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Activists in training
Jeff Heinrich, The Gazette (Montreal)
June 15, 2005

It's a risky business, swapping ideas about human rights in an open country and then trying to import them back into a repressive one.

But for many of the 130 participants in an international conference now going on at John Abbott College in Ste. Anne de Bellevue, the risk is worth it.

They're registered in the 26th annual International Human Rights Training Program, organized by the Montreal-based Canadian Human Rights Foundation. Workshops began Monday and continue for three weeks.

Coming on bursaries from countries as disparate as Bahrain and Zimbabwe, where they struggle daily against poverty, discrimination and censorship, the human rights activists are here to learn from each other.

The next challenge is to take it all back home - safely.

"It's a bit scary, because you never can tell what will happen when you get back," said Tafadzwa Ralph Mugabe, 23, a lawyer with Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, in Harare, who just happens to have the same last name as the African country's autocrat, President Robert Mugabe.

"I know about colleagues who have difficulty when they come back from abroad; they've been harassed by state security," said Mugabe, who until now had never been outside his homeland.

"They claim that sometimes when people go outside they go and demonize the country. But I wouldn't call it demonizing. Sometimes it's the truth, and sometimes you have to tell the truth, even when it's ugly."

Take, for example, his namesake's current campaign against Harare's underclass of black-market vendors and slum dwellers, 200,000 of whom have been left homeless in the past month, their shanties and stalls bulldozed in a massive demolition blitz to "clean up" the capital.

Mugabe, the young lawyer, unsuccessfully helped fight the demolitions in court. Now here, he can only deplore them - and share his dismay with others.

People like Sawsan Al-Refai, 27, a diplomat's daughter from Yemen who works for the Girls World Communication Centre, a training institution in Sana'a that helps raise young girls and women from the depths of illiteracy and exploitation in the Arab country's labour market.

"It's OK to come here and talk about human rights, but to really implement them in reality back home is something else," said Al-Refai, who is also a practising radiologist.

In Iraq, where Fatima Al-Shiraida, 51, teaches linguistics at university, safety is the major issue these days.

"We practise freedom now since the war (against the U.S.), but we just lack for security," she said. "We don't feel safe - in our homes, in the streets, in our businesses."

With her experience here, "maybe I can convince people in Iraq to be peaceful, not to struggle against each other."

Zainab Abdulnabi, 21, a budding journalist from Bahrain, is writing about her experience for Alwasat News, one of the oil kingdom's media.

She has to watch her tongue. The director of her organization, the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, was jailed for two months last year after returning from the conference here; he had spoken out against the government in a training seminar on poverty he gave upon his return.

Abdulnabi said journalism is her way of speaking out for the poor and the unemployed, the oppressed and the voiceless.

"Journalism can develop human rights - for example, when somebody goes to prison, journalism can make pressure to get him out. Journalists write about issues and have solutions," she said.

"I want to help people, yes - and by helping them, I hope to draw a smile from them. With a little kindness, everybody should be able to smile."

E-mail: jheinrich@thegazette.camwest.com

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