"Olympic Dreams" campaigne: Protect human rights defenders!

Human rights defenders - Olympics 2012. The Campaign features 15 human rights defenders from around the world, and calls on the public to take action to help protect human rights defenders.
 "Let us link our arms to fight for goodness against injustice --- let us work for the common good worldwide:" (Chen Guangcheng) Chief rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks (Munich 40 years ago)

“Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire... Sport can awaken hope where there was previously only despair.”
Nelson Mandela


Front Line Defenders launches campaigne on 15 human rights defenders coinciding with Olympics:

https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/node/19098
(Link thanks to Belarusian human rights defender Oleg Volchek)

Oleg Volchek:
http://minkristnasamhllsblogg.blogspot.fi/2012/06/human-rights-defender-aleh-volchak.html

Torture testimonies (Belarus):
http://minkristnasamhllsblogg.blogspot.fi/2012/07/human-rights-violations-in-belarus-in.html 

http://www.sportshrd.org/
15 human rights defenders to protect - Click on the map and read more.

http://www.chinaaid.org/2012/07/front-line-defenders-launches-campaign.html
"Front Line Defenders launched an online and social media campaign today to call attention to the plight of 15 human rights defenders (HRDs) around the world facing threats, harassment, intimidation, prison and violence on account of their human rights work. The ‘Olympic Dreams’ campaign (www.sportshrd.org) calls on the public to take action to support these 15 defenders by writing to country officials, including the heads of the various National Olympic Committees." 

http://www.sportshrd.org/china.html
Gao Zhisheng

Geng He: "Release my husband": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HaQ5uCVXuA&feature=player_embedded



 



Watch Newsnight tonight for John Sweeney's report from Belarus:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/21stcentury-torture-life-under-europes-last-dictator-7986176.html

http://www.charter97.org/en/news/2012/7/30/55954/
"Opposition activists both inside and outside Belarus have claimed they were tortured at KGB headquarters in central Minsk. The building is known as the "Amerikanka" and is said to be named after a 1920s design for a Chicago prison. People who say they have been tortured in the Amerikanka include the opposition figures Vlad Kobets and Natallia Radzina, the presidential candidates Andrei Sannikov and Ales Mikhalevich, the poet Vladimir Neklyayev, and others still in Belarus. They say that in December 2010, after a bitterly disputed election, victims were forced to strip naked and stand in stress positions while masked guards swished electric batons. Icicles hung from open windows and the temperature outside was -20°C."

"In the end, said Martin Luther King we will all remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends...

...where there where protests it made difference" (Chief rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2C-k4q_wLI
Honoring Shoah and Seyfo


Forty years ago this summer, the Olympic world was rocked by the tragedy of the Munich Massacre. Recently there was public outcry when the International Olympic Committee refused to honor the Israeli victims of the 1972 Palestinian terror attacks.

http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2012/07/french-swimmer-stuns-olympic-games-with-a-silent-tattoo.html
Honoring the victims.




Photo: Kerstin L.