WASHINGTON—Each year the United Nations dedicates Dec. 10, Human Rights Day, to a different theme. The 2010 spotlight is on human rights defenders.
“This Human Rights Day is an occasion to salute the courage and achievements of human rights defenders everywhere—and to pledge to do more to safeguard their work,” said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in a statement posted on the U.N. website.
One man that has taken Secretary-General Ban’s pledge to heart is Jeffrey Imm, founder of Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L).
Imm hosted a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington on Thursday where he allowed a diverse group of human rights defenders the opportunity to speak out.
Topics included the genocides in Sudan and Darfur, the stoning of women in Iran, the persecution of Falun Gong in China, and the challenge of racial and religious intolerance in America.
Speaker Mohamed Yahya said that he lost 20 of his close family members—they were shot, raped, or burned alive by the janjaweed—in the Darfur genocide, and that the killing is still going on. Yahya, founder and executive director of the Damanga Organization, was studying at Al-Azhar University in Cairo at the time his village was attacked, and was among the first to begin alerting international authorities of the unfolding atrocities.
Speaking on Thursday, he opened his speech by acknowledging Human Rights Day.
“On this day it is important for all people around the world to speak out for their fellow human beings,” he said.
As Yahya sees it, greed is a major factor.
“Human beings are not the issue. The issue of the land, interests and the oil, gold and the resources, become more valuable than human beings,” he said.
His latest concern, the separation of South Sudan in less than a month, means to him that his country is starting to fall apart.
Maria Rohaly, a volunteer spokesperson for Mission Free Iran, spoke about how the sentencing of one woman, Sakineh Ashtiani, to death by stoning inspired her to help launch an international campaign to end the archaic practice and censure the Iranian government at the U.N.
The resultant moral outrage prompted diplomatic meetings, and the high profile involvement of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
On Saturday Rohaly plans to join a protest outside the United Nations in New York to demand the U.N. pass a resolution condemning the practice of stoning worldwide, and ask that regimes such as Iran and Saudi Arabia be banned and/or removed from U.N. organizations tasked with improving the lives of women.
Imm themed the day’s press conference Compassion and Human Rights, because he believes compassion holds the key to our common, shared humanity, and to improving human rights he believes are central to human dignity and freedom. His goal is to rebuild a culture where human rights are a priority, not an afterthought.
Imm encouraged Americans to make “the courageous decision to put hate and intolerance in our past, and make compassion and human rights our future.”
