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Journalists for Human Rights: Film Screening and Discussion

May 25 | News | julie

Journalists for Human Rights (JHR) presents the film LUMO: One Women’s Struggle to Heal in a Nation Beset by War, Wednesday, May 28, 2008, 7 PM at Innis Town Hall, University of Toronto.

The film is centered around Lumo, a young victim of sexual violence, living in Kivu provinces, in the Eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The DRC has experienced a prolonged period of horrifying civil war that has claimed more lives than any conflict since WWII.

Similar subject matter was explored in A Love During War, which closed this year’s Toronto Human Rights Watch Film Festival.

Following the film, Congolese Lawyer and Human Rights Activist Mimi Kashira is joined by Kigali Radio Contact (Rwanda) Producer Lauren Vopni as well as Canadian Human Rights Activist Cheryl Sutherland to discuss the realities on the ground in Kivu.

All proceeds from the screening will go to JHR’s operations in Central and West Africa.

Tagged congo, human rights

In the News: Human Rights Watch World Report

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February 1 | News | julie

human rights watch world report 2008
In its 2008 annual report released yesterday, Human Rights Watch criticizes Western governments for devaluing democracy by allowing “dictators to legitimize themselves on the cheap.”

The sweeping report says Western nations are undermining human rights worldwide by allowing autocrats to pose as democrats, without demanding they uphold the civil and political rights that make democracy meaningful.

World Report 2008 identifies many human rights challenges in need of attention, including atrocities in Chad, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia’s Ogaden region, Iraq, Somalia, Sri Lanka, and Sudan’s Darfur region, as well as closed societies or severe repression in Burma, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Libya, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam.

The United States also comes in for harsh criticism:

275 prisoners are still being held at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without being charged with any offense. Many have been there for six years, and several were cleared long ago of wrongdoing but simply not released.
The CIA continues to assert, with White House backing, that it is not bound by key U.S. anti-torture rules.
Secret prisons that were closed in 2006 appear to have been reopened.
Under U.S. anti-terrorism laws, authorities have denied refugee protections “to persons who fit the refugee definition under international law, including rape victims forced into domestic servitude by rebel groups,” the report says.

Canada was not one of the 75-plus countries that the report focused on.

Human Rights Watch was founded in 1978 and has produced an annual global survey of human rights for the last 18 years.

For more information, including video footage of yesterday’s press announcement delivered by Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth visit the World Report Special Feature.

Canadian News Coverage:
CBC News – Western states turn blind eye to brutality by allies, NGO finds
Toronto Star — Olivia Ward — Rights group says West backs `sham’ democracies

Tagged human rights, human rights watch, human rights watch world report

A Message From Director Hana Makhmalbaf

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January 21 | Buddha Collapsed Out Of Shame, HRWFF Opening Night | julie

hana makhmalbaf portrait

January 18, 2008
Tehran, Iran

To The Toronto Human Rights Watch Film Festival:

I was very happy to hear that you are screening my film Buddha Collapsed Out Of Shame on the Opening Night of a film festival that carries the title “Human Rights.” I am also disappointed I cannot join you on such a courageous occasion.

This December marks the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, all over the world, human rights are still being violated by human beings themselves. I have asked myself for many years now: Who is doing the violating?

Recently, I found an answer to this mystery: I, you, he, she, we, they.

Despite having witnessed all the violent wars, fascism, jails, torture, genocide and poverty in the world, it continues. If we keep silent, we, too, are all participants in the violation of human rights.

Bakhtay, the little girl in the film, might not be aware of the fact that it is almost 60 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted.

In this unfair world, filled with inequality and injustice, and all alone on her own two tiny feet, Bakhtay wanders through the mountains and deserts of her country in search of something missing: that something is called Human Rights.

Thank you,
Hana Makhmalbaf

Tagged hana makhmalbaf, human rights

Taxi to the Dark Side: Reviews

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January 17 | Taxi To The Dark Side | julie

taxi to the dark side the family

A snapshot of some of the reviews for Taxi to the Dark Side coming out in advance of the film’s opening this Friday in New York and Los Angeles.

AM New York — “Taxi is a must see!”

Associated Content — “The film invites a revolutionary and transformative reflection on the essence of human rights as well as the true intention of the forces behind the War on Terror.”

BlogCritics — “An eye-opening look at US detainee policy in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo, it’s a stunning film, and one that deserves to find a wide audience.”

Box Office — “We should take solace in the notion that as long as documentaries like Gibney’s are allowed to be produced and screened, we’ll never be too far away from a time when such films weren’t even necessary.”

Entertainment Week — “Hot, anguished, and sometimes as difficult to watch as pictures of torture ought to be…”

Film Journal — “Director Alex Gibney makes an indisputable case that leaders of the Bush administration have made torture an integral part of United States policy in the Middle East. It is a devastating account of detainees killed, soldiers corrupted and principles abandoned.”

Hollywood Reporter — “In the end, this passionate indictment of present U.S. policies stirs both sadness and outrage.”

New York Magazine — “It’s the equal of No End in Sight in its tight focus on the nuts and bolts of incompetence, and it surpasses any recent melodrama in the empathy it evokes for both its victims and–surprisingly–victimizers.”

Variety — “Photos and video of torture at Bagram and Abu Ghraib are the most viscerally disturbing elements of Taxi to the Dark Side, but the way soft-spoken soldiers were transformed into beasts with the tacit approval of the higher-ups is just as profoundly chilling.”

Village Voice — “Taxi is an impressively blueprinted work. Still images–from autopsy tables, makeshift holding cells, the Oval Office–are selected and deployed to maximum effect.”

Tagged human rights