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2002
Award Dinner
2001
Award Dinner
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25th Anniversary Human Rights
Award Dinner
Honorees
Archbishop Pius
Ncube
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Pius
Ncube is one of the leading human rights advocates in Zimbabwe. He
is widely respected in his home country and internationally for his
efforts to draw attention to the breakdown in the rule of law in Zimbabwe
and for challenging these violations.
Zimbabwe today is a country in crisis. In recent years, the government
of Robert Mugabe has relied on violence and routine misuse of official
power to stifle dissent. Human rights activists are attacked and jailed,
women are raped because of their family’s associations with
government opponents, and those in the political opposition are arbitrarily
detained and tortured for their peaceful political activities. The
government has severely undermined the independence of the judiciary,
enacted repressive legislation and forcibly shut down the independent
press.
These and other rights violations have contributed to an escalating
humanitarian crisis. Today there are serious food shortages in Zimbabwe,
massive job losses and a collapse in the country’s public health
system at a time when the HIV/AIDS pandemic afflicts tens of thousands
of Zimbabweans.
In the midst of this crisis, Archbishop Ncube has emerged as one of
the leading champions of human rights in Zimbabwe. His clear and brave
voice of moral courage has given voice to thousands of Zimbabweans
whose daily suffering is too often dismissed or ignored in Africa
and elsewhere. “I am not going to be quiet when my people are
suffering,” Archbishop Ncube has said. “I have a right
to talk. That is why I was called to this office - to talk on
behalf of the suffering.”
Archbishop Ncube was ordained in 1973. He became the first black prelate
of the Bulawayo diocese in 1998. He became the Chairperson of the
Amani Trust (Matabeleland), an organization that assists victims of
torture and documents political violence. Using this platform, he
systematically reported on a pattern of gross human rights violations.
The government responded with threats and intimidation, and in 2002
the Amani Trust was forced to suspend its operations.
Earlier this year Archbishop Ncube became Chairperson of a new organization,
the Solidarity Peace Trust, which has been created to assist victims
of human rights violations and to promote justice and peace in Zimbabwe.
Despite years of threats, including anonymous death threats, Archbishop
Ncube continues to lead, to speak out, and to serve as a moral beacon
in his troubled land.
In August 2003, the Lawyers Committee helped organize a conference
on Zimbabwe that brought civil society groups together from seven
African countries to condemn the human rights crisis in Zimbabwe and
call for urgent action by regional governments, as well as the international
community, to end serious human rights violations in the country.
The Archbishop was the keynote speaker at the conference. In his remarks,
he said, “This meeting with our colleagues from the region has
helped immensely to strengthen us in our struggle for respect for
basic rights in Zimbabwe.”
Earlier in the summer, in an op-ed in the New York Times,
Secretary of State Colin Powell decried the situation in Zimbabwe,
and wrote:
“A brave man recently met with me and described how life in
his country has become unbearable. ‘There is too much fear in
the country, fear of the unknown and fear of the known consequences
if we act or speak out,’ explained Pius Ncube, the Roman Catholic
Archbishop of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Yet Archbishop Ncube speaks out
fearlessly about the terrible human rights conditions in Zimbabwe,
and is threatened almost every day with detention or worse.”
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Xu Wenli and
Xu Jin
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Xu
Wenli
Xu Wenli is known by his colleagues in China as the “Godfather
of Dissent.” For most of the last 20 years, however, he was
known as “001” - his prisoner identification number.
Wenli is one of China’s most prominent political dissidents.
As a founder of the Chinese Democratic Party, he dedicated his life
to the struggle for democratic freedoms and human rights in China.
As a result of his outspoken advocacy, Wenli spent 16 of the last
20 years in prison, suffering torture and solitary confinement.
Wenli’s early life did not predict what his future would hold.
As a young man, he rejected the idea of college and instead became
a sailor and a railway electrician.
In his early 30s, the direction of his life would change. In 1976,
Wenli attended a public mourning of workers for the death of Zhou
Enlai. Suspecting a covert protest, police beat the mourners; Wenli
witnessed this brutality first hand. “At that moment,
I realized that everything I believed was a lie,” Wenli has
said of the event.
Two years later, Wenli participated in the Democracy Wall Movement
- and helped create a wall in Beijing where people could post
pro-democracy messages. He also published a pro-democracy journal
April Fifth Forum. In 1981, in response to these actions and his proposals
for peaceful reforms, the Chinese authorities staged a midnight raid
on Wenli’s home and arrested him. He was tried in secret and
received a 15-year sentence.
During his time in prison, Wenli was allowed only sporadic and brief
visits with his wife, He Xintong, and his daughter, Xu Jin. Working
covertly from his jail cell, Wenli drafted My Self-Defense, a memoir
documenting his secret trial and imprisonment.
In retaliation, the Chinese authorities placed Wenli in solitary confinement,
where he remained until his release from prison in 1993, having served
12 years of his sentence.
By 1998, Wenli had returned, full swing, to his pro-democracy work,
establishing labor unions and other pro-democracy groups and, eventually,
the Chinese Democracy Party and the Chinese Human Rights Observer.
He was arrested and again sentenced to 13 years for “incitement
to overthrow the state.”
Intense international lobbying - led by Wenli’s wife and
daughter - persuaded the Chinese authorities to release Wenli
on medical grounds; he was diagnosed with Hepatitis B in 1999. Taken
straight from his jail cell to the airport, Wenli found his wife on
a waiting plane. They flew to the United States and were met by their
daughter at the airport.
With the help of the Lawyers Committee and its pro bono lawyers, Wenli
and his wife were granted political asylum in the winter of 2003.
Wenli’s fellow dissidents remain in prison.
Wenli is now a visiting fellow at Brown University. He gave the university’s
commencement address in May. Wenli continues his pro-democracy work
from the U.S., studying ways to bring democracy to China. Democracy
is not just a political system, he says, “It’s a way of
life, essential as bread, air and water.”
Xu Jin
As the daughter of a political dissident and a participant in political
protests as a young woman in China, Xu Jin was banned from attending
university. On a trip to the United States in 1994, Jin won a scholarship
to Bard College and Boston University for her masters in fine arts.
While pursuing her studies, she worked as many as four jobs at a time
so she could send money to her parents in China. In 1998, Jin, with
the help of the Lawyers Committee and its pro bono lawyers, was granted
political asylum.
When her father, Xu Wenli, was arrested and imprisoned for the second
time, Jin campaigned tirelessly for his release - staging hunger
strikes and appealing to prime ministers and presidents. In Washington,
D.C., Jin lobbied the U.S. government and met with international diplomats.
On Christmas Eve 2002, the efforts of Jin - and those she organized
- culminated in Wenli’s early release from prison. Reunited
with her parents for the first time in nearly a decade, Jin works
in Providence, Rhode Island as an independent artist and teacher.
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