Human rights: Unsung heroes

Extended description: The struggle for human rights around the world has produced some great victories. The apartheid system has finished in South Africa and dictators like Marcos in the Philippines, Duvalier in Haiti, and Sukharto in Indonesia have been swept from power. Former communist countries have undergone political changes which have brought freedom in their wake. The world is freer now than just a few years ago. This 30 Minuts special report celebrates these developments and pays homage to those men and women who brave threats, torture, and harassment in the defense of human rights. These unsung heroes have helped advance the cause of freedom and in the process have risked their lives, their jobs, and their families in defending moral values. These are the stars of our report “Human Rights: Unsung Heroes”. COLOMBIA Defending human rights in Colombia carries a high price. Osiris Bayter was President of a human rights organization in the Magdalena Medio region, one of the most violent in Colombia. She was forced into exile in the Basque Country because she had received death threats. In Colombia, such threats are best heeded. Six members of her organization were killed in the early 90’s by a spy network set up by the Colombian Army. The program also filmed the work of Osiris’ colleagues, who stayed behind in Colombia. They have all been declared “military targets” and as such can be killed at any moment by the so-called Peasant Self-Defense groups, paramilitary groups hired by the big landowners and drug barons to carry on a dirty war against anyone considered “subversive”. The human rights workers’ only “crime” is to attempt to bring the murderers of innocent citizens to justice. Osiris Bayter Osiris and her family have been given refuge by Amnesty International and the Vitoria City Council. In the early 90’s, six members of CREDHOS, a human rights group over which she presided, were murdered by an intelligence network created by the Colombian Army in her hometown, Barrancabermeja. “I became a defender of human rights because I felt I could no longer just go on burying my friends and weeping over their deaths,...to go on burying friends and acquaintances that the State had labeled guerrillas and subversives, and then go home and cry.” Francisco Campos Francisco Campos, “Chico,“ is a member of CREDHOS. He is escorted by unarmed members of the Peace Brigades International, an NGO which does what it can to protect human rights workers. The initiative followed the slaughter of six workers by an army intelligence outfit. “Two things worry us. First, we are concerned our scarce resources will stop us from doing more. All human rights workers share that concern. Second, we are very afraid of the appalling brutality, the terrorism, the senselessness of the criminal deeds of the State that know no bounds, no limits and that stop at nothing. We are totally defenseless, as are our headquarters, our homes...” BELARUS Vladimir Shchukin and Tatiana Protska are two very different characters. The former is an ex-sailor who was elected Communist Party deputy in Belarus’s Supreme Soviet. So far, he has been imprisoned eight times for his opposition to the government. Tatiana has been a human rights activist for several years and is now President of the Helsinki Committee. Both of them fight against the regime led by Aleksandr Lukashenko, a former communist bureaucrat. Lukashenko’s dictatorial government is hell-bent on reunification with Russia and setting aside the independence Belarus gained in 1991. The old Soviet political machinery and Lukashenko’s populist politics are putting back the clock and destroying what little progress the country had made towards democracy. International human rights reports on Belarus and other former republics of the Soviet Union paint a bleak picture of the situation in these countries. This report shows how the Lukashenko regime makes life impossible for political opponents, independent trade unions and journalists. It also shows how those persecuted by the regime try to survive the daily repression. Vladimir Shchukin Shchukin has been imprisoned eight times for his political activities. President Lukashenko’s tactic is to impose huge fines on detainees rather than hold them in prison for long periods of time. The fines are deliberately set so high that they are impossible to pay. Shchukin cannot own a house or a car because they would be seized by the authorities to pay the fines. “The political situation here could be defined as a dictatorship. There are no concentration camps, but the state is totalitarian. There's a total lack of participation in politics by ordinary citizens. People have no power whatsoever, neither in the capital nor in the provinces. The city mayors are not elected by the people, but appointed by the president.” Tatiana Protska Tatiana Protska is President of the Helsinki Committee in Belarus. The organization is very active in its defense of human rights. The reports produced by the Committee are strongly critical of the government. The organization’s daily work of denouncing injustice is hampered by the climate of fear which pervades the country. “All regimes which act in an irregular way try to cover up what they are doing or at least to justify their actions. The leaders of our country feel no need to hide their use of illegal measures. The strange thing about Belarus is that legality is simply absent from daily life. It is not governed by the force of the law, but by the law of force.” TUNISIA Tunisia has signed more international treaties on human rights than any other Arab country. It even has an official body, the Commission on Human Rights, which theoretically defends basic freedoms. But the ugly reality is that those defending human rights are continuously harassed. Here are a few examples of the treatment meted out by the regime and covered in this report. Khemais Ksila, Vice-President of the Tunisian League for Human Rights, has spent the last two years in prison for having published a protest against the country's appalling record on rights. Radhia Nasraoui, a lawyer, has ended up as one of the accused in a case she was defending. Taoufik Ben Brik, a journalist, can only work for the foreign press and has suffered attacks and threats. All these people and their families are closely watched by the police. Their telephones have been cut off and their passports taken away in an effort to silence them. Khemais Ksila Khemais Ksila, Vice President of the Tunisian League for Human Rights, has spent the last two years in prison. He was only released a month ago. His “crime” was to have made a public statement in which he denounced the abuse he suffered for being a defender of human rights. “They cut off my telephone. I am kept incommunicado. They watch my house and intimidated us. My car was robbed. They had me fired from my job and then they took away my passport. They decided to arrest me for denouncing all of this and everything they had done to my family and because I dared to speak out about the lack of freedom and human rights in my country.” Radhia Nasraoui Radhia Nasraoui lives with her three daughters. Her husband, leader of the illegal Tunisian Communist Workers Party, was forced into hiding two years ago. Radhia Nasraoui is an internationally-renowned human rights defense lawyer. Her last case dealt with police torture. “Torture is a savage, medieval practice still in use in our country. The worst of it is that nothing happens when we denounce the torturers. They act with total impunity. Special report on those men and women who brave threats, torture, and harassment in the defense of human rights. Original language summary: Programa dedicat als drets humans amb motiu de la celebració del 15è aniversari de "30 minuts". El programa consta de tres reportatges sobre la vulneració dels drets humans a Colòmbia, Bielorrússia i Tunísia.