This week, Burmese democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi will visit the United States for the first time in decades. Newly free after more than 20 years of near-constant detention, she is now an elected parliamentarian. Her visit is, above all, a chance to honor her long struggle for democracy. But it also highlights the vital role individual prisoners of conscience can play in personalizing the abstract rhetoric of human rights -- cutting through the wrenching ambiguities that attend the pursuit of basic universal values in a globalized world. After a week of worldwide protests that could make a moral compass spin, Suu Kyi's visit is a welcome ballast. She is a reminder that even though few human rights struggles end in happily ever after, progress is possible and that while no person or cause is perfect, there are human rights heroes who can inspire. The stories of Suu Kyi and a new wave of celebrated dissidents offer one way to motivate new activists to press for human rights change amid the complexities and tradeoffs of a global politics in which no governments are blame-free. These individuals are inspiring a rising generation to use the tools and devices they know best to mobilize a powerful human rights constituency for the 21st century.
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When the international human rights movement began 50 years ago, it centered on campaigns to free "forgotten prisoners," people deprived of their rights to freedom of expression and belief who languished in prisons. As it grew, the movement came known for efforts on behalf of courageous figures challenging totalitarian regimes. Andrei Sakharov, Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa, Nelson Mandela, and later, Suu Kyi herself -- "prisoners of conscience," as Amnesty International designated some -- captured the imagination of activists worldwide, making faraway human rights struggles seem real and immediate. Millions participated in letter-writing campaigns, vigils, and protests, fueling media coverage and pressure for their release -- and, sometimes, powering their political rise. Behind each marquee name were hundreds or thousands of lesser known prisoners whose cases may not have become a cause célèbre, but whose voices were taken up by innovative and tireless grassroots activists around the world. This movement, and the people behind it, made "human rights" a household word and invented what became a new, proven, and powerful way to bring about broad global change.
Building
on this success, the human rights movement broadened its work to tackle
systemic problems: investigation and documentation of human rights abuses;
high-level advocacy; and campaigns for new global treaties and institutions,
from weapons bans to the International Criminal Court. In a matter of decades,
the movement made important strides in South and Central America, Southern
Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and -- one hopes -- the Middle East.
The maturing movement faces clear challenges. In a more interdependent and less
neatly polarized world, it grows more apparent by the day that Western
governments have diminishing political and economic leverage to press for human
rights change elsewhere in the world. When leaders don't stress human rights
within their foreign policies, the media doesn't focus on it either. The West
has also ceded some of what moral credibility it had to champion human rights
abroad after the abuses of the U.S. "war on terror" and the mistreatment of migrants
in Europe. (China now counters the State Department's annual human rights
country reports with reports of U.S. failings, from police brutality to gun
violence.) And amid a fragmented 24/7 news cycle, household names like Suu Kyi
and Mandela are few and far between. While grassroots human rights work goes
on, citizens worldwide don't have a name or face that they associate with the
struggles for human rights and freedom in Bahrain, Bosnia,
Kosovo, and South Sudan.
The Arab Spring and the unfolding violence over the last week have raised new and deeper questions. The attack on U.S. diplomatic installations leaves it uncertain at best what role the United States and other Western countries can play in promoting human rights, democracy and peace in the Arab world. Since the uprisings began 18 months ago, critics have called out the hypocrisy of the United States in backing protestors in Egypt and Libya while defending the regime in Bahrain.
Watching all this, citizens eager to do something in response to shocking images of people beaten and shot in distant, rubble-filled streets may be confused over who or what to support -- and how. These ambiguities can be a recipe for apathy, as would-be activists conclude that human rights are too fraught and turn to other causes.
Yet in recent months we've been reminded that an individual's plight can stir public passion like nothing else, offering a path for dynamic grassroots activism. By joining in solidarity with citizens worldwide, grassroots activists can find the comfort of being part of a broad movement that stands only for human rights. Whereas the icons of the 1960s and 1970s captured the hearts of activists faraway through their political philosophies and writings, today's prisoners of conscience are connecting to a digital generation through the mediums it loves best: mobile, music, and video. Last spring, on the eve of a U.S-China summit slated to virtually ignore human rights, a blind lawyer stole headlines with his Houdini-like escape from house arrest to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. Twitter accounts went into overdrive as Chen Guangcheng's personal drama rewrote the summit script, forcing the United States to take a stand for political freedoms through compassion rather than righteous lecturing. His dark sunglasses and ubiquitous cellphone inspired legions of tweets, texts, and emails, upending a carefully choreographed diplomatic encounter and prodding the two sides to hash out a deal for his release.
The worldwide uproar over Chen's fate, rendering his face among the world's most recognizable in a matter of days, would not have ricocheted nearly as far or fast without the mass Chinese microblogging platform Weibo. The scale of the outrage and media frenzy forced China to release Chen, but also to recognize that even the tightest media controls and censors can no longer keep Chinese abuses out of the spotlight. Social media outlets have also forced Beijing to acknowledge what it would rather deny and ignore in its own media channels: Chen's strong popular support among ordinary Chinese.
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