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RIGHTS: Absent Speakers Will Be Heard Loud

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Jun 19 2006 (IPS) - Some civil society activists who will be heard loudest at the Civicus world assembly to be held in Glasgow later this week are those who will not be present at all.

And they will not be heard necessarily over the phone and the web either. They are being invited to speak only because they cannot be present – they will be the voice of civil society behind bars.

The world assembly called by the civil society group Civicus and the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) has invited 14 civil society activists from around the world, who have been sentenced or charged for their work. Most of them remain behind bars, others continue to have their freedoms restricted.

They will be invited to speak at various meetings, and their absence will make the point. Other participants will sign petitions to be sent to various governments, “urging the unconditional release of activists and renewed respect for civil society’s freedoms of expression, assembly and association,” Civicus said in a statement.

Participants will also sign cards of solidarity to be delivered to the selected civil society activists in prison around the world, the Civicus note said.

Civicus secretary-general Kumi Naidoo says many of the threats civil society faces are a consequence of the U.S.-led ‘war on terror’.

“We are saying very categorically that the war on terrorism has had a very negative effect on democratic space and that in fact if anything our estimation is that it has ended up promoting terrorism and driving people into the hands of terrorists,” Naidoo told IPS.

“But on the other hand more worrying is that it has also undermined some of the fundamental tenets of democracy,” Naidoo said. “It is legitimising detention without trial, house arrests, extraordinary renditions and torture. And sadly the people at the receiving end of this include also large numbers of trade unionists, NGO leaders and other social movement activists.”

Naidoo said that “we have never felt the need to have such a big focus on this before but we are concerned about this trend and that is why we are highlighting 14 of these colleagues, more as an example of the impact that the war on terrorism is having.”

The cases will be highlighted also “as an act of solidarity to say to those of us that are safe and well in our countries need to stand with those that are undergoing such threat and challenges so that if one day those situations obtain in our countries, then the rest of the global civil society movement will also speak with one voice.”

Naidoo said “we want to create solidarity and acknowledge how serious things are. Our view is that an injury to one is an injury to all.”

The following civil society activists will be profiled:

Daniel Bekele (Ethiopia) works for Action Aid Ethiopia and is also a member of the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) campaign. He was arrested in November 2005, and he is currently being tried alongside more than 100 other defendants on the charge of ‘Outrage against the Constitution or the Constitutional Order’. This charge carries a possible life sentence or death penalty.

Netsanet Demissie (Ethiopia) is executive director and co-founder of the Ethiopian NGO, Organisation for the Social Justice in Ethiopia. He is being tried on similar charges as Bekele.

Pavel Severinets (Belarus) is leader of the non-registered youth organisation ‘Youth Front’, responsible for coordinating mass street protest actions. On May 31 last year Severinets was sentenced to three years in jail, although it was later reduced to two.

Su Su Nwe (Burma) is a human rights defender who was charged with threatening and abusing local government officials. She had complained that she and other villagers were forced to work on a road construction project in April 2004 under orders of the local village tract authorities. She obtained the first successful forced labour conviction against local government officials in Burma. She was released on June 6.

Civicus will highlight her case, along with another activist, representing the over 1,100 other political prisoners detained in Burma.

Kong Youping (China), a former trade union official, was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment on Sep. 16, 2004. He was reportedly involved in planning the establishment of an independent union and had posted articles on the Internet criticising official corruption and calling for a reassessment of the violent suppression of the 1989 Democracy Movement by the army.

Fessahaye Yohannes (Eritrea) was co-editor and co-founder of the weekly newspaper Setit, which had at one time the largest circulation of any newspaper in Eritrea. He was among the journalists and dissidents arrested in September 2001. He continues to be held without charge or trial along with others in secret detention facilities.

René Gómez Manzano (Cuba) is head of the Cuban Association of Independent Lawyers and vice-president of the Assembly to Promote Civil Society, an umbrella of 365 independent civic organisations. He was detained on July 22 2005, while participating in a small peaceful demonstration outside the French Embassy in Havana, demanding the release of political prisoners in Cuba. Although not charged, Gomez and eight other participants arrested during the protest are reportedly being held in maximum security prisons outside Havana.

Stanislav Dmitrievskii (Russia) is the executive director of the Russian- Chechen Friendship Society, an NGO that monitors human rights violations in Chechnya and other parts of the North Caucasus, producing daily press releases on “disappearances” and other serious human rights violations. He is also the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Pravo-Zashchita (Rights Protection).

On Feb 3, 2006, Stanislav was given a two-year suspended sentence and a four-year probationary period, on charges of incitement to hatred. His colleague Oksana Chelysheva will be speaking at the World Assembly on his behalf.

Mohammed Abbou (Tunisia) is a founding member of the International Association for Solidarity with Political Prisoners and the Centre for the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, both of them Tunisian human rights organisations the government has refused to recognise. Mr. Abbou was sentenced to three years in prison on June 20, 2005, by a Tunisian appeal court, on charges including “insulting the judiciary” and publishing material “likely to disturb the public order,” in addition to an assault charge.

Mutabar Tojiboyeva (Uzbekistan), head of the Ardent Hearts group in the eastern city of Fergana, was detained on October 7 2005, following the demonstrations in Andijan. Ms. Tojiboyeva was sentenced to eight years in prison on May 30, 2006, on 13 charges, including threatening public order, fraud, theft, blackmailing local businessmen and tax avoidance.

Brothers Marcelino and Leonardo Miranda (Honduras) are indigenous activists affiliated to the Civic Council of Indigenous and Popular Organisation. This group’s campaign for communal land titles has placed them at odds with landowners and other powerful people in the Gracias municipality. The Miranda brothers were sentenced on December 16 2003 for a murder committed in 2001, despite evidence that the case against them was fabricated in reprisal for their role in trying to secure a communal land title for the Montaña Verde communities.

Eren Keskin (Turkey) is president of the Istanbul branch of the Human Rights Association. Ms. Keskin is also one of the founders of the Legal Aid Project, an organisation for women who have been raped or sexually abused in custody. On March 14, 2006, Ms. Keskin was sentenced to 10 months’ imprisonment, commuted to a fine of 4,475 dollars, for a speech she made at a conference in Germany in 2002, which was deemed to be denigrating to the Turkish armed forces.

Kamal al-Labwani (Syria) is a civil society activist, physician, artist and writer. He was arrested on arrival at Damascus airport on Nov. 8, 2005, after several weeks in Europe and the United States where he had had some of his artwork exhibited. On May 29, 2006, he appeared before the criminal court and was charged with “weakening national morale” and “conspiring with a hostile nation to attack Syria.” The latter charge carries a possible sentence of the death penalty.