Min Sun – China

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

She says: « Care for the livelihood of the common people + Care for the ecology + Care for history = Care for our future ».

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Min Sun – China

She works for the magazine Camellia, Humanistic Geography.

Sun Min comes from a family of teachers who trace their ancestry to the cadets at Jiangwu Hall in Yunnan Province during the 1911 revolution. After graduating from senior high school, she lived and worked in a production team in a village for three years learning about rural society and the livelihood of peasants in China.

After high school Sun continued her studies in the Chinese Department in Yunnan University. She then worked in a cultural department in Yunnan Province and started her research work in the mountain areas. Her investigation includes the socio-history, customs and oral histories of the ethnic minorities in Yunnan Province.

One of the key findings of her study was that tradition is integrally linked with the land and civilization of a people. With the onslaught of economic development Sun Min used her magazine Camellia-Human Geography to address issues of environmental damage, loss of tradition etc. Concern for the livelihood of the common people and ecology and respect for history along with her conscience are the guiding principles for Sun as a researcher and writer.

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Maria Inês Gomes Rodrigues Fontinha – Portugal

Linked with O Ninho, with human trafficking.org, and with How to Fight (Human) Trafficking.

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

She says: « To build peace, it is necessary to combat war and all its faces: poverty, prejudice, exclusion, unemployment, despair, HIV/AIDS ».

Read: Prostituição Sexualidade e Sida – Inês Fontinha – Sociologia – Instituto de Ciências Sociais e Políticas da UTL, O Ninho – Lisboa.

She says also: « Lost women, women who took the easy way », that is how people used to call prostitutes in Madeira Island, where Inês Fontinha was born. « In my generation, those women had to face a great deal of prejudice. It was a problem nobody would talk about. Women were always seen as the guilty ones ».

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Maria Inês Gomes Rodrigues Fontinha – Portugal

She works for the European Federation for the Eradication of Prostitution (FEDIP), and for O Ninho.

The social scientist Inês Fontinha (born 1943) has been fighting the sexual exploitation of women for over 30 years. In the beginning, she supported Portuguese prostitutes through her work for the non-governmental organization O Ninho (The Nest). Years later, she also started to combat sexual trafficking in children, young and adult women. In 1992, she founded the European Federation for the Eradication of Prostitution (FEDIP), a network in several European countries against this crime.

At the beginning of the 1960s, Inês had recently graduated in Social Science, and was invited by a lawyer friend to visit “O Ninho.” The organization, founded in Portugal in 1967 to support young prostitutes, followed the example and was named after a French organization created in 1936. “My friend used to be a volunteer, teaching the women how to read and write”.

When she first met the sex workers, Inês realized their “way” was not “easy” at all. “I saw the suffering in their faces. I heard their stories and decided to understand, through them, that unknown world I had ignored until then.”

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Parshuram Rai – Nepal

Linked with The Centre for Environment and Food Security CEFS, with Hot Spot of NREGA corruption in Orissa (India), with Rural Job Scam – Survey Report on Implementation of NREGA in Orissa, with India International Centre, and with Invisible Genocide Of The Poor.

Parshuram Tamang, a member of the Call of the Earth Steering Committee, is a Professor of Economics at Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu in Nepal. Born on 18 February 1952, Parshuram is of Tamang descent from the eastern part of the region – the Tamang people being one of the largest indigenous populations in Nepal.

He writes: « The idea of Second Green Revolution seems to me an old poison in an old bottle with a new label on it. It will kill farmers and destroy family farms at very large scale with « high efficiency ». This is a blueprint for loot, plunder and pillage of not only farmers but entire rural India » … (full long text, 21 February, 2006).

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Parshuram Rai – Nepal

Read: Nepalese News and Thoughts (only in Hindu script).

Letter to Prime Minister, 3rd September 2007. Dear Pradhanmantri ji, I am writing this letter to you as my last attempt to bring to your notice that it is not the epidemic of cholera but cancer of corruption that is killing hundreds of Adivasis in Orissa’s KBK (Kalahandi- Bolangir- Koraput) region. It may appear as a sweeping and cynical statement. However, I have come to this disturbing conclusion after spending 5 months of sleepless nights and restless days in uncovering the interlinkages between corruption and abject poverty in the KBK region of Orissa … (full text).

He is a human and democratic rights activist and is also one of the leading architects for indigenous movements in both Nepal and Asia. Over the past 30 years his efforts have been instrumental in the:

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Aung Myo Min – Burma (in Thailand)

Linked with ILGA International Lesbians and Gay Association, with Latest News about Burma, and with UNHRC resolves Burma to allow Paulo Sergio Special Rapporteur.

First to disambiguate: there seems also exist a H E Brig-Gen Aung Myo Min, Deputy Minister for Education, Head of Delegation of the Union of Myanmar, and also U Aung Myo Min, an executive with the government’s mass-movement body, the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) in the western delta region. To me it seems there are three different persons.

Executive director of the Human Rights Education Institute of Burma, is a 1993 graduate of the Human Rights Advocate Program at Columbia University. He is the first openly gay man among the democratic movement of Burma and has received numerous international awards for his human rights work and lesbigay work, including the 1999 Felipa De Souza award by the IGLHRC and Honour of Courage award from the San Francisco City Board. He has been integrating LGBT rights into the mainstream human rights through HRE awareness activities and involving in the drafting process of the future constitution of Burma. (ilg.org).

Aung Myo Min, director of Human Rights Education Institute of Burma, said: « the use of child soldiers in Burma is rampant not only in the Burmese military but also in ethnic armed rebel groups ». (full text).

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Aung Myo Min – Burma (in Thailand)

He says also: « The (tody’) demands are exactly the same (as 1988): freedom, democracy but the main difference is that today the whole world has been following the events in the streets. This was not the case in 1988. We had then no way of communicating to the outside world what was happening. At the moment the demonstrations are better organised, the media is better informed and there is an awareness of what this Junta is doing. In 1988 it was the students who led the uprising while today it is the monks … The multinationals should leave the country. They pretend to help the population but in reality they are only keeping the Generals in power. It is these economic partnerships that are allowing the Junta to buy arms from neighbouring countries. The foreign investors should really leave. (full text).

Aung Myo Min also pointed out using the name of ‘Human Opportunities’ instead of ‘Human Rights’ was a human rights abuse excluding the rights concerning government duties in Universal Human Rights Declaration. (full text).

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Elmar Altvater – Germany

Linked with Attac weist Versuch zurück, jede Kritik unter Gewaltverdacht zu stellen, and with SOCIALIST POLITICS AND THE CRISIS OF MARXISM.

He says (about Heiligendamm):  » … Increasingly, the G8 has come to show the strength of opposition to globalization and the desire of many people to see an alternative form of globalization to what we have at the moment. This year the issue of climate change will be particularly important, because it is threatening the survival of mankind. I don’t think we can expect the G8 to really take into account the seriousness of this problem. It is an issue that the anti-globalization movement has to put on the agenda, as a worldwide movement. Otherwise, all we will see are more statements on climate change, but nothing will come from them. (full text, May 18, 2007).

Er sagt: « Der Kapitalismus, davon bin ich … überzeugt, kann nicht durch einen ‘endogenen’ Verfall zugrundegehen; nur ein äußerer Stoß von extremer Heftigkeit im Verein mit einer glaubwürdigen Alternative könnte seinen Zusammenbruch bewirken… ». (full text).
Elmar Altvater – Germany

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Bio on wikipedia: Elmar Altvater (born 24 August 1938) was Professor of Political Science at the Otto-Suhr-Institute of the Free University of Berlin, before retiring on 30 September 2004. He continues to work at the Institute, and to publish articles and books.

As a student, Altvater studied economics and sociology in Munich, and attained a doctorate with a dissertation on « Environmental Problems in the Soviet Union ». At the Otto-Suhr-Institute, he was active in socialist research groups, working with among others Klaus Busch, Wolfgang Schoeller and Frank Seelow, and he gained fame as one of Germany’s most important Marxist philosophers, who strongly influenced the political and economic theory of the 1968 generation of radicals.

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Walter Kempowski – Germany

Berlin – One of Germany’s most important contemporary authors, Walter Kempowski, died early Friday at the age of 78, his publisher said. Kempowski, who established himself as a bestselling author and a chronicler of the German middle class, had been suffering from intestinal cancer. He is best known for his series of novels called German Chronicles and the monumental Echolot (Echo Sounder), a collection of documents reflecting the reality of life during World War II. German government spokesman Thomas Steg described Kempowski as « one of the most prominent authors in the German language ». Kempowski’s first success as an author was the autobiographical novel Tadelloser und Wolff, in which he describes his youth in Nazi Germany from the viewpoint of a well-off middle class family …

(full text).See his website, in english. Und auch seine deutschen Internet-Seiten.

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Walter Kempowski – Germany (1929 – 2007)

He said:  » … I’m a participant of the post-war era. I paid the price for the sins of others. My family did nothing awful. My father helped a few Jews escape to Sweden. But he was no hero. Nor was my mother » … (full interview text).

Find: his books on Literaturarchiv; on wikipedia (scroll down); on Google book-search; about him on Google scholar-search, and on Google blog-search; and his publications on his own english website, und auch sein Werkverzeichnis auf der deutschsprachigen Internetseite.

Walter Kempowski is one of north Germany’s greatest writers. Apart from his novels, one of the works which has brought him great renown, is a collection of documents reflecting the reality of life during the Second World War. The title he gives to these works is « Echolot » – echo sounder – as he probes into the past. In his house in the north German countryside, Kempowski is surrounded by thousands of letters and documents he has collected over the years. Among them are diaries, letters, photographs and postcards – most of which come from ordinary people. He bought some of them in second-hand bookshops and on market stalls, while many more are sent to him as unsolicited material. In some respects, he has become the keeper of the national memory. His main work charts five weeks in 1943, when the tide of war was turning against the Germans in Stalingrad. Each week is represented by dozens of quotes from people from all walks of life … (full text).

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Maggiorina Balbuena – Paraguay

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

She says: « When I was just 18 years old I went for the first time to Asunción, the capital of the country, trying to escape from the extreme poverty that afflicted the farming community. In Asunción I worked as a maid in the houses of important families, and I was able to see another reality. Then I began to ask myself why my family was so poor while other people had such a good life. Like many other young girls there, I suffered the consequences of being uprooted ».

She says also: « With my parents agreement I moved to the district of Misiones. There, with the help of an uncle who was a catholic priest, I entered the Catholic Agrarian Youth (JAC), where I became one of the leaders. This organisation was a wing of the famous Agrarian League that tried to provide the rural communities with new forms of production based on community work. Three months later this militancy took me to jail ».

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Sorry, I can not find any photo showing the person of Maggiorina Balbuena, Paraguay.

She works for the National Coordination of Organizations of Female Peasants and Indigenous Women.

Maggiorina Balbuena used to get up at four o’clock every morning, and by the pale light that shone from a homemade night light, she prepared the few implements that she would take to school. She dressed in threadbare overalls. That was her uniform. She had no shoes on her feet. She walked miles to the small, rural school in the Karanday’ty Colony (Karanday: Totora. A plant similar to a palm tree- Karanday’ty: Palm grove).

Today known as Genaro Romero, part of the city of Coronel Oviedo (Coronel Oviedo: the most important city of the Caaguazú district due to its economic development).

This was Maggie’s routine, the routine of a fighter like few others. She fought for the cause of the Paraguayan farmers. The routine was repeated every day except at sowing and harvest times when she worked on the farm wearing her hat made of pirí (Pirí: rush, reed, a plant of high canes that once dried are used as the raw material for handcraft work. Hat pirí: a handmade Paraguayan hat). She was born into a family of farmers from a rural community located in one of the most inhospitable wooded zones of Paraguay. She grew up with the green colour of the fields and she lived with the twin evils of poverty and exclusion.

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Madeeha Gauhar – Pakistan

Linked with The Ajoka Theatre.

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

She says: « By starting Ajoka Theatre during the strictest period of martial law, Madeeha Gauhar created an outlet for human rights activism at a time when other avenues had been blocked ».

She says also: “Some of the other prominent street and stage plays by Ajoka include Kala Qanoon which revolves around the Hudood Ordinance; Kala Meda Bhes which deals with a real-life incident in Sindh where a woman was exchanged for an ox and Dukhini which portrays the practice of women trafficking by deceiving Bangladeshi women living in rural areas to come to Pakistan” … (full text).

Find her on Google blog-search.

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Madeeha Gauhar – Pakistan

She works for the Ajoka Theatre.

If alternative theatre is today a vibrant form of political expression in Pakistan, a large share of the credit goes to Ajoka Theatre and its founder, Madeeha Gauhar, a trained theatre director and human rights activist. Led by Madeeha for over 20 years, Ajoka has been, and continues to be, an integral part of the struggle for a secular, democratic, humane, just, and egalitarian Pakistan.

Madeeha, a lecturer at a girl’s college and an activist for women’s rights, decided to start Ajoka at a time when all avenues for political expression were blocked in Pakistan. The group was born in 1983, during the repressive military regime of Zia-ul-Haq, and began modestly, operating out of the homes of its members and with money raised from personal contributions and donations by activist supporters and audiences.

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Florence Aubenas – Belgium

Florence Aubenas (born February 6, 1961 in Brussels) is a Belgian journalist, who worked until 2006 for the French newspaper Liberation. She was taken hostage on January 5, 2005, in Iraq along with her translator Hussein Hanoun Al-Saadi. Ms Aubenas travelled to Baghdad last December, and went missing with her Iraqi interpreter Hussein Hanoun al-Saadi on 5 January 2005. Little is known about their captivity … On March 1, 2005, a video tape was found in Iraq, in which Aubenas asked for help. She spoke English and declared she was in bad health. In the end of the 26-second video, she mentioned the name of Didier Julia. The French authorities and Florence Aubenas’ family were given another video (on CD-ROM) a week earlier. Florence and Hussein were freed on June 11, 2005. (full text).

She says: « When you live through something so public, it becomes a communal story. People who recognize me, congratulate me, it’s a little funny. Was I really a hero? For me, a hero is someone who leads a fight, gloriously, with a firm stand. I didn’t fight for anything. I was captured, held and delivered. I was an object » … and: « I might savor my coffee more in the morning, but when it comes to the big issues, I don’t see life any differently ». (full text).

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Florence Aubenas – Belgium

She works for the french journal ‘Liberation‘.

In the course of a 19-year career with the daily Liberation, she has covered many conflicts – including those in Rwanda, Kosovo and Afghanistan. She is a great professional who is used to danger zones, Liberation newsroom chief Antonie de Gaudemar told AFP news agency. Another colleague described her as plucky but not reckless … (full text).

She says also: « I had no stratagems, no tricks. You are simply obliged to put up with it, you have no choice » … and: « Baghdad is at the heart of the major issues of our time. For a foreign correspondent it is a dream to be there » … (full text).

Aubenas, a veteran war correspondent for the daily newspaper « Libération », and Hanoun al-Saadi were abducted on 5 January by unidentified individuals. Dozens of European media organisations and journalists, including 150 news media executives and editors, rallied to support Aubenas and Hanoun al-Saadi and raise awareness of the kidnappings. Hanoun al-Saadi was reunited with his family in Baghdad shortly after his release, while Aubenas arrived home in France on 12 June. (full text).

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José Gabriel Condorcanqui alias Túpac Amaru II – Peru (1742 – 1781)

Linked with UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and with Articles for Indigenous Peoples on our blogs.

Túpac Amaru II (b. March 19, 1742 in Tinta, Cusco, Peru – executed in Cusco May 18, 1781) — born José Gabriel Condorcanqui Noguera — was the leader of an indigenous uprising in 1780 against the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. Although unsuccessful, he later became a mythical figure in the Peruvian struggle for independence and indigenous rights movement and an inspiration to a myriad of causes in Peru. He should not be confused with Tupac Katari who led a similar uprising in the region now called Bolivia at the same time … (full text).

Read: NGOs, Intellectual Property Rights and Multilateral Institutions; and THE XVIII CENTURY; and The Túpac Amaru Rebellion in Peru, 1780-81.

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José Gabriel Condorcanqui alias Túpac Amaru II – Peru (1742 – 1781)

The today’s representant and general co-ordinator of the Indian Movement Tupaj Amaru is Lazaro Pary Anagua, Bolivia, accredited observer at UNGE, CH-1217 Meyrin 1, Switzerland, Tel: +41 22 7347612, Fax: +41 22 7347617, email.

José Gabriel Condorcanqui’s Bio:

No other rebellion in the American colonies was quite so menacing for Spanish interests in America as this one. Despite the fact that in a certain sense it had been announced beforehand, it took the colonial authorities by surprise, and this oversight helped the movement to acquire sizable dimensions. (full text).

Submitted statements:

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