Urgent Appeals Programme – celebrating 20 years of unique resistance
29th September, 2017
Twenty years ago, when the Asian Human Rights Commission’s (AHRC)
Urgent Appeals Programme started, we embarked on a new venture to
demonstrate the potential of the Urgent Appeals in creating a culture
that respects the sufferings of the victims, and to create a counter
culture of concern and protest.
It is time now to assess how far this original dream regarding the
Urgent Appeals have been achieved in the last 20 years? We therefore
call upon all our partners, victims of human rights abuses, our
associates, and those who have used the Urgent Appeals Programme to
write to us in the coming weeks to share with us your experiences
relating to the workings of the Urgent Appeals Programme of the AHRC.
You may write your own stories of how you connected with the Urgent
Appeals Programme. You may write your personal story about incidents
that you have suffered or found somebody else have suffered. You may
also inform us how the Urgent Appeal Programme helped in drawing
public attention to the injustices you have experienced, and also how
the programme helped you as a tool of creating support and solidarity.
It is also possible to look at the 20 years’ experience of the
Urgent Appeals Programme from different perspectives. One way is to
see how far does the programme help to break the culture of silence, a
political culture, that prevails in most of Asia. In a larger
political climate of impunity, what can a single individual do , by way
of recording what the person learns about a particular human rights
violation, and through links with other organisations who are willing
to give publicity to such violations support the victims of human
rights abuses, particularly in instances where threats to victims
exist from state agencies.
Those who led the Urgent Appeals' Desk over the years
What it means is that in this age of enormous developments in
communication systems, even an isolated individual living in a remote
part of country could become an active agent of promoting justice, and
also developing many forms of creative protests by utilizing this
enormous revolution that has taken place in the communication world.
Today any person who cares about justice could easily become partners
with others by taking few simple steps of recording what is it around,
by way of interviews with people who suffer various problems. By
becoming a narrator of the stories that a person sees around and by
simply passing it off to others who will take the trouble to see that
such stories are being told to larger audiences, not only in
particular country but also to the global community.
How far an individual can empower oneself through the modern
communication process was illustrated by the 20 years of experience of
the Urgent Appeals Programme. This programme started with meagre
resources, but relying entirely on voluntary acts of partners,
victims, and even onlookers who in some way want to participate in the
attempt to help another who is facing difficulties.
The complaint about powerlessness before grave injustices is a real in
the context of the many Asian contexts. Communities have not awakened
to a sense of a common purpose of fighting for the basic justice. What
is worse is the extremely divisive forces that try to spread cynicism
and do everything possible to discourage a person who is aggrieved due
to an act of injustice he or she has suffered. The forces of evil are
within the communities themselves. Those who are engaged in creating
divisions are doing so for their own purposes, and these purposes
could be very many.
However, instead of being led by opposition that is within the
community itself, people can take initiatives with the help of the
modern communication systems which are readily available to anyone in
order to reach out to others of similar state of mind who wants to
collaborate in an attempt to fight injustices and inequalities that
are so deeply entrenched in many of the Asian countries. Urgent
Appeals Programme is a solidarity creating agency which connects
people from various parts of the world without having to go through
cumbersome activities which have to be done at earlier stages of
calling for meetings and trying to come into physical contact with
those who share similar opinions. Today by use of the solidarity
measures such as the Urgent Appeals it is possible to come in contact
with very large audiences, and it is also possible to make it a
talking point of a story which would otherwise have remained unknown
to others.
There are thousands of stories that the Urgent Appeals Programme can
now share through its own experiences, of how a completely unknown
incident which has happened to the person who was thus far
insignificant in the social ladder, had become a major story which is
made known to the whole nation and locality, and also has become a
reference point in the global human rights discourse. In the days to
come, we will narrate some of the stories of brave victims who had
fought almost alone with no financial means, no support from the
lawyers or anybody else in the community, and facing serious threats
to their lives and liberties from the perpetrators of injustice.
However, these persons and those who have come to support them have
stood the test of the time and has fought for each other, and thereby
created a narrative which is fully been told as an example of what can
be done even when everything appears to be bleak, and when some people
may say that nothing can be done.
The story of the Urgent Appeals Programme is the story of solidarity,
story of creativity, and a story of how without much fanfare many
things can be done within a community by people themselves to help
themselves. And, today that fact can be narrated with living stories
of literally thousands of people who participated in this Programme.
Urgent Appeals Programme is a dream that came through, and a dream
that is realised. It is a dream not merely kept within one’s
imagination, instead which was put into effect. Thanks mainly to the
development of communication systems, which have changed the world in
the last 15 years. The Urgent Appeals was possible only in the kind of
global situations as we are experiencing now.
Therefore, we call upon all of you, to celebrate this event, in the
history of human rights struggles in the global human rights community
and in particular in the Asian context. Urgent Appeals can be
celebrated in each country with people who worked on this programme
over the last years. We can make use of this situation as a
story-telling occasion at which we reaffirm our faith in the great
values on which the human rights movement is built, and by recalling
what we ourselves have done in order to promote those great ideals.
# # #
The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) works towards the radical
rethinking and fundamental redesigning of justice institutions in
order to protect and promote human rights in Asia. Established in
1984, the Hong Kong based organization is a Laureate of the Right
Livelihood Award, 2014.
* This Press Release was sent to e-pao.net by Asian Human Rights Commission who can be contacted at www.humanrights.asia
This Press Release was posted on September 30 2017
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