Wednesday, June 29, 2011

The Solidity of Solidarity by Thomas Meyer

If we want real international legal change, the super powers can’t be afraid to step in.”
            Professor Krzysztof Motyka

Today’s discussions opened up a myriad of religious, ethical, and political questions with regards to the Solidarity movement in Poland.  Our first lecturer, Professor Krzysztof Motyka from John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin discussed the origins of the human rights legal system.  For me, a human rights law student, this talk was of particular interest.  In his lecture, I was most interested in his discussion of the effectiveness of the UN Declaration of Human Rights as a legal tool.  He argued that it historically it has been an effective means to enforce what he referred to as “negative rights”, essentially the basic rights to life, but doesn’t accommodate more progressive rights such as healthcare, educational rights, and others. Upon reflection, I questioned how effective the UN Declaration of Human Rights was at enforcing even these more basic or “negative” rights.  In US Courts, the soft language of the Declaration, and later documents such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), has made it more difficult to hold foreign nations accountable for their human rights violations under the alien tort statute.  One such example is Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, where a loophole in international law allowed a DEA to escape punishment for his torture of a Mexican national.  Reversing this trend of poor international legal accountability will require, as Professor Motyka said, “a multilateral movement” in international courts.



            Additionally, another thought-provoking debate came up during the fellow’s talk was the discussion over universalism vs. moral relativity in the realm of human rights.  This debate was originally sparked during the Human Rights Conference organized by the University of Warsaw a few days ago and resurfaced during Professor Andrzej Rychard’s discussion on Poland’s Solidarity today.  While Professor Rychard discussed several different aspects of the Solidarity movement, given my background in philosophy, this was the topic I was most interested in.  At its core, the debate came down whether human rights were universal, or whether they varied depending on the cultural, era, and other factors; and also how we should act on them.  We ultimately settled for a resigned amalgamation of the two.  Personally however, I found myself going against the consensus of the human rights conference--which was in full support of enforcing the universality of human rights, by leaning towards moral relativism.  While I certainly believe in the universality of right to life and other basic liberties, I don’t believe that human rights intervention should occur on rights that lack international consensus, or rights that a sovereign free nation has decided it’s opposed to.  For example, an LGBT campaign in Saudi Arabia would be an absolute disaster and would probably impinge its cause. 

In fact, as we discussed in the fellows talk, it appears far more effective when powerful “progressive” countries bring more repressive countries into the fold economically and overlook their human rights violations.  One such example is Nixon in China during the 60s.  Through his brilliant diplomacy, he strategically engaged China economically, overlooking political and human rights violations.  Decades later, despite violations against the Uyghur and Tibetan people, China has moved much further into the mainstream.  Ultimately, I believe that this sort of “Moral Relativist Diplomacy” is what is needed in the Middle East and elsewhere to engage countries on economic issues, and indirectly change their human rights policies. 

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Are you on topic? Suggest others! by Alina Iovcheva

How to warn a young girl, who is looking for a better life abroad, about the dangers of human trafficking? How to explain to Polish parents, that a lesbian teacher should not be reason to change their child’s school? How to tell a young girl in a disco that the consumption of immense amounts of alcohol can have unfortunate results? How to show the bosses of a large company that female employees deserve the same opportunities, prospects, and pay as male employee? How to break societal stereotypes about the Roma people? How to explain to a nightclub security guard that a guy in a wheelchair has the right to have fun as everyone else?
How do we convey to people what is important? How can you share with them what you know and what can help them build better and more positive relations? Which way do we go so as to be heard and understood correctly? 
All these questions are conceptually important in the protection of human rights, and I hope that our group of HIA Poland activists, with Marek Dorobisz's, Creative  Director of advertising agency Ars Thanea,  help, will find the answers in the near future. 
Today, our speaker Marek revealed to us a few secrets of building an effective social campaign. He spoke about what angles a matter must be approached from in order to achieve the desired result, and about how to formulate social messages to make them heard.
In my opinion, building a social campaign is an invaluable practical component of our program, which can help each of us to convey our ideas of human rights protection to a wide range of people. It's a great experience, which we'll take with us to our own countries and will use in our future activities.

I should note that I awaited the practical part of our program impatiently, and I'm sure I was not alone. Personally, I wanted to try to develop some strategy to promote a particular category of human rights in society. The theoretical component is very important certainly, since it’s something that enriches our knowledge and helps to orient us in a particular area. But practical work is something that can help us to become qualified specialists, and can add a very dynamic, interesting and useful component to our future activities. But it turned out that the work is not all so simple ... We were faced with some problems.  We have been split into international groups that are united by common interests in particular human rights field. Each group tried to create some new and extraordinary approaches to the problem of constructing a social campaign, to formulate the right message for society... but not everything was right. Step by step, Marek tried to show us the right way and give us key tips on how to effectively communicated what we want to our target audience. 

So, we learned our first lessons, we’re done with the first steps and now need to work out the kinks in our projects. Now each team will be working on designing a social campaign during next 2 weeks. I hope that each of us achieves high quality results, and that we will be able to give practical expression to our knowledge. 
Good luck to us, guys! I hope for interesting and fruitful work for us:)

Saturday, June 25, 2011

How to bring about social change? by Joanna Klimczak

One of the most important steps to end up the abuse of human rights is to make everyone aware of his or her rights. In empowering minority groups different types of media play a crucial role.  As the issues raised by various feminist organizations, minority groups are usually marginal to social and political life, media engagement is central to the outcome of social movements and NGOs in Poland. The example of Ewa Tomaszewicz’s activities on Wedding in the air project and many other NGOs actions  prove that media has been shown to be an effective tool which may break the silence related to  certain problems in regards to human rights. I think that the use of such tools as social campaigns, facebook, twitter gives a lot of opportunities to increase the attractiveness of the projects in general as well as increase the chance to reach bigger group of recipients.

Social movements rely on media to great extent in order to gain social and political support. In the contemporary world new media has made it  easier and faster for many of NGOs to reinforce their message, make it clearer as well as often more attractive. In my opinion, the crucial issue for them is that if they want to be considered as relevant  and important they must respond to the media by using different concepts, forms, new ideas, artistic experiments. Barbie Girls cabaret, various visual actions in regards to ‘Wedding in the air’, postcards, t-shirts are great illustrations of such response.  Based on my personal observation I think the Foundation Mimo Wszystko and Polish Humanitarian Organisation proved to be most effective in conducting consequent promotional activities in Poland. By exposing the violation of rights, by bringing to the attention concerns of silenced groups through accurate forms, NGOs gain the chance to break the difficulties between media expectations and human rights problems. 

Media may produce visible positive result by generating dialogue with people, which was central to the success of the world's first same-sex wedding in the air of Gosia and Ewa or program ‘Pajacyk’ organized by PAH, whose goal is to feed children at schools. In their case the realm of social media played a significant role in the public sphere, as platforms in which ideas were exchanged and discussed by individuals and groups from every corner of the world. Such social media as facebook or twitter are used as quasi-public sphere which may influence a social movement’s outcome.

The desired social change is often determined by the relationship between the organization, media and the recipients. The often difficult challenge in today’s reality for NGOs is that they must struggle to maintain their principles and values. There is always a possibility to face and step into conflict with the values of others. However in the age of facebook and growing potential of youth media, the response of these NGOs to every-changing social media characterizes the internal dynamics of organizations, movements, and their capacities to deliver these important messages to society.

I think that what is most important to their motivation is that they need the media attention; however, media do not need social movements, NGOs etc.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Breaking the Awkward Silence, Breaking Down Barriers by Kristin Meagher

By the very nature of our Fellowship program, we as fellows are constantly called to step out of our comfort zone when it comes to intellectual and intercultural discussion and experience. Wednesday June 15 was no exception to this rule. Our discussion topic for that day revolved around the experiences of the LGBTQ community in Poland. Tackling the issue of LGBTQ rights in this country required an understanding of both past and current context. Looking at the issue through American lenses, I was blind to the hardships that this group of people currently face in light of the power and the presence of the Roman Catholic Church in Polish political society. Contrary to the current situation in the United States, where there is a discernible absence of an unquestionably dominant religion and the problems faced by this community revolve around the paradigms of various divisions in the American population, the situation in Poland is markedly different. Here, where law and politics are so tightly entwined with the ever-present, ever-dominant Catholic religion, the LGBTQ community faces a slightly similar yet arguably even more complex set of issues.

On June 15 we had the privilege to hear from Ewa Tomaszewicz, an openly-declared member of the Polish lesbian community. Of particular note were her views on the internal divisions within the LGBTQ community as well as her insights regarding being a “double minority” in that she is both a woman and a lesbian, and as such she faces discrimination on two fronts. She answered our questions to that extent with an interesting mix of evident discontent combined with a reluctant acceptance of the current state of affairs here in Poland.
 
Ms. Tomaszewicz also discussed her campaign for legislation permitting civil unions for homosexual couples despite her open acknowledgement of the fact that she would prefer to be fighting for legalized marriages; it was made evident that, in her opinion, change in Poland will be slow to come. Her comment regarding the recent LGBTQ Pride Parade, which took place throughout the streets of Warsaw on June 11, was that the number of people who partook in the parade (including a number of our HIA Poland Summer Fellows) was not nearly enough, especially when compared with the parades in neighboring European countries where participants numbered in the tens of thousands.

As always, following our speaker’s lecture and presentation, we were encouraged to engage in a dialogue of questions and answers, critiques and comments. I found that our group of habitually chatty and eager-to-speak students had become slightly hesitant when it came to the questions posed and even the phrasing and framing of those same questions. I might even be so bold as to say that the aforementioned dialogue was slightly strained with something akin to a sense of the ‘forbidden’, that the air was laced with the taste of tension (possibly because this important issue seems to be such a taboo subject here in outwardly Catholic Poland). Regardless, after a few initial moments of icy apprehension, our group of intelligent and forward-thinking students was able to grapple with the fact that the best way to break down barriers like these is indeed through the very dialogue which at first felt so uncomfortable. It became evident that the best and perhaps the only way to break awkward silences like these is to be brave enough to step out of one’s comfort zone and to face these issues head-on through constructive dialogue and intellectual discourse. I was quite proud of our group that day and quite proud of myself for learning to embrace a new way of thinking, a new way of seeing the world and all its people.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Human Rights Work Beyond Paperwork by Roman Gautam

Another warm summer day in Warsaw, again tempting us to go outside into the sunshine. Fortunately we had some great speakers who gave us good reasons to stay inside and pay attention. The day’s program covered three particularly vulnerable groups – socioeconomically marginalized children, refugees, and disabled people – whose needs Polish society is struggling to meet. The individuals we were introduced to and the NGOs they represent, (Przemysław Sendzielski from Aim High (Mierz Wysoko) Association, Agnieszka Kosowicz from the Polish Migration Forum, Katarzyna Kubin from the Social Diversity Forum , and Magda Szarota of the Association of Disabled Women ONE.pl) are taking steps to correct those failings, but, as with so many of the admirable projects we’ve seen during the program, it’s clear that ensuring full human rights for these groups is a long struggle that is far from finished.


Personally, the highlight of my day was the first session with the Aim High (Mierz Wysoko) Foundation, which works with children from poor homes, often in welfare housing, in the Praga district. The foundation’s work reminded me a lot of the culture and ethic of a community center that I volunteered with in Sao Paulo some years ago, and I know the enormous challenges involved at this level of human rights work. Aim High works on the ground at the most direct and personal level. Of course government and city policies matter to the organization, but Aim High chooses to work on the front lines of human rights. Their deeply committed volunteers and employees play with the neighborhood kids right on the street, and organize workshops and activities for them. Every case here is subjective and personal, and Aim High tries to understand each child’s situation and when possible to intervene with their families, with the police and state authorities to give the kids a better chance at social stability and a future in society. Since many of the organizations we’ve been seeing focus on human rights advocacy on the policy level, it was good to be reminded that human rights work is not only about paperwork and research and business suits, but that addressing human rights violations ultimately involves dealing directly with individuals facing very difficult circumstances. I find it deeply unfair that both in terms of money and of prestige, such hands-on human rights work is never rewarded as highly as policy level work. Still, it is heartening to see that many people don’t care about prestige and continue doing vital grass-roots work.

At the end of the day, Iwa Kos, one of the fellows from our team, facilitated a discussion that got us to focus on precisely this aspect of human rights work: that solutions need to be found at the individual, communal, and legislative levels, but that at the most personal level every single case demands immediate individual solutions that, unfortunately, are the most difficult to find and implement. Iwa summarized the stories of two actual individuals in Poland struggling with disability, gender and immigrant rights, and we had to brainstorm solutions at all three levels for their situation. In both cases it was easier for us to find communal and legal solutions, and very difficult to find immediate solutions to their unique combination of problems.

Przemysław Sendzielski, Aim High Association
Our lectures and training so far have given us a great grasp of legal and social advocacy work, but I feel that we cannot learn how to tailor specific solutions to individual cases until we get out of the classroom and get hands-on experience in direct human rights work. I guess that’s the challenge we will all face after the HIA Summer Program: taking the general lessons learnt here and applying them to specific problems in the real world, where all problems and cases are far more difficult than they appear on paper.

Katarzyna Kubin, Social Diversity Forum and Agnieszka Kosowicz, Polish Migration Forum
Magda Szarota, Association of Women with Disabilities ONE.pl

Thursday, June 16, 2011

… and wearing my favorite high-heels by Anna Yamchuk

The sessions we had on the 10th of June were probably ones of the most interesting sessions since the beginning of the program. 
Our day started with a visit to the Human Rights Defender’s Office, where we discussed a very important issue: defending human rights in Poland with legal means. I had read a lot about the work of Ombudsman in Ukraine, and I was very excited that I actually got an opportunity to talk to people working in the Ombudsman’s office here in Poland, who shared their experience and knowledge with us.    

Our next session was dedicated to the women’s rights and I want to tell a little bit more about it, as I have always been particularly interested in this issue.

We spent much time talking about the equality of rights of women and men. On one hand, that sounds obvious for me because since my early childhood I have been brought up as an independent, strong, and persistent girl who has all necessary abilities to make my dreams come true. On the other hand, I understand that this basic principle of equality of rights is perfect just on paper, and when it comes to implementation, a lot of problems appear. One of these problems is connected with a physical factor that distinguishes men from women– women are granted with the gift to give birth to a child. This is our huge privilege, but at the same time, women meet many obstacles on their way because of this present from the Nature. 

For example, it is unfair that an employer would not want to hire a young woman under the presumption that she will leave her job in a year or two in order to focus on her private life. Unfortunately, such situations do happen in many countries. At the same time, an employer most likely would not like the idea of hiring a woman with a gap in her professional CV (a gap which appeared because she was at home raising her child). A woman must prove: ‘I am still good enough!’ Charlotte Whitton once said “Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult”. Well, I agree! 

These labor equality issues are not the most serious ones when it comes to gender discrimination. We talked a lot about problems such as rape crimes, domestic violence, and the like. It is already terrible that such crimes happen, but what is more shocking is how our society treats victims and perpetrators. If a woman is raped, it is believed that it happened because she was most likely wearing too short a skirt and because she behaved in a way which allowed a man to assume he was given allowance to do whatever he wanted with her. “He is just a man after all”. This reminds me of words of prof. Monika Płatek. In her speech, given during the conference we visited on Wednesday, prof. Płatek stressed that the education on rape prevention should focus on men, the potential perpetrators, not just on women, the potential victims. Of course, I don’t think that it will solve the problem, but at least an essential step ahead will be made.

Furthermore, if a woman wants to make an abortion, even if it is legal, she is perceived by some as an irresponsible killer of the unborn child. Moreover “this unwanted pregnancy” is often believed to be the woman’s fault for she should have thought about consequences before she slept with “a first coming stranger”. Now it is her own responsibility and she should bear the consequence of what she did.  
If a woman becomes a victim of domestic violence, she will probably remain silent and no one will ever know what happened to her. She will just be ashamed presuming that it is all her fault. Indeed, she might have done a better job at home, and perhaps her husband has a right to be angry … 
May be I am exaggerating a little bit, but it seems to me that it is pretty much a situation in Ukraine. And I don’t think that we are “unique” in these terms.  Girls are taught from their early childhood that they are future wives while boys are taught to make a career and that girls should be good wives. I believe that the problem of protection of women’s rights starts with the lack of proper education and self-estimation. But we are a new generation and hopefully we will see this world differently. I believe that changes will come! 

The topic of women’s rights is a very broad one and I am only able to tackle on few issues. And due to its scope and complexity, it is impossible to come up with a fast and general solution. 

Yes, it is not easy to be a woman: “a mother, a wife, a daughter, a professional”. I just wonder: shall I ever manage to be this “4 in 1”? Well, I believe that God would not have created me a woman if I had not been good enough to cope with all of this. So yes, some day I will manage it somehow, just being myself and wearing my favorite high-heels.     

Monday, June 13, 2011

Lessons in Courage by Alec Arellano

As a citizen of a country with comparably stable governance, it is easy to be ignorant of the sacrifices other people elsewhere in the world have made for freedom. Some experiences I had while in Poland, though, helped me On Monday, 13 June 2011, Tomasz Pisula gave a talk to us entitled “Sharing experiences with strengthening democracy: Solidarity with the East.” Additional talks on this day examined the issues surrounding Roma communities as well as the difficult topic of human trafficking in Poland. The day's theme was defending and promoting human rights beyond national borders. Pisula is Chairman of the Board of Directors of The Freedom and Democracy Foundation, a Warsaw-based nongovernmental organization (NGO) that seeks to share Polish experiences of successful struggle for independence, democracy and human rights with activists in other parts of the world. Pisula’s organization has done work in Belarus, Cuba, The Ukraine, and former Soviet Republics in the Caucasus. He spoke about the international networks of support among anti-Soviet dissidents in the Eastern Bloc during the cold war, as well as the lessons he had learned through carrying out his own organization’s work in the face of intimidation and repression abroad. 

Pisula possessed the honest and direct speaking style of someone whose day-to-day work left him too sick of dissimulation and high-flown rhetoric to engage in it himself. In spite or perhaps because of this, though, his words reminded me of what one of his predecessors in the struggle for freedom, the Czech poet and playwright Vaclav Havel said in a speech to the United States Congress twenty-one years ago. In it, he tells the assembled Americans who had been his allies in the struggle against Soviet Communism that he and his countrymen can offer their allies something in return: namely, their experience and the knowledge that has come from it. He claims that the experience of subjection that he and his fellow Eastern Europeans have suffered has given them: 
something positive, a special capacity to look from time to time somewhat further than someone who has not undergone this bitter experience. A person who cannot move and lead a somewhat normal life because he is pinned under a boulder has more time to think about his hopes than someone who is not trapped that way.  

Regardless of whether or not this accurately expresses the reality of the Central and Eastern European psyche after the fall of communism, the image of a person who better appreciates life after having experienced it hanging in the balance is certainly a powerful one.
Indeed, it sometimes seems that those who know best what life is worth are those most willing to risk it for something higher. Pisula spoke of doing democratization work in former Soviet Republics in the Caucasus, where he saw soldiers fire live ammunition into crowds of protestors, and police at a demonstration beat a man until his head split open. One cannot help but think that people who willingly put themselves into such situations in order to secure their own freedom understand the value of being free much better than do those of us who simply take it for granted.  

Pisula’s stories about ordinary people’s courage in the face of state brutality made me think of the hundreds of students, intellectuals, and trade union activists in Poland who were beaten, imprisoned, and even killed in the decades leading up to free elections in 1991. At the crucial moment, they could not know that their sacrifices, whether small or great, would amount to anything. But they chose to make them anyway, animated by a faith in the rightness of their action. I am awed by the courage and depth of conviction that those who make such sacrifices possess. 

My respect for this courage and conviction was further developed by an experience that I had during my time in Poland. Last Saturday some other HIA fellows and I took part in Warsaw’s Equality Parade, a march for LGBTQ rights. Over a thousand people, many of them young, participated in the event. Several trucks decorated with rainbow flags and playing loud disco music rolled with the parade. An extreme right political group had organized a counter-demonstration in opposition to the march. This was my first time seeing such a large, brazen display of hate in a public place, and it contrasted sharply with my experience attending similar LGBTQ events in the United States.

What really made an impression on me, though, were the scores of riot police deployed on the parade grounds. I later learned that several years earlier, a previous march in another Polish city had degenerated into violence, and now municipal governments deploy police to maintain order. Seeing so much massed state power unsettled me more than the than the angry men and women chanting slogans on the other side of the street. I reminded myself that the police were there to keep everyone safe, and I had nothing to worry about. I couldn’t help but think, however, of the previous generations of Poles who had stood up to organized violence to assert their rights. This parade, like Pisula’s talk and so many other experiences that I’ve had while in Poland, have deepened my appreciation for the sacrifices others have made for freedom.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Osiatyński connecting people, or how to make human rights more human ? (part 2) by Mieszko Hajkowski

On Wednesday, June 8 Humanity in Action Fellows had a great pleasure in participating in a conference organized by the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights and the Faculty of Law and Administration of the Warsaw University. Which aspects of human rights issues were taken into account during the second part of the event?

The third panel entitled "Social Rights and People's Needs" was of special value for me because of several very meaningful to me speakers so I anticipated it the most. The list of panelists included among others: ethicist, philosopher and one of the most influential Polish feminists, prof. Magdalena Środa, the President of the Board of Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights Mrs. Halina Bortnowska and, naturally, the commentator of every session prof. Wiktor Osiatyński, with no doubt the most important guest that day. Unfortunately, some of them, including prof. Środa, who I was so glad to see on the program, could not come to the conference. 

This panel covered the problematic status of inequality in modern capitalist societies and the unfair way in which social goods are distributed, because they predominantly support the middle class interests and give more to the loudest groups, not the poorest and in the biggest need. The session focused on legal notions which, I guess, might cause lots of difficulties for people unfamiliar with the terminology. Nevertheless, I found it very interesting, especially Dr Elżbieta Morawska's lecture. She reread the content of European Convention of Human Rights, which was signed in  1950, in order to make them usable in interpreting today's cases from the perspective of social rights. She implied from personal laws, mainly ones about prohibition of inhumane treatment - which is commonly interpreted to include torture - the social aspects, which were not previously included into them, and she has also provided examples from the European Court of Human Rights' jurisprudence that such interpretation is also shared by the judges. In my opinion it shows the possibility/a chance to use law which created many years ago in a different political and economic situation to fit today's needs and with current awareness of human rights issues in many dimensions of life (including domestic violence or disabled and mentally ill people's right to dignity). It is also about how to overcome apparent limits of law and use it not literally, but with left-wing sensitivity and responsibility for human beings.

When it comes to the last session, "Universalism and other Values - are Human Rights Universal Key to Happiness?" there is a lot one can say about. What it was mostly taken into account is the paradoxical character of human rights - with their local genesis and aspiration to global validity. One the one hand, one can be the sign of ethnocentrism and neocolonialism. As one of the speakers Prof. Roman Kuźniar claimed, they are proclaimed with the awareness of hypocrisy itself and used as a tool to legitimize even cruel military interventions. On the other hand speakers define universal values as the core of human rights, which can be applied into other, non-Western cultures with high respect for differences on the level of practice. In this way, as prof. Zdzisław Kędzia admitted, human rights guarantee diversity rather than uniformity. Probably only one speaker directly answered the topic question. "Human rights are not the key to happiness, they are just key to sensibility", Halina Bortnowska said in her brief but moving speech.

The meeting was heading to its end, when prof. Mirosław Wyrzykowski made an unexpected gesture toward Humanity in Action in his closing speech. As he said, a relevant subtitle of this year's conference should contain the name of our organization "Human Rights and their Limits - Humanity in Action" and that thanks to us the conference gained an international status. We are grateful for appreciating us, it was a great pleasure to take part in such an crucial event. Our first and for sure not the last visit to the Helsinki Foundation of Human Rights Conference brought us a very good experience and gave us a lot food for thought for the future.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Professor Wiktor Osiatyński connecting people, or how to make human rights more human ? (part 1) by Basia Marlewska

Several faces of Professor Wiktor Osiatyński

Sometimes serious, very often smiling. Always - understanding. That was the Professor's very own face, he did not lose his cool approach even for a single moment. Other faces of Professor were visible in the speakers' faces, who indeed were coming from very diverse backgrounds. 
We could hear the founder of Helsinki Human Rights Foundation, Mrs Halina Bortnowska; many scholars and lawyers from different universities in Poland and Europe who gave a moving testimony about a need of HRs protection, also prof. Ewa Łętowska, the very first Polish ombudswoman in the history, mocking smartly of everyone, Mrs Wanda Nowicka, a feminist and reproductive rights activist, we could hear prof Płatek criticizing the police approach towards rape victims.

Silence doesn't mean yes
 
What I found definitely shocking, was the quota of female speakers, speaking about women problems. Probably the most actual and burning issue is the attitude of the society towards rape crime and rape victims. It is also the fault of legal provisions, that  accentuate the prevention mechanisms (quotation of police hints: never wear sexy clothes, never go to the clubs, never walk alone in a dark alley, never dance with a man and never smile him ...) and involves kind of ban for femininity. Professor Monika Płatek, specializing in penal law, proposed rather innovative concept of the sexual autonomy, instead of sexual liberty. This concept, introduced and evolving then in the legal doctrines, should influence the legislation and start to be a remedy for the Human Rights violations such as domestic violence, rapes, femicide, sextortion, etc.

Human Rights in practice

Professor Osiatyński, glorious receiver of the Order of Polonia Restituta (Krzyż Komandorski Orderu Odrodzenia Polski) on that day, is not only the famous Human Rights thinker and sociologists, but also a great fan of music, women and poetry. He is also a great humanist – two things that shocked me was the presence of his daughter and grand son. Sitting in the very first row, they were the living example of the open spirit of professor, his love and devotion for family. 
Another detail, that I found absolutely astonishing, is the spirit of truth and modesty, and also power, with which the professor was talking about his alcohol addict. Professor Osiatynski, the man of numerous virtues and great courage, gave evidence of his eager and hard struggle for sobriety and consciousness. In fact, in Poland, alcoholism is collecting the dark harvest of human rights violations of sexual liberty, domestic violence, right to personal integrity. Probably, for many people, this would be much stronger proof than his book, of his deep humanism. 

Human factor

To end with - as prof. Jerzy Zajadło mentioned at the very beginning of the conference – to write a good book on human rights – we need knowledge, experience, perspective of understanding and the legal workshop. However ,  to write a very good book, to that set of conditions we should add the compassion.  Is it indispensable only to write excellent books on human rights?

Friday, June 10, 2011

Impossible Stories by Alexandria Margolis




Any person who has watched the Academy Awards in recent years can see that the Holocaust is a topic of interest. Filmmakers who pursue it have been highly lauded, but increasingly they use the subject as an instrument of philosophy: The Reader (2008) led viewers to question traditional notions of Nazi evil and Inglorious Basterds (2009) went so far as to rewrite history. 

Memorials and museums proliferate but their role as tourist destinations has made the presence of a “Holocaust industry” obvious. The autobiographies and memoirs of survivors – once the material of historians – have come to make up a literature indistinct from fictional renderings. As the final Holocaust survivors die out, I often fear that the layers upon layers of representation will somehow obscure our vision of historical truth. What if the reality of the Holocaust is swallowed by its imaginative depictions? Without the opportunity to sit and speak with a real witness to Auschwitz, how will my children learn the harsh reality of genocide?



This last question received an unexpected answer on Tuesday, June 7, 2011 when the summer fellows in my Warsaw-based Humanity in Action program and I took a field trip to Treblinka. This camp was one of three built in 1942 in eastern Poland specifically for the purpose of extermination. In the summer of 1942 some 350,000 Jews were sent from the Warsaw ghetto to the gas chambers of Treblinka. Another 500,000 Jews would join them by October 1943. Deception was sustained from the first moment to the last. Ninety-nine percent of all who arrived were asked to deposit their valuables with a cashier before “continuing their journey east.” They were asked to undress and shave their heads for sanitation. As their commodities entered the war economy for Nazi profit they entered the gas chambers. Only a small fraction of the inmates were kept alive as prisoners, strong men kept to dig graves and bury corpses.

The Nazis sought not only to mislead their victims, but the world as well – in 1943 the Nazis exhumed and cremated all the corpses in Treblinka’s mass graves. By the end of that year the Polish Jewry has been eradicated, and even the camp itself was rendered nothing but ash. 

Imagine then, if you have not been to Treblinka, what you find there today: meadow surrounded by dense deciduous forest. It is, against all expectations, serene. Only the songs of birds and the buzz of insects disturb the quiet. If it weren’t for thousands of granite rocks that mark the space like jagged gravestones there would be no way to know that you were walking on ground marked by death. Nature also deceives you.

It occurred to me then that the grass in Treblinka’s meadow will not pause its growth to mark the human tragedy that took place there. To make the Holocaust matter, to keep it from turning to ash, we have to encapsulate it in a human medium, the largest and least mortal we have: artistic representation. Though many have tried to represent the Holocaust as truly and as perfectly as they could, I realized that no such purity ever existed, in fact or in fiction. Even the stories I hear from the Holocaust survivor I visit in New York City transform with each retelling. But they are what we have: humble, flawed stories, which nevertheless must attempt to convey the awful enormity of genocide.


Thursday, June 9, 2011

Diversity: What Went Missing That Cannot Be Missed? by Ann-Kristin Wiethaupt

Poland is not yet lost!

The Mazurka, expressing the spirit that the nation of Poland, despite lack of political independence, should never perish as long as the Polish people would be still alive while fighting for its salvation and the honor, very quickly became one of the most admired patriotic songs all over Poland. (Retrieved from the World Wide Web, June 6th, 2011:

That’s a short excerpt from an entry about the Polish National Hymn. As such, one may find nothing surprising in this text. However, I would like to ask “who are the Polish people”?

In our first lecture held by Konstanty Gebert, a writer and columnist, we were encouraged to see Poland through the eyes of minority / majority. In other words, Mr. Gebert introduced us to the diversities in Polish society.  Before the outbreak of World War II, over 3 million Jews, numerous Germans, Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Belarusians called Poland their homeland. After World War II, Poland is considered to be ethnically homogenous or mono-ethnic: over 95% of the population claim Polish nationality. This homogeneity is the outcome of the deportations of certain groups of people ordered by Nazi Germany but also by Soviet authorities, as well as the result of the border shifting after the war.

This mono-ethnic status did not seem to bother Polish society. Many Poles considered ethnic homogeneity to be a good order of the State. In fact, this was what the Socialist regime wanted the Polish people to belief. In other words, the regime presented the mono-ethnic status as a success. As we all know, it was mere propaganda. In fact, as we learned from Mr. Gebert, the society did feel that something is missing. To me, this 'phantom pain' is not surprising as the Polish history is so rich of cultural diversity. One cannot just erase or unwrite parts of history. Many regimes tried this but luckily failed in the end. According to Gebert, the Poles were not able to adapt or consume the history their people had produced in previous centuries. Similar to the situation in the Balkans, the people did not comprehend and appreciate their rich cultural heritage. Due to the immense looses during WW II, people and tools needed to enrich Polish culture were missing. Thus, Poland became “extremely boring” without all the missing ‘others’ who were not enriching Polish culture any longer. Another factor playing into it may have been the missing solidarity between the minorities in Poland, which Gebert stressed. Maybe, if united,  they would have been able to raise their voice. Yet, there is hope. Over the last couple of years, the Poles seem to have overcome the “darkness” by remembering their multi-cultural history. Also, when walking through the streets of Warsaw, one can see that the structure of Polish society is changing, i.e. you pass a diverse range of people from around the world who call Poland their home.



Personally, I agree with Gebert that a multi-cultural society can bring about a win-win situation for all sides, given that all parties have equal say, and that no one has to choose one identity over another one. One can be a Polish catholic, a Polish Jew, Polish German or Ukrainian Pole…. In the end, it does not matter, so long as one feels at home in Poland. This is too simplistic, some may argue. Still, one may again raise the question: why to choose one identity over any other? Based on which grounds - religion, civic obligation, personal attachment, tradition, territorial and/or family ties? Viewed in the context of our globalized world, this question seems obsolete.

After all, I think that we should be grateful that there is a revival of Jewish culture nowadays in Poland, despite their near extinction by the Nazis. Gebert calls it the “presence of the absence”. The annual Jewish cultural festival of Krakow constitutes a good bridge between the past and the present; held in Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter of Krakow, it attracts Jews and non-Jews from around the world, both survivors and post-Shoah generations. Everybody is eager to explore Jewish culture and to trace family roots in Poland. To me, such an event is crucial in two aspects: firstly, to unite people from different religions and countries and, secondly, to restore what went missing that cannot be missed.

With regards to my last remark, I do not want to miss to mention that we had the great pleasure to welcome two other speakers on this day: Dr. Sebastian Duda, a philosopher, theologist and journalist, talked about the Roman Catholic church under Socialism and in the free Poland. In the afternoon, we visited the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights. Dr. Adam Bodnar, gave us a first-hand insight into the role of NGOs in defending human rights in Poland. Both lectures were fascinating and an eye-opening experience. In fact, they deserve their own blog entry.