Washington, D.C. — Supported by an array of human rights organizations, foundations, corporate sponsors and Hollywood stars, a project called "Speak Truth to Power" has been launched in Washington, DC by Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, a long-time human rights activist and daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy. Twelve Africans are among a group of "defenders of human rights" from more than 40 countries highlighted in a new book, a web site, a play, an upcoming US television special and an educational packet for schools.
Twelve human rights activists from Africa were among fifty-one leading human rights defenders from around the world honored this week by President Bill Clinton and a dozen Hollywood stars as part of the launch of a new, high- profile project designed to focus attention on violations of human rights and to protect human rights defenders.
The "Speak Truth to Power" project tells the stories of, among others, Abubacar Sultan, an activist working to rehabilitate former child soldiers in Mozambique, Juliana Dogbadzi, a former sexual slave from Ghana who now advocates the abolition of slavery and Bishop Wissa, an advocate for religious tolerance in Egypt.
"The real story is not the repression, but the resistance; not the terror but the courage," declared Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, founder of the "Speak Truth to Power" initiative. "These voices are, most of all, a call to action."
The project includes the publication of a book, an exhibit of the photographs at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC that will travel across the United States, a web site (http://www.speaktruthtopower.org) and a performance at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts that was taped for nationwide television broadcast in the US on October 8.
In a press briefing on the initiative, Chilean playwright Ariel Dorfman, whose dramatization of the material from the book was the core of the Kennedy Center event, issued a challenge to journalists around the world. "Argue with your editors," he said. "Don't take no for an answer," until media organizations give as much attention to "the Olympians of human rights as to the Olympians of sport."
Dorfman's play draws from the book called Speak Truth to Power, a collection of interviews by Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, illustrated by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Eddie Adams.
In selecting the activists to be profiled, Kennedy Cuomo chose a mixture of the already famous, such as South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Maathai, and the unknown, including one from the Sudan who is simply listed as "Anonymous" to protect the person's life. Other Africans profiled include Samuel Kofi Woods, founder of the Justice and Peace Commission in Liberia, Koigi wa Wamwere, former Kenyan political prisoner, Guillaume Ngefa Atondoko, a human rights activist from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Freedom Neruda, an Ivory Coast journalist, Fauziya Kassindja, who has campaigned against female genital mutilation, and Hafez Al Sayed Seada, a human rights campaigner from Egypt.
Their stories, together with those of colleagues from nearly forty countries, were woven together in Dorfman's drama, performed by American actors Alec Baldwin, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Giancarlo Esposito, Kevin Kline, John Malkovich, Rita Moreno, Sigourney Weaver and Alfred Woodard.
As the force behind the entire project, Kennedy Cuomo has demonstrated an ability to use her family name and position as daughter of Robert F. Kennedy to attract money and powerful people to support the cause of human rights around the globe. But Kennedy Cuomo was also careful, in her selection of human rights defenders, to not exempt her own country. Among those profiled are five people from the United States, including a nun who opposes the death penalty and an activist against police brutality in American communities.
"From South Africa to Chile, people are confronting the injustice of the past so that their children will not have to re-live them," President Clinton declared at the Kennedy Center program. "Those who fight for human rights deserve our support and our absolute conviction that they are not in vain."
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But Clinton admitted that when he met privately with the "defenders" prior to the performance, they told him that the United States was not doing enough for human rights and that he must do better. After Clinton spoke, actress Sigourney Weaver told the audience, which included a slice of Washington's political elite, that there has still been no justice for one of the defenders, an American num raped and tortured in Guatemala by a group led by an American advisor. The American government, she said, has refused to release information about the crime.
Many of the profiled activists are well known in the human rights community, and Kennedy Cuomo worked with groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to locate individuals for the project. But many of those selected for profiles have never had wide publicity.
Already, the project has generated a cover story in Parade Magazine - a popular newspaper insert that is distributed to more than 15 million homes across the United States, and has been featured on CNN's "Larry King Live" and the US morning television program "Good Morning America."
