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HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH ANNUAL DINNER
Voices for Justice
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New York Annual Dinner
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Please join us at a very special celebration honoring human rights monitors from around the world. The dinner will be held on Wednesday evening, November 13, 2002 at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine in Manhattan.
Human Rights Watch will honor three individuals from Chad, India, and Turkey, who through their personal triumphs and perseverance speaking out for international justice, AIDS victims, free expression and refugee rights in their home countries, have helped advance the cause of human rights. Daily, they risk their safety, and often their lives, to defend their fellow citizens from tyrannical governments and abusive armed forces. Human Rights Watch works with these brave individuals on the ground as part of its defense of human rights in over 70 countries worldwide. Through sheer persistence in collecting information, strategic advocacy at local and international levels, and aggressive follow-up, Human Rights Watch has led the way in building support for human rights principles worldwide.
This year Human Rights Watch is proud to honor:
Souleymane Guengueng, Chad, International Justice
Meena Seshu, India, HIV/AIDS and Human Rights
Sanar Yurdatapan, Turkey, Freedom of Expression
Monitor Profiles
To learn more about each of this year's Monitors and their work, please read the brief biographies below or visit www.hrw.org/campaigns/defenders/2002/monitors.html. For background information on each country, please visit our countries page at www.hrw.org/countries.html and for more information on the monitors' issues, you can visit our Global Issues page at www.hrw.org/advocacy/index.htm
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Date
Wednesday, November 13, 2002
Time
Cocktail Reception, 6 - 7 p.m.
Program & Dinner, 7 - 10 p.m.
Location: Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine
Tickets
Underwriter
($25,000 for one Table of 10)
Benefactor
($10,000 for one Table of 10)
Patron
($5,000 for one Table of 10)
Individual Underwriter
($2,500 for one ticket)
Individual Benefactor
($1,000 for one ticket)
Individual Patron
($500 for one ticket)
For more information or to purchase tickets to the Human Rights Watch Annual Dinner please call or email:
Michelle Leisure, Coordinator of Special Events, leisurm@hrw.org
(212) 216-1803
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 Souleymane Guengueng, Chad, International Justice
Souleymane is the founder and Vice-President of the Chadian Association of Victims of Political Repression and Crime (AVCRP), and is the main force behind the cases against Hissène Habré. Souleymane embodies the victim's quest for justice, a quest that Human Rights Watch has made the focus of so much of its work. As the ICC enters into force, he also represents a victim looking for a forum to judge his tormentor. Souleymane, falsely accused of supporting Habré's opposition, almost died of dengue fever during two years of mistreatment in Habré's prisons, and watched hundreds of others succumb to malaria, exhaustion, malnutrition and torture. When Habré fell, Souleymane and other former prisoners founded the AVCRP which gathered testimony from 792 victims, widows and orphans, hoping to use them to bring Habré to justice and win compensation for the victims or their survivors. When the Deby government recycled many of Habré's accomplices, however, and made clear that it was not going to pursue justice for the victims, Souleymane hid the files underneath the mud-brick home where he lives with the 24 members of his family, including nine children. That is where the files stayed for eight years until Souleymane handed them to a Human Rights Watch researcher in 1999. These files formed the core of the case in Senegal.
Since then, Souleymane has been the driving force behind this case in Chad. He has devoted all of his free time to the case - indeed his life is devoted to the case - and he has traveled to Senegal, Belgium and France. After the recent trip of a Belgian judge to Chad, which for most Chadians transformed a case in far-off courts into something concrete, Souleymane told Liberation, "Everyone thought I was crazy but now they can see that justice is on the march." ("Tout le monde me prenait pour un fou, mais chacun peut voir que la justice avance maintenant.") Since the judge's visit, dozens of victims have been visiting the AVCRP on a daily basis, asking to file complaints in Belgium or to become part of the trial. But in a ominous sign that Habré's accomplices are feeling vulnerable, Guengueng's car has been followed through N'Djamena by military officers and one night another car filled with unknown men parked in front of Guengueng's house all night. He was also suspended from his job at the Lake Chad Basin Commission for engaging in "political activity" until our hue and cry got it back..
Meena Seshu, India, HIV/AIDS and Human Rights
Meena Seshu's work highlights the importance of not forgetting to pay attention to the high-risk groups, especially sex workers, an important and often forgotten part of the context in which the epidemic is playing itself out in the world. Meena speaks of AIDS consistently in the language of human rights, another part of the media and public discourse on AIDS that is not nearly prominent enough. As for current events in India, Meena's organization's main battle these days has been with a leader of the Hindu party Shiv Sena, which fits right in with communal violence, etc., and many of the sex workers that are part of her group are lower-caste women, something she can speak to eloquently. She has been threatened with physical force and has been accused publicly of using HIV/AIDS work to promote prostitution and to run brothels. (She tells everyone that the personal attacks on her are not a problem since she, as a middle-class woman, has resources and contacts that lower-caste people can't muster.) Her response to all of this is to continue to mobilize allies and find support for the struggle for the rights of sex workers and MSM. She is an indefatigable activist and an amazing human rights advocate, and she is incontrovertibly one of the AIDS and human rights heroes of South Asia and the world.
Sanar Yurdatapan, Turkey, Freedom of Expression
Sanar Yurdatapan was born in Susurluk, Turkey in 1941. He became well-known as a composer and song-writer during the 1970s. In 1979, he became the General Secretary of the DEMAR (Democratic Artists Community). Following the military coup of 1980, he left Turkey with his (ex-) wife Melike Demirag - a singer and film actress - and went to Germany where they were obliged to live in exile for over 11 years. The Turkish military regime stripped them of their citizenship in 1983. They were able to return to Turkey in December 1991. In 1992, their citizenship was restored. He is the informal coordinator of the Freedom of Expression Initiative, which is a group of young people that work together with people prosecuted for exercising their right to freedom of expression. Yurdatapan has now published 43 Freedom of Expression Booklets. He has also organized two high profile events called Gatherings for Freedom of Expression aimed at drawing attention to the constraints on freedom of expression in Turkey.
In 2001, he received the Hellman/Hammett award. He also organized a delegation to investigate the killing of eleven Kurdish villagers at Guclukonak in January 1996. The massacre was allegedly carried out by the PKK, and the Office of the Chief of General Staff organized flights of journalists into the remote area to film the bodies. Because the PKK were at that time on cease-fire, and also denied the killing, it was widely assumed that state forces had carried out the killings to discredit the PKK. However, the massacre took place in an area that was previously completely inaccessible to human rights monitors. SY organized a large, high profile delegation that included figures (such as a German MP of Turkish ethnicity) whom it would be impossible for the gendarmerie to turn back under the view of cameras and journalists. The evidence uncovered by Sanar Yurdatapan and the other members of the delegation showed almost beyond doubt that this was a state massacre. They submitted their evidence to the prosecutor, and when nothing was done for three months, Sanar Yurdatapan made a public declaration accusing the Chief of General Staff of covering up the massacre. The authorities replied with a trial for insulting the military, for which Sanar Yurdatapan and two others received prison sentences. He appealed and was only recently acquitted. He has again publicly accused the military of covering up the Guclukonak massacre.
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