Last night, we were invited to an evening with Ken Roth,
Executive Director of Human Rights Watch.
Human Rights Watch is dedicated to protecting the human rights
of people around the world. We stand with victims and activists
to prevent discrimination, to uphold political freedom, to
protect people from inhumane conduct in wartime, and to bring
offenders to justice. We investigate and expose human rights
violations and hold abusers accountable. We challenge
governments and those who hold power to end abusive practices
and respect international human rights law. We enlist the public
and the international community to support the cause of human
rights for all.
Ken Roth is a former litigator and federal prosecuter, who has
dedicated his energy to the Human Rights cause over the last two
decades.
He explained HRW's mission, methods, and results in an engaging
talk. A recent victory was described eloquently.
A Belgian judge has issued an international arrest warrant
charging Chads exiled former president, Hissène Habré, with
human rights crimes committed during his 1982-1990 rule. Habré
lives in exile in Senegal, where he was indicted over five years
ago before courts ruled that he could not be tried there. The
Belgian warrant marks a turning point in the long effort to
bring Habré to justice, and should lead to his extradition from
Senegal to Belgium to stand trial. This man, in his days, killed
tens of thousands of people, until Souleymane Guengueng, a
modest and deeply religious civil servant who watched hundreds
of his cellmates perish from torture and disease during two
years in Habrés prisons, took an oath before God that if he ever
got out of jail alive, he would bring his tormentors to justice.
But it was the methods that he described that were the most
compelling.
In a nutshell, HRW uses strategic blackmail to arm-twist
governments and powers to get them to cooperate, and to put a
stop to unacceptable ways. No government wants to be publicly
accused as a human rights violator. HRW has tremendous
credibility with the world media for telling it as it is. Their
reports are authentic, generated by researchers on the field, at
considerable personal risk. They have the ability to create
front page headlines in all major newspapers worldwide.
I was impressed by the combination of ruthlessness and killer
instinct and getting the job done focus, set in the context of
immense kindness.
It was still a rare, warm San Francisco night when we came out.
With a sigh I thought to myself: Such, I hope, would be the
anatomy of leadership in the years to come.
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