Articles [3]

SA Man Locked in Prison for Calling Mugabe an Idiot
Published: 21 Jan 2011
Source: The Zimbabwean
Tags: Zimbabwe, freedom of speech

Coming Out of the Darkness
Published: 21 Jan 2011
Source: The Dallas Voice
Tags: children, education, school violence, emotional violence, LGBT, gender expression, local news

Intro

Now that I'm starting to feel a little happier with the way it's arranged I just wanted to take a minute to do a quick introduction for this blog.

I am a fourth year Anthropology major working on a minor in Human Rights as well as Gender Studies. This semester I'll be going through no less than three Human Rights courses including the foundational introductory course, which is promising to be the most intense. In order to help me keep track of all my obligations for this course I've set up this blog. Because HR is a subject that focuses on action and, at it's most basic level, raising awareness, I've decided to make this process public.

What you can expect to see will be mainly the posts that keep track of the news articles I'm supposed to read several times a week - the original concept behind keeping this journal is that I'm supposed to turn in a hardcopy of a "journal" containing all of the articles I've read throughout the semester.

Posts containing lists of terms and definitions or notes will appear often. My professor relies heavily on the "podium banging" method of driving a point home - whenever he repeats a word, or stamps his foot or bangs his fist while saying it, you can be sure it's important and it needs to be written down and Googled later - so he says himself. So that's what you'll see here too.

You can also expect to find posts which essentially contain my notes; as I take notes in class, they are pretty messy, as I review them in the evening they come together. The notes do not present the exact lecture of the day but should contain the key points.

Later on there will be the occasional post relating my experience during a 30 hour service project.

Lastly you should expect to see a number of reflective posts; me writing down my thoughts and feelings about the subject matter, as I process and relate to everything we'll be learning.

And who knows what else might end up finding its way into the daily posts.

That's another thing; if I do this right, this blog should update every day of the week, sometimes several times a day.

To the left of the post column should be a list of Human Rights related links that should be used on a regular basis. To the left is the archive where you can find posts according to date, and you can also track posts according to their tags; the above listed categories should all have similar tags, so if you want to keep up with the relevent ID's you should be able to quickly click a single tag to see all the same posts, while clicking on the newsjournal tag should take you to all the articles I've been reading.

I apologize if the header or background still appear somewhat blurry; I'm still working that out. Thanks.

Articles [2]

Elisa Massimino Talks China and Human Rights on Fox News
Published: 20 Jan 2011
Source: Human Rights First
Tags: China, Tibet, presidential exchange, "deaf to Human Rights", "fair and balanced debate" Fox News, "Universal Rights?", media censorship, internet censorship

Pregnant Zim Women Threatened With Deportation in SA
Published: 20 January 2011
Source: The Zimbabwean
Tags: Africa, Zimbabwe, speech, women, immigration

http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=36904:fresh-cholera-outbreak-in-bikita&catid=69:sunday-top-stories&Itemid=30

censorship, children, China, diplomacy, FoxNews, LGBT, newsjournal, Tibet

HR Lecture 1/14 - Introduction to Human Rights: The Problem Defined

Born in 1988 - What do you have to answer for?

RWANDA

Murambi

1994*

Brutal murder (mainly) of the Tutsi people by Hutu. Genocide, mass graves.

What is the will to live?

*Reflection:

I was six years old. Does this mean I'm "off the hook"? Hotel Rwanda came out in 2004. I first saw it in 2007, as a college freshman. I had recently decided I wanted to declare as an Anthropology major. Something in the film indicated to me that in a way Anthropology was at fault for the horrors in Rwanda. It was because of European Anthropologists coming in and categorizing the people into groups like Hutu and Tutsi, and then declaring both subtly and overtly that one should be superior to the other and creating institutions to reinforce this notion, which enacted the system of inequality and strife which catalyzed the violent retaliation.

I am definitely not off the hook for this one. This was a defining moment in my college career; it was a point where I decided how I should use my degree, and when I realized Human Rights was a minor, it seemed the obvious thing to do.

SUDAN

Darfur

Articles [1]

UN Delegates in Gujarat to Take Stock of Human Rights Situation
Published: 18 Jan 2011
Source: Daily News & Analysis
Tags: India, Gujarat, riots, demonstrations, police brutality

Haiti: Prosecute Duvalier
Published: 17 Jan 2011
Source: Human Rights Watch
Tags: Haiti, miscarriage of justice, "Papa Doc" Duvalier, torture, murder, violent corruption, French compliance

Time

I think I declared my Human Rights minor in my sophomore year; the requirements haven't been altered since then, so I've known I would have to take this class eventually since the beginning. I deliberately put it off though, for a couple of reasons. Partly because I knew it was going to be hard; in fact, friends and peers who have taken it before me have kinds of put the fear of God into me about how strenuous it would be. Though I'm grateful for their input and advice, I wish they hadn't emphasized the hardship so much. But I'm sincerely grateful for their honesty.

The other barrier was knowing what a depressing and discouraging subject this can be. I like to think I have been allowed to live a relatively aware existence, not completely unaware of the problems around me as I lived and traveled all around the world. After four years of studying Anthropology and Gender issues, and being involved in several forms of activism and standing up for this cause and that movement, I've experienced firsthand how frustrating the slow progression of change can be, and I've been discouraged almost to the point of giving up several times. I didn't think I could really handle the intensity of a class that would require me to confront these horrors every single day with the full knowledge that they wouldn't end with turning off my computer monitor. In a word, I was afraid of being discouraged.

But now it's time to wake up. Time to commit fully. Time.