Profiles

Hidden Champions

Alongside prominent figures such as Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Kofi Annan, there are a great many less visible individuals and initiatives that have made invaluable contributions in the pursuit of civil rights and liberties. We have put together some

Rafael Marques de Morais An Angolan journalist who denounces human rights abuses — **Rafael Marques de Morais** An Angolan journalist who denounces human rights abuses

Rafael Marques de Morais campaigns for press freedom and fair social conditions in Angola. In the course of his work as an investigative journalist, he has repeatedly confronted the country’s powerful elites. In 1999, for example, he published an article about then-President José Eduardo dos Santos in the weekly magazine Angola, calling him a corrupt dictator. This earned him a prison sentence of 43 days. Later he denounced human rights abuses in the diamond mines and accused the attorney general of acquiring land illegally, which led to further convictions and a prison sentence. The country now has a new government. President João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço himself has declared war on corruption and encouraged Marques to continue expressing his critical views.

Lucia Diaz A Mexican mother in search of her son — **Lucia Diaz** A Mexican mother in search of her son

Lucia Diaz fights against the culture of silence in the face of injustice and the lack of action by Mexico’s government agencies, which all too often allow perpetrators to escape punishment. Her son was abducted in the city of Veracruz in 2013 and has not been seen since. In 2014, she responded to his disappearance by setting up a non-governmental organisation, Colectivo Solecito de Veracruz, which tracks down clandestine graves and attempts to hold those responsible to account. Together with a few hundred other mothers, she calls for justice, effective government based on the rule of law and more active law enforcement measures. ‘We’re not going to stop looking for our children,’ she says, while admitting that the likelihood of finding them alive is not very high. Diaz also supports a programme called Shelter City that offers a temporary refuge to human rights activists who are in danger so that they can build up new strength.

Arthur Kharythonov A Ukrainian lawyer and civil rights advocate — **Arthur Kharythonov** A Ukrainian lawyer and civil rights advocate

Arthur Kharytonov campaigns in favour of liberal democratic values in Ukraine. He is a lawyer and both founder and president of the Liberal Democratic League of Ukraine, a non-profit, non-governmental organisation that evolved from a student initiative. All of its members are young people born after 1991, the year the country gained its independence. With its motto ‘Life, Liberty, Happiness’, it promotes civil rights and civil liberties in Ukraine and beyond. Kharytonov is 24 years old and has also written three novels and various short stories. He wants to use his work to make a statement against the old structures in his country. ‘We are the representatives of a new generation,’ he says, ‘not the puppets of oligarchs.’ As well as educational work and campaigns, the League’s activities include events to show their solidarity with the demonstrators in Hong Kong.

Ayleen Jovita Romero A Chilean soprano who sings from a balcony — **Ayleen Jovita Romero** A Chilean soprano who sings from a balcony

During the protests in Chile, Ayleen Jovita Romero used her most potent weapon – her voice. On 21 October 2019, undaunted by a government curfew, the opera singer delivered a rendition of a well-known protest song from her balcony. Laced with great passion, the words of ‘El derecho de vivir en paz’ (‘The Right to Live in Peace’) thundered out across the otherwise relatively quiet capital city, Santiago de Chile. The response was one of overwhelming support – first of all from her immediate neighbourhood, which acknowledged her singing with frenetic applause, and later on social media, where her performance soon attracted millions of followers in Chile and far beyond. Since then, Romero has enjoyed cult status in Chile.

Joshua Wong A student in Hong Kong demonstrating for democracy — **Joshua Wong** A student in Hong Kong demonstrating for democracy

Joshua Wong is a leading voice among the protesters who have been taking to the streets of Hong Kong for months, demanding free elections and democracy. Their trademark is the colourful umbrellas they use to protect themselves against attacks by the police. The 23-year-old, who founded a student activist group as early as 2011 and has been politically active ever since, has been arrested and convicted several times but so far has always been released. The demonstrators have achieved their core demand not to extradite suspects to courts in mainland China for trial. The extradition bill has been suspended. Now they are calling for it to be permanently withdrawn and for China’s influence in Hong Kong to be curtailed. Wong believes he and his comrades are on a kind of demarcation line: ‘If we are in a new Cold War, then Hong Kong is the new Berlin,’ he said recently.

Scrutinising elections

Bitter arguments regularly break out over whether elections were really free and fair. One solution is to request a judgment from neutral international observers appointed by a body such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). OSCE is a conference of states parties for peacekeeping and the successor organisation to the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), which was established in 1975 at the height of the Cold War. In recent years, among its many other activities, OSCE has audited more than 300 elections in its 57 member states. That involves deploying observers with different areas of specialist knowledge, in most cases for several weeks. In the post-Cold War period, OSCE’s attention was focused primarily on the transition countries of Eastern Europe. More recently, it has started working with other groups of states, partly in response to the emergence of electronic voting systems, which present new dangers. For example, OSCE was involved in the last presidential elections in the USA. It also dispatched a small team of neutral observers to report on the 2017 Bundestag elections in Germany. OSCE is one of the most renowned election-monitoring organisations in the world.

A critical eye on social media

Myanmar is on the road to democracy after a long period of military dictatorship. However, past ethnic and religious conflicts, combined with the rapid expansion of the internet, have fuelled an increase in hate posts on social media. To make matters worse, Facebook is the only source of information for most people in Myanmar. According to the United Nations, the fact that members of the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority are being brutally persecuted, with more than 700,000 fleeing in 2017, is partly linked to Facebook, which has, it maintains, played a ‘crucial role’ in the incitement of hatred. In response, GIZ has launched a pilot measure entitled Supporting Voices of Pluralism, which is designed to promote diversity of opinion by supporting the work of civil society organisations dedicated to filtering out and analysing hate speech against minorities on social media. Another goal is to ensure that less frequently heard voices are able to gain an audience on Facebook.

published in akzente 1/20