People
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Raji Sourani
Tags Share Raji Sourani founded the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), which lobbies for legislation that incorporates international human rights standards and basic democratic principles. Since its establishment in 1995, PCHR has become the foremost human rights organization in the Gaza Strip, serving as an independent legal body in Gaza that documents and investigates…
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Avigdor Feldman
Tags Share A noted Israeli human and civil rights attorney, Avigdor Feldman has litigated countless human rights cases and spoken out against his country’s violations of its own laws and values. During its occupation of the Palestinian territories, the Israeli government has at times resorted to torture, arbitrary detentions, and extrajudicial assassinations against Palestinian leaders…
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Amílcar Méndez Urizar
Tags Share Amílcar Méndez Urizar became a prominent advocate for human rights in Guatemala in the 1980s. In July 1988 he helped to found the Comunidades Etnicas Runujel Junam (CERJ) (in English: “Council for Ethnic Communities ‘We Are All Equal’”), a group that documented human rights violations against Guatemala’s indigenous population. He also directed the…
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Fang Lizhi
Tags Share “Just as scientific research was a way of bearing witness to truths about the natural world, so, Fang believed, intellectual and political inquiry were ways of bearing witness to truths about the political and social world.” –Orville Schell Throughout his career, physicist Fang Lizhi (1936-2012) fearlessly criticized the Chinese Communist Party for the…
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Fang Lizhi
“Just as scientific research was a way of bearing witness to truths about the natural world, so, Fang believed, intellectual and political inquiry were ways of bearing witness to truths about the political and social world.” –Orville Schell Throughout his career, physicist Fang Lizhi (1936-2012) fearlessly criticized the Chinese Communist Party for the stifling restrictions…
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Stephen Bradberry
Tags Share After Hurricane Katrina, thousands of New Orleans residents found that they had no way of returning home. Rebuilding efforts were slow, some areas were simply abandoned, and the Lower Ninth Ward was even going to be turned into wetlands. But Stephen Bradberry would not let this stand. Together with Robert F. Kennedy Human…
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Kim Keun Tae & In Jae Jeun
Tags Share “The last time I saw Kim was in Seoul, for the launch of Speak Truth To Power there. I asked him how he was doing. At the time he was the Speaker of the House and was considering a run for the presidency. What a transformation. What a life he led, and what…
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Gibson Kamau Kuria
Tags Share Gibson Kamau Kuria was once detained in a maximum-security prison for nearly a year. His crime? Representing and defending Wanyiri Kihoro, a former political prisoner who himself had been detained and abused in a torture chamber. Selfless courage has always characterized Kuria, a leading human rights attorney who has spent his professional life…
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Adam Michnik
Tags Share Despite repeated imprisonments and attempts to expel him from his country, Adam Michnik never stopped speaking against communist rule in Poland. Michnik began his human rights work in the 1960s, participating in protests in 1968 that led to his expulsion from the University of Warsaw and a yearlong stint in jail. Despite these…
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Zbigniew Bujak
Tags Share Lech Walesa has called Zbigniew Bujak “One of the most outstanding and bravest fighters for citizens’ rights and Solidarity.” Trained as an electrical technician and soldier, Bujak joined the opposition in 1978 while he was working at a tractor factory. After organizing a strike in 1980, Bujak became the leader of the Warsaw…
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Father Jerzy Popieluszko
Tags Share Father Jerzy Popieluszko’s introduction to the priesthood was counterintuitive. He spent several years in the a Polish special forces unit commissioned specifically to deter young Polish men from entering the priesthood, part of the larger tension in Communist Poland between the open expression of religion and Communism’s animosity towards organized faith. Unlike many…
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Allan Boesak
Tags Share Reverend Allan Boesak and Beyers Naude fought tenaciously to end apartheid in South Africa. In 1981, Boesak was elected chairman of the Alliance of Black Reformed Christians in Southern Africa. During the 1982 World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) meeting in Canada, Boesak introduced a motion requesting that WARC declare apartheid heresy. The…
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