Books World changers
SPEAK TRUTH TO
POWER: HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS WHO ARE CHANGING OUR WORLD By Kerry
Kennedy Cuomo Photos by Eddie Adams Edited by Nan Richardson Crown
Publishers, $50 |
By TOM ROBERTS
NCR Staff
As coffee table books go, this is a tough one, its subject matter
disturbing. Author Kerry Kennedy Cuomo features 51 champions of human rights,
some famous, others not well known. Cuomo, 40, has been involved in human
rights work since she interned with Amnesty International as an undergraduate
at Brown University.
The photos, by Eddie Adams, are startling and engaging. Adams,
familiar with the outer limits of human cruelty through his work in war zones,
here captures the outer limits of human resolve and resiliency. Adams won a
Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for his photograph of a Saigon police chief shooting a
North Vietnamese prisoner at point blank range.
Kennedy Cuomo, daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, is married
to Andrew Cuomo, U.S. Housing Secretary and son of former New York Gov. Mario
Cuomo. It is perhaps not accidental that her concern for human rights should
emerge from such a pedigree of eloquence on behalf of the downtrodden and the
have-nots.
One might suggest that in her work -- including this book and its
associated projects -- she carries a rather tattered banner bearing the
language of common good, a concept that in the last 20 years has been fairly
trampled by the rampant individualism of consumerist politics.
A graduate of Boston College Law School and mother of three, she
worked for more than two years on Speak Truth to Power, a phrase reportedly
taken from a Quaker pamphlet of the civil rights era. She interviewed her
subjects in nearly 40 countries.
Many in these pages are not well-known, people who do not have
access to the media and to bully pulpits. They are people who have altered
history not from the front lines of a conquering army or from the deck of a
battleship or by pressing the buttons of a hi-tech fighter plane, but from
circumstances extraordinary only because of how ordinary they are.
There is no academy for the kind of instinct that makes a
fundamental decision to put oneself in the way of dictators and brutal
militaries for the greater good, no think tanks that can produce a five-year
plan for selfless courage.
So Natasa Kandic, who certainly did not suspect that she might be
the subject of a book on human rights activists, made a basic decision nearly
10 years ago. Before the war years, I was involved in political actions
in the former Yugoslavia without any knowledge about existing international
powers for the protection of human rights. And when the war started in 1991,
many of my friends decided to leave the country. I understood their choice, but
I felt I had to stay and fight the policies of war itself.
She traveled widely throughout Yugoslavia, at first in the region
of Croatia and later, when the war began in Bosnia, she investigated the
situation of minorities and Muslims in Serbia.
In 1992, she established the Humanitarian Law Center, a highly
regarded organization known for its meticulous documentation of human rights
abuses during wartime.
Speak Truth to Power is loaded with heroics, the bold
activity that grows out of single-minded conviction, or the decision, as in the
case of Sr. Ortiz, to move on in redemptive ways in the aftermath of the most
horrendous torture and abuse.
But, just as often, the book demonstrates, making the case for
human rights involves the tedious work of collecting data, stories, testimonies
and establishing credibility.
Ka Hsaw Wa is not a familiar name to much of the world beyond
Burma, and even there, in extremely dangerous circumstances, he does his work
clandestinely.
He is the founder of EarthRights International, a nongovernmental
organization that sued Unocal, a U.S.-based oil company, for human rights
abuses committed by Burmese government agents hired by the company to
provide security, transportation and infrastructure support for an oil
pipeline. The suit alleges that the agents committed extortion,
torture, rape, forced labor and extrajudicial killings against the local
indigenous population.
Ka Hsaw Wa, a pseudonym that means White Elephant,
spent years walking through Burmese forests interviewing witnesses and
recording the testimony of victims of human rights abuse. His data has been
used by organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
He has been arrested and tortured by the brutal Burma military
regime, yet his work continues, always at great personal risk.
In the introduction, Cuomo writes that faith in a higher
power is a theme that runs through most of the life stories depicted in
the book. Most referenced a structured religion, a number had ambitions
at some point to join a religious order, and at least six actually did.
Those include the Dalai Lama, Episcopal Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa,
Coptic Bishop Wissa of Egypt, and Catholic nuns Digna Ochoa, a leading human
rights lawyer in Mexico, Diana Ortiz, who was kidnapped and tortured in
Guatemala, and Helen Prejean, who wrote the best-selling book Dead Man
Walking and has led a relentless campaign against the death penalty in the
United States.
Whatever the motives -- anger, compassion, faith -- the costs for
those who elect to buck the tide are always personal and the gains elusive and
uncertain.
A lot of my former classmates now have their Ph.D.s in the
United States, Ka Hsaw Wa said in the interview for the book. They
are educated and come here with money. I think to myself, What am I
doing? I dont gain anything for myself and I cant seem to do
anything to lessen the suffering of the villagers. I see the situation
worsening and I blame myself for not being able to do enough. At the same time,
I cant quit. If I turn my back and walk away, there would be no one to
address the issue.
A photo exhibit of the portraits taken for the book will be
traveling the country through 2003. Further information on the book and related
projects, including suggestions for becoming involved in human rights work, can
be found at www.speaktruthtopower.org
Tom Roberts e-mail address is
troberts@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, November 24,
2000
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