Idi Amin

Today I will play the role of the devil´s advocate. I will defend the acts of Idi Amin while president of Uganda between 1971 and 1979.

Amin was accused of a lot of violations against Human Rights, namely the kidnapping, the torture and the murder of 300.000 people.  Although this may seem incriminatory, Idi Amin only did those things for the best interests of his country and for its people. He was a man of good and always fought for the best for his people and they knew it. He tried to improve his country, making new schools, new hospitals and new houses, making his country better, stronger and free and to do all these things he was forced to “strip those people out of the scene”. Those who were against Uganda have to get out of the way of those who want the growth of Uganda and the best for Uganda. Amin was not a bad man; he was what recent countries without good conditions need to get better: a man with a strong fist.

Besides all this, he knew exactly what those poor people suffer since he has had an awful childhood and so, he could identify himself with the people and solve their problems. Another thing in his side is that he was just punishing the traitors; and betray your own country is a thing that it is still punish severally by law with life imprisonment or even with death penalty in develop countries too (it is called treason and it is the capital crime), like Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Russia, Switzerland, United Kingdom and USA.

As you can see and to conclude, all the bad things that are said against Idi Amin is perspectives of who wasn’t there to see how the things real were or just didn’t want to see. A lot of people who were close to him have nothing but good things to say about Amin.

note: all the things said in this text was based on a theme of a project work, not in a personal opinion.

References:

2011, ‘Idi Amin’, Wikipedia, viewed 25^th November of 2011, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idi_Amin

2011, ‘Treason’, Wikipedia, viewed 25^th November of 2011, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treason

2011, 'I Knew Idi Amin - 04 Feb 08 - Part 1 (Repeat)', viewed 25^th November of 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYD7EQqz1M0

The Universal Declaration of the Human Rights

The Universal Declaration of the Human Rights(UDHR) was written on December 10 of 1948 as a result of the atrocities made throughout the 2^nd World War an after the creation of the United Nations.

                                              

“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.” This is the Article 10 of the Declaration of the Human Rights, an article that basically says that everyone should have the right to a trial by a fair court. The purpose of this right is to ensure the proper course of the justice. As a minimum the right to fair trial includes the following fair trial rights in civil and criminal proceedings:

·         the right to be heard by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal ;

·         the right to a public hearing;

·         the right to be heard within a reasonable time;

·         the right to counsel;

·         the right to interpretation.

However, are these minimum requirements respected? Let´s see some examples of violations of the article 10 of the UDHR and examples of respect for this right.

Beside all the atrocities made by the son of the former Libyan dictator Muamar Kadhafi, Saif al-Islam Kadhafi, the United States of America demands that the Libyans grant him a fair trial because respecting the humans rights is a way of show that Libya is in the right path to have a future of peace and democracy.

Howsoever, in the United States, a single law firm, which represents maybe a hundred or so corporate clients, earned US$1,000,000,000 (one billion) while the U.S. Federal government was only willing to spend US$300,000,000 (300 million) on legal services for forty million poor U.S. citizens.  The combined U.S. governmental expenditures on civil legal services for the poor-US$600,000,000(600 million)-represent only 0.5% of the more than US$130,000,000,000 (130 billion) the people of the United States currently spend on lawyers. So, we can see that not everyone have the opportunities to have a fair trial.

The human rights are constantly being violated and not just in poor/undeveloped countries. It is our duty no to pact with these violations and to help to reduce them in every way we can.

References:

The Universal Declaration of the Human Rights, Copyright © United Nations 2011, 10^th December 1948, last view at 19^th November 2011, http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml

History of the Document, Copyright © United Nations 2011, 10^th December 1948, last view  19^th November 2011, http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/history.shtml

Right to a fair trial, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, last view 19^th November 2011, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_a_fair_trial#

Justice Earl Johnson, Jr., 2000, Fordham International Law Journal, last view 19^th November 2011, http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/ilj

First Approach to Human´s Rights

What it’s done, it’s done. The only thing that we can do now it’s respect them and accept them as equals because that is what they real are. We are in the 21^st Century and last time I heard we were all humans.

Of course I’m talking about the relations between the white people and the black people and about the horrific actions of our (white people) ancestors.

If it was not enough that the black people had been forced to leave their countries to be slaves, they were discriminated for the following centuries, too.

Therefore, they started to get ways of express themselves like trough music (gospel, jazz...), writing (Maya Angelou, Largston Hughes...), painting and so one.

Romare Howard Bearden (1911-1988), an African-American artist, musician and writer, was one of those people. Trough literature, music and art, Bearden could fight for civil rights and he could show to people the life of the black people in America like in his collage “The Street” (1964) where Harlem street life through the eyes of Romare Bearden.  He used the art to speak out against the limitation on Black artists.

Romare Howard Bearden, in his army uniform,

a photograph taken by Carl Van Vechten, 1944

                                        

During the 60s, he got more socially conscious and fought for justice and equality to the black people, helping to found an artist's group in support of civil rights and it was there that his artc became representative of the black people’s civil rights.

Roamare Bearden, The Street (Harlem), collage, 1964, Swann Galleries, New York

The black people are fighting for their rights for centuries. I think it is about time to live as one, as humans.

Romare Bearden, The Calabash,collage,

1970, Library of Congress

References:

Site credits, 2009, Romare Bearden Foundation, viewed 11^thNovember 2011, http://www.beardenfoundation.org

Site credits, viewed 12^th November 2011, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romare_Bearden

Project works- 2

Today my post will be my classmates’ project works, again. This week, it was very difficult to choose the best project work.

After a lot of weighing, I chose the Ana Margarida and Cristiana’s work because it has shown a great effort of these girls to have good materials such as the fantastic presentation and the papers, which aloud a strong interaction with the audience.

The only thing that I recall as being a weak aspect was the fact that they showed us a lot of regions and their different accents, however, they have just associated the regions with known towns when they talked about Birmingham’s accent and so we, the audience, could not make a relation between the accent and some known towns (e.g.: Manchester, Liverpool...).

Good job, girls!

I want to end up extolling the tremendous courage of Kcénia to go there just by herself. I was sorry that she was so nervous, nevertheless that it was perfect understandable.

Great Job, mates! Continue to work, always.