to changing the world system that feeds some people and leaves others hungry. (betterworld). See also it’s Vegetarian Quotes.

Social forum proposes alternative to Davos, 23/01/2008.

He writes also: I’m engaged in the global resistance movement because I think that one has to do something worth while with one’s life. There’s nothing heroic about this. It’s just that you have to do it, to be human. It’s something we owe to our fellow human beings. We have a situation in the world in which this sort of exploitation and poverty that we have should not be seen. Human beings should be able to devise more equitable structures. And so one has to be part of that process. Because you either engage in the process and thereby be true to yourself or you disengage from the process and are just an onlooker and that, I think, would be not being true to oneself. So, the answer to the question why does one engage in this work, it’s because that’s the only decent thing to do. There’s no big inspiration and there’s no big heroism, there’s no sort of martyrdom and there’s no glory. It’s just pure decency. I think that’s at least what motivates me. (full text, scroll down).

Poor, Deluded Europeans, January 22, 2008.

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Zuleikhan Bagalova – Russian Federation

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

Zuleikhan Bagalova is a leading actress of the Chechen theater. She holds the titles People’s Actress of Checheno-Ingushetia and Distinguished Actress of the Russian Federation. For her theatrical achievements, she was awarded the order Symbol of Honor. Zuleikhan already began her social activities in Soviet times. She was three times elected to the Supreme Council of Chechen-Ingushetia. Since 1995, she has been directing the LAM Center which focuses on reviving Chechen culture, providing humanitarian aid, and taking a stand against the war in Chechnya.

She says: « Those trying to conceal the truth about Chechnya do their best also to conceal the fact that the activities of the human rights organizations are anti-war rather than anti-Russian ».

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Sorry, I can not find any photo of Zuleikhan Bagalova in the internet.

She works for the LAM–Center for Complex Research and Popularization of Chechen Culture.

Zuleikhan Bagalova was born on 2 June 1945 in Kara-Balta in Kazakhstan. Her father Mutush Ginaevich Bagalov was a veteran of World War II, who, after having been seriously wounded, was demobilized from the army in 1943. He then worked in the military procurement service.

Zuleikhan has three children. The daughter with her two children is currently permanently living in Norway. Her eldest son is working in the Theater-Museum “Bakhrushin” in Moscow. The youngest son is a student.

After having finished secondary school in 1961, Zuleikhan Bagalova enrolled in the Grozny Theater Studio, which she finished in 1963.

She worked in the Chechen Drama Theater “Kh.Nuradilov” from 1961 to 1997. She completed a distant learning course as actress at Moscow Lunacharskiy State Institute of Drama Art.

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Francis S.L. Wang – China & USA

Linked with Rebuilding a Bridge, and with War Crimes Studies Center WCSC, U.C. Berkeley.

Francis (Frank) S. L. Wang ’72, sharpens the contrast of East and West with two quotes, one by Angus Graham – “…The most striking difference between…the two ends of the civilized world is in the destiny of logic. For the West, logic has been central…” – and the other by Liu Shuhsien – “…it is precisely because the Chinese mind is so rational that it refuses to become rationalistic and…to separate form from content”. (full text).

He says: “It’s not as if the two cultures are from different planets, but they do originate from differing philosophies and perspectives. It is not sufficient just to preach about the rule of law; we need to understand that people are different. If we want to bridge the gap between China and the West, we need to learn more about China’s philosophies and culture so as to understand the way the Chinese organize their world view, and as a consequence their society, and the way they think about law” (full long text).

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Francis S.L. Wang – China & USA
Professor Wang is a Professor of Law at the Kenneth Wang School of Law of Soochow University and is a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as a visiting professor and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the University of the Pacific / McGeorge Law School, (Courses: International Intellectual Property, Concepts of Chinese Law). He is one of the founders and the Senior Counsel of the U.C. Berkeley War Crimes Studies Center. He is one of the founding members and serves on the Board of Governors of the International Association of Law Schools IALS. He is the Executive Director of the Wang Family Foundation (named in SuperPages.com). He has testified before the United States Senate, the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. Trade Commission, as well as the United States Trade Representative’s Office. He has published widely and lectures frequently in the U.S. and Asia on selected aspects of international law and related issues. (full text).

Find him on FindLawyer.cn (a chinese website).

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