Human Rights Watch was deeply saddened to announce the death of our beloved colleague Mike Jendrzejczyk, the Washington Director for our Asia division. In his 13 years with Human Rights Watch, Mike was the leading advocate in the United States on human rights in Asia. To remember Mike Jendrzejczyk in a way that he would have appreciated, Human Rights Watch has created the "Mike Jendrzejczyk Emergency Fund for Asian Human Rights Activists" to protect human rights workers in Asia who are threatened or attacked and have to flee their residence or even their country.
Mike first became involved in the human rights movement as a Vietnam war protestor in the 1970s and an anti-nuclear demonstrator in the 1980s. He worked for Amnesty International USA in the mid-1980's and joined the staff of Amnesty's International Secretariat in London in 1988. In 1990, he became Washington Director for the Asia division of Human Rights Watch. Mike worked tirelessly to help people in these situations Ð people like the Chinese dissidents Xu Wenli, Wang Dan, and Wei Jingsheng, and Vietnamese activist Dr. Nguyen Dan Que. The emergency fund will be used for the protection of local activists, or to help them move for their safety. Read more about Mike and ways of contributing to the new fund at https://www.hrw.org/about/bios/mikej/fund.htm
