Human Rights Week Kicks Off

The purpose of the week is to raise awareness about the cruelty and human rights atrocities in places such Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Afghanistan.

"In the past, the focus of Human Rights Week has been activism," said Tina Singh, co-chairwoman of the Globe Committee. "This year we want to educate so that hopefully people will want to take up advocating action through awareness."

The keynote speaker for the week is Dith Pran, who gained fame in the early 1970s as a war correspondent in his homeland of Cambodia.

Pran survived the forced labor camps of the Khmer Rouge regime, facing death and starvation for four years. He is also the subject of the award-winning movie, "The Killing Fields."

"We are very excited about our speakers," said Aisling Doyle, co-chairwoman of the Globe Committee. "Each actually has experienced human rights violations firsthand and will hopefully charge emotions and get people involved."

Pran will speak at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday in Hamilton 100.

The week begins at 7 p.m. today in 103 Bingham Hall with presentations by Father Emmanuel on ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka.

On Tuesday, members of the Falun Gong -- a Chinese group that believes in refining the body and mind through exercise and meditations -- will demonstrate its religious rituals in the Pit from noon to 1 p.m.

The group received worldwide attention recently after their leaders were jailed and tortured by the Chinese government.

In the Sonja H. Stone Black Cultural Center on Wednesday, UNC Diplomat-in-Residence Brenda Schoonover will mediate a discussion on children's rights in Africa. Schoonover witnessed human-rights violations in Togo while serving as ambassador.

Other campus groups also are involved in helping educate students during the week. UNC's United Nations Organization will present a mock minefield on Tuesday in the Pit from noon to 1 p.m.

Singh said there will be disarmed land mines and a mock minefield including painted "cardboard victims" of mines.

On Friday, Chapel Hill residents Taffy and Herbert Buchman, the latter a retired UNC professor of Islamic studies, will make a presentation at noon in the Campus Y basement. They will describe their experiences in the role that Islam plays in the Taliban's oppression of women and its destruction of the world's two largest Buddhist statues.

To publicize the week's events, members of the Campus Y will be wearing T-shirts today bearing human-rights violation facts.

"If we can make one student care about human rights, then we have done our job," Singh said.

"Our human rights event is about providing info and letting people decide for themselves."

The University Editor can be reached at udesk@unc.edu.