The Vietnam War - Day 17

Today is the day number 17 since the war started. I hadn't wrote anything because I had experienced terrible things with my dad. He is no longer living with me because he is now fighting for Vietnam. As I am just a kid, I can't live alone so government of South Vietnam has built some shelters where children like me are sent. People here are also living alone. I don't like this place, I feel like if I were on prison. Literally I am living in a little room sharing the bed with other boy. He is now homeless, his parents died during a fight. We can't do many things like playing or running as normal boys. The only thing that can distract you is the window. I can see from here how soldiers are trained and how some others die in the battle. On the night when there is no noise in the room, I can hear people screaming and gun shots. When this happens, I try to close my eyes and to think that from this there will be a nice consequence. Sometimes when it is dark I can see how forests and woods are in fire. Soldiers do this to distract their enemies but they don't think on the effects that it cause. When light appears after this fire, I look to the sky and see that everything is grey. All the smoke and the gases that strategies cause are affecting our ecosystems. There is sometimes a very nasty smell, I hate it. It is like if someone is burning plastics or something like that.
I don't know how much time I will spend here, I hope that this will last just few days. I miss my dad, I don't want him to lose the battle. I want him beside me. Taking care of me and being happy. I will wait till the day when he come back

The Vietnam War - US army is coming to Vietnam.

We now moved to Chao Doc. I know that the U.S. is helping south Vietnam because war is now officially declared. I hate wars, they are just acts of violence that are based on conflicts. It is like a contest where the most powerful country win. War moments are just full of enmity and destruction. I hardly now that the war that is now starting in my country is against communists. North Vietnam supports communism and the south supports capitalism. I guess that this is the reason why the U.S. is helping us.
Here in Chao Doc is a very big military camp. There is where my father is working. He has been trained to fight against communists. I heard, when I was at the communitarian shelter, that not all of the people that live in south Vietnam support capitalism. But they have to pretend that they are actually capitalists because I think that the real capitalists would kill them.
The U.S. army is the one that helps south Vietnam with weapons because actually here we don't have the necessary armament to fight in a war. We are not prepared enough to live a war but I think there is no other choice. People are really angry and ready to fight for what they believe, they don't matter if they hurt children like me. They just want to hurt people that doesn't think like them.
Anxiety is biting me!!! I really don't know what will happen now. I don't know what to expect. :S

The Vietnam War - First day of chaos.

It is September 2nd, 1945. I am living in the middle of what  I think will become a war. The leader of the Viet Minh declared today that Vietnam is now an independent republic. I live with my father in south Vietnam. I don't know what are we going to do. I don’t know what will happen with my father's job. He was working at a factory, he was not paid so good but he earned the necessary to eat and to have a home. Since the last month that everything started, he is unemployed and we have moved to a communitarian shelter. Here we receive food and comfort but I really miss my home. I don't know why but I think I will lose it.
Today was a bad day because I heard that all of the men have to go and fight for the country. I don’t want my father to go to the war. It is very dangerous and I don’t want to lose the only thing I have in life.
I will stop writing for today because my father and I are going to a military camp where we are going to be sent to another part of the country.

RENT

This is a very interesting musical movie, it is about a group of Bohemian friends that live in a rented building. They suffer a lot of problems because they don’t have enough money to pay the rent, some of them are involved in drugs and some others are infected with AIDS. It takes place in East New York in the year of 1989, it is a very poor zone, where almost everybody is involved in drugs or violence.

This movie is very sad, because people’s lives are very hard. There are two gay couples, one of them is infected with AIDS. After living a “normal” life, one of the guys died.

There is another heterosexual couple, the girl is also infected with AIDS but also she is addicted to drugs. After living a very hard life working as a dancer and also suffering the addictions and poverty, she dies. Her couple and all the friends suffer a lot when they had to see how their friends where suffering. They had to take care of them for the last moments alive.

These are the most important characters in the movie because they show us how people with AIDS has to survive, both of them doesn’t have enough money to pay the treatment and they have to work on nights to get something.

We can see in this movie the daily life of these people and it is very hard because we see that even when they are unemployed and sick they try to always look at the good things.

It is very hard to see the last moments of people, that here is nothing more you can do you just watch them until they die. We all know that most of the people with HIV/AIDS can’t pay for the health services or doesn’t have anything to eat, and without it people die.

Poverty and Hunger in Ireland

How is Poverty defined?

People are living in poverty if their income and resources (material, cultural and social) are so inadequate as to prevent them from having a standard of living, which is regarded as acceptable by Irish society. As a result of inadequate income and resources people may be excluded from participating in activities, which are considered the norm for other people in society.

Some poverty facts in Ireland:

• In 2001, 192,000 people (5% of the population) lived in consistent poverty.
• Consistent poverty levels reduced from 14.5% in 1994 to 5% in 2001.
• In 2001, more than 862,000 people (almost 22% of the population) lived on less than €164 per single person per week.
• Relative income poverty levels increased from 15.6% in 1994 to 22%.
• In 2001, 6% of the population live without basic necessities and on weekly incomes of less than €172 per adult.
• 4.9 % (192,000) of the population are on weekly incomes of less than €192 for an adult and €63 for a child and lack basic necessities.
• 6.5% of children (66,000) experience consistent poverty; 23.4% (237,000) are in income poverty. (Combat Poverty Agency, 2001).
• Children in Ireland are almost twice as likely as adults to be poor. By EU standards, Ireland has amongst the highest rates of child poverty, even though it has fallen in recent years.
• Demand for Housing is currently outstripping supply, particularly in the social housing sector. According to the Local Authority Social Housing Assessments of 2002 a total of 48,413 households were in need of local authority housing compared to 39,716 in 1999, an increase of 23.5 %.
• The financial stresses faced by private renters on low incomes are more severe than the financial stresses from housing costs faced by low income house purchasers.(Against all odds, 2004 Combat Poverty)
• Actually, 17 percent of Irish workers are living below the poverty line.

Hunger in Ireland:

The famine in Ireland lasted from 1845 to 1851 and it was a disaster of unimaginable proportions. Over 1 million people died of starvation and disease and another 1 million emigrated from the country--that was out of a population of just over 8 million. The lasting effect is that Ireland is the only major European country of any size that has a smaller population today than it had 100 to 150 years ago--something like 4.5 million in the North and South combined today.

More information? go to Hunger in Ireland

Human Rights and its Violations.

Article 1.

·         All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

There are some countries in India where children are exploited working all day in hard conditions and suffering hunger and illness, they are exploited by their parents or they do it because they have nothing to eat and their parents think that forcing them is the only way to get money. This is not fair because all children have the right to live in good conditions, equal in dignity and rights (we have the right to education, health, food).

Article 2.

·         Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

On January 2^nd 2011, Republican Senators discriminated Democrats Velmanette Montgomery of Brooklyn and Suzi Oppenheimer of Westchester County only because they are African-American and because they are women.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/nyregion/31senate.html?_r=3&ref=discrimination

Article 3.

·         Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

A registered sex offender charged with murdering a teen girl last month is a focus of the investigation into the death of a 14-year-old girl whose remains were found more than a year after she disappeared near her school.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/03/09/police-man-eyed-nd-calif-teen-murder#ixzz1DKRzPha0

Article 4.

·         No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

British involvement in slavery is over 2,000 years old, but not in what is now the accepted perspective. Cicero noted in about 54 BC that the 'British' enslaved by Julius Caesar 'were too ignorant to fetch fancy prices in the market'. The enslavement of the people of this outpost of the Roman Empire continued for hundreds of years as we know that Pope Gregory spoke with some British slaves in the slave market in Rome in the seventh century AD. Domestic slavery – usually called 'serfdom' – also existed in Britain: serfs were bought and sold with the estate on which they had to work for a fixed number of days a year without payment; they could only marry with their lord's consent, could not leave the estate and had few legal rights.

Article 5.

·         No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Extract of a torture victim: Patson Muzuwa (Zimbabwean, tortured in Zimbabwe)

“I was tortured three times. I was electrified, put in a drum of cold water and beaten

under the foot uncountable times. On the last incident I was taken from the house at

2am by the militias. They beat me because I didn’t want to get into their truck. A British

journalist booked me a ticket to come here when I had a broken arm and stitches in the

head and had been beaten with rubber baton sticks.

http://www.redress.org/downloads/survivors-stories/PatsonMuzuwa.pdf

Article 6.

·         Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Crude historical depictions of African Americans as ape-like may have disappeared from mainstream U.S. culture, but research presented in a new paper by psychologists at Stanford, Pennsylvania State University and the University of California-Berkeley reveals that many Americans subconsciously associate blacks with apes. In addition, the findings show that society is more likely to condone violence against black criminal suspects as a result of its broader inability to accept African Americans as fully human, according to the researchers.

Article 7.

·         All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

April 1933 (the holocaust) "Civil servants who are not of Aryan (non-Jewish) descent are to be retired."

Article 8.

·         Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

After visiting Rwanda, Senegal's Bacre Waly N'diaye chronicled the increasing ethnic violence against minorities. He asserted the killings met the definition of genocide, which automatically should have triggered intervention by the international community as stipulated by the genocide convention. Instead, his 1993 U.N. Human Rights Commission report was ignored. About a year later, nearly 1 million people had been murdered.

Article 9.

·         No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

The Sudanese government has executed prisoners who were minors at the time of their arrest, Human Rights Watch said today. Despite the human rights commitments the government has made in the peace process with southern-based rebels, death penalty defendants are routinely denied fair trials, and arbitrary arrests and detentions remain commonplace in Sudan.

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2005/09/06/sudan-detainees-suffer-arbitrary-arrest-execution

Article 10.

·         Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Bamber, 50, has always protested his innocence, claiming that his sister Sheila, who had paranoid schizophrenia, used a rifle to kill her adoptive parents, Nevill and June, and her six-year-old twin sons, Daniel and Nicholas, before shooting herself in the remote Essex farmhouse. The Bamber murder case is one of the most notorious criminal cases in modern British history. Bamber’s legal team plan to set out a series of apparent inconsistencies in the case presented to the original trial court. This case shows that everybody has the right to be protected by a specialized tribunal.

http://www.channel4.com/news/jeremy-bamber-new-evidence-will-set-me-free

Article 11.

·         Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defense.

·         No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

The “Shawshank Redemption” scenario but one that often plays out in real life.  While perverse and tragic, it’s not at all obvious how it can be fixed, short of barring plea bargaining and parole.  The system very much incentivizes guilty pleas and parole boards, not unreasonably, operate on the presumption that the convict is guilty of the crime for which he’s incarcerated.

Article 12.

·         No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

An example is that Google "accidentally" collected 600 gigabytes of unsecured private data while driving cars around the country in search of Wi-Fi networks, or something as sinister as tracking company RapLeaf using sophisticated technology to create incredibly detailed profiles of people (including names, email addresses, shopping habits, voting history, and so on) and then selling that data to advertisers; this has been a year full of headlines about privacy violations.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-evans/top-5-privacy-violations-_b_802615.html

Article 13.

·         Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

·         Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

 Two flights left France, bound for Bucharest, with 93 Roma immigrants on board. Some 700 Roma are expected to be removed by the end of August. And 300 illegal Roma camps in the country will be demolished over the next three months. The explanation of the French government for the deportations is that the camps have become bases for people-trafficking, prostitution and crime. But critics of the policy detect an uglier motive: a hope from President Nicolas Sarkozy to distract public attention away from allegations of corruption that swirl around his administration.

Article 14.

·         Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.

·         This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

The daughters of Saddam Hussein, whose husbands were killed on their father's orders, will not be given political asylum in Britain

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/saddams-daughters-will-not-be-given-political-asylum-says-britain-539888.html

Article 15.

·         Everyone has the right to a nationality.

·         No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Amnesty International has urged the Lebanese authorities not to take any step to overturn a landmark court ruling allowing a woman to pass on her nationality to her children.

A court of appeal in Jdeidit al-Metn in Mount Lebanon heard the case of Samira Soueidan, a Lebanese citizen who in June 2009 was granted the right to pass on her nationality to three of her Lebanon-born children. The hearing lasted 15 to 20 minutes and the judge, Mary Maoushi, said the verdict was expected on 18 May.

Under Lebanese law, women, unlike men, cannot pass on their nationality to their spouses or children. The children of Lebanese women married to a foreign national can’t obtain Lebanese nationality.

Article 16.

·          Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

·         Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

·         The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

An example of violation to this right is the child marriage; a practice in which the parents of a child arrange a marriage with another child or an adult. In most cases young girls get married off to significantly older men when they are still children .Child marriage always has to be considered as forced marriage because valid consent is absent. It is commonly practiced in Niger, Chad, Mali, Bangladesh, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Mozambique, Nepal, Uganda and Cameroon, where over 50% of girls are married by the age of 18. Poverty, protection of girls, fear of loss of virginity before marriage and related family honour, and the provision of stability during unstable social periods are suggested as significant factors in determining a girl’s risk of becoming married as a child. 

For more information about consequences go to: Child Marriage; a violation to the Human Rights 

Article 17.

·         Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.

·         No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Not content with the confiscation of land and the deprivation of the livelihood of citizens, the Israeli army also intentionally destroyed the lands located west of the Wall. On August 5 2006, the Israeli army intentionally burned 300 dunums of agricultural lands located west of Far‘on that were planted with olive trees. On August 6 2006, the same thing happened when the Israeli soldiers burned 500 dunums planted with olive trees. Then, on August 7 2006, they burned a further 300 dunums in the same area and in the same way. Once again, on August 12 2006, the army burned 12 dunums of agricultural lands. In all these cases, the burning took place at noon in front of Far‘on citizens. Typically, a military jeep would arrive; soldiers would get out and burn the lands. On each occasion the army prevented citizens from reaching their lands to extinguish the fire. The Israeli army also threatens to fire at the Palestinians if they approached the Wall or if they were in the vicinity of it when they burn the lands. Moreover, they prevent the fire services of Toulkarem Municipality from entering the lands and extinguishing the fires.

http://www.alhaq.org/etemplate.php?id=176

Article 18.

·         Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

The Left Government in West Bengal has imposed an all-time high tax on voluntary social organizations (VSOs) this year for using its land at the Gangasagar Mela ground for distributing food, offering free shelter and medicine to several lakhs of Hindu pilgrims who assembled on the auspicious Makar Sankranti day to take a holy dip at the confluence of the river Ganga and the Bay of Bengal. The State Government has also sharply increased fares of buses and motor launches taking pilgrims from Kolkata to Sagar Island. The enhanced tax and increased fares on Hindu pilgrims are similar to the hated jizya (pilgrimage tax on Hindus) reintroduced by Aurangzeb to draw a communal divide between the Hindus and the Muslims.

http://www.hvk.org/articles/0304/94.html

Article 19.

·         Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

In Sri Lanka, five major media organizations suffered gas attacks and dispersion of peaceful protest campaigns in number of cities on February 2010 by the police. This was a violation of basic right to freedom of expression of the people. They were afraid that this incident reconfirms the fact that in Sri Lanka today space for opposition political activities, which is an essential component of a pluralistic democratic society, is being seriously restricted.

http://freemediasrilanka.wordpress.com/2010/02/11/attack-on-peaceful-protests-is-violation-of-freedom-of-expression/

Article 20.

·         Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

·         No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

In August 2007, Deputy Attorney General Fred Ruhinde and Minister of Ethics and Integrity

Nsaba Butoro called for the enforcement of criminal law against homosexuals.

This followed a press conference in the country’s capital Kampala by the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender coalition, Sexual Minorities of Uganda (SMUG), to launch its Let us Live in PeaceCampaign calling for understanding and respect of sexual minorities. The press conference prompted an anti-gay rally drawing more than one hundred demonstrators, including several

Government officials who demanded official action against LGBT people. The rally also called for

the deportation of an American journalist writing for the Ugandan newspaper, the Monitor, which

had reported on the experiences of gays and lesbians in the country. The tactic of shutting down public debate on issues of homosexuality is not a new one in Uganda.

Article 21.

·         Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.

·         Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.

·         The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

In the U.S. an estimated 5.3 million Americans are denied the right to vote because of laws that prohibit voting by people with felony convictions. Of these, 4 million are out of prison and living and working in the community. Two states permanently ban voting by anyone with a felony record of any sort.

Article 22.

·         Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

·         In 2009, the global economic crisis impacted Israel hard, especially jobs with a sharp rise in unemployment, and those without them discovered that since 2000, social safety net protections have deteriorated.

·         In addition, unemployment insurance has eroded to one of the lowest among western countries, and eligibility became more stringent. As a result, those qualifying have decreased by about 50%. In 2007, less than one-fourth of Israel’s unemployed were entitled to monthly stipends. Those without them struggle for any means of support, making them vulnerable to exploitation.

·         “The drastic cut to income-support and unemployment insurance has been one element in Israel’s high ranking in the (OECD’s) Inequality Index.”

Article 23.

·         Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

·         Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

·         Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

·         Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

In mid-2008, the Oz unit replaced the Immigration Police and began intensifying residency law enforcement against asylum-seekers and migrant workers invited to work as nurses, in agriculture, and for construction. Now they’re accused of causing unemployment and dehumanized by being called “burglars, junkies, and street people.”

Article 24.

·         Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Millions of children around the world have to work to support themselves and their families, especially in South Asia and Africa. Many do light or part-time work, but others are involved in dangerous or exploitative labour that harms their development, wrecks their health and denies them an education

Article 25.

·         Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

·         Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Rajasthan, India's largest state in surface, is called the State of mines and minerals. After agriculture, mining is its second biggest trade. There are more than 12,000 mines and around 20,000 quarries located in Rajasthan employing 325,000 people.

The wages of the workers are deplorably low. Even those who are paid as skilled workers and toil almost every day all year round, can hardly sustain their families. Thus numerous people are suffering from malnutrition, which of course adds to their frail status of health and makes them even more vulnerable against the onset of the said occupational diseases.

http://www.fian.org/cases/letter-campaigns/india-violation-of-right-to-food-of-mineworkers-in-rajasthan

Article 26.

·         Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

·         Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

·         Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Some children were denied admission to school, some were subjected to corporal punishment by the school authorities and yet others were denied the benefit of the economically weaker section (EWS) quota for poorer students in Delhi schools.

http://www.newkerala.com/news/world/fullnews-109599.html

Article 27.

·         Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

·         Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Deafness is such a trait that brings people together that would normally be excluded from mainstream society, or the hearing culture that remains status quo.
Historically, deaf people have come together to create their own clubs,
businesses, schools, theatre, language, and other institutions that were meant
to foster a sense of pride and dignity.

http://www.youngpeoplefor.org/node/1969

Article 28.

·         Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

There are some countries that are not part of the United Nations organization such as Puerto Rico; human rights in these countries are not fully protected because the United Nations is the strongest human rights protector and if they are not part of this organization they are not protected by it.

Article 29.

·         Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.

·         In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.

·         These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30.

·         Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

*If you want to learn more about the cases, follow the links.