Human Rights and Wrongs

Panellists: Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch; Tim Wilson, Human Rights Commissioner; Mona Eltahawy, Egyptian born democracy activist; Lucy Siegle, Journalist and author; and Ilwad Elman, Somalian human rights activist. -- Kenneth Roth Kenneth Roth has served as executive director of Human Rights Watch since 1993. Under his leadership, Human Rights Watch has gone global, growing ten-fold in size and vastly expanding its reach. It now operates in more than 90 countries, among them some of the most dangerous and oppressed places on Earth. During Kenneth’s tenure, Human Rights Watch has worked to bring justice to victims of the worst abuses, documenting war crimes from Bosnia to Congo and from Iraq to Sierra Leone, testifying at international tribunals, pushing to create the International Criminal Court, and helping to hold to account Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, Peru’s Alberto Fujimori and Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic, among others, for crimes against humanity. Hard-nosed advocacy laid the groundwork for international treaties banning landmines, cluster munitions, and child soldiers. Under Kenneth 's leadership, Human Rights Watch has expanded its work on the rights of women, children, refugees, and migrant workers, bringing a human rights perspective to such issues as domestic violence, trafficking, rape as a war crime, and child soldiers. It has helped spotlight previously ignored topics such as the rights of gays and lesbians and, prompted by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the link between health and human rights. Kenneth joined Human Rights Watch in 1987 as deputy director. His initial work centred on Haiti, which was just emerging from the Duvalier dictatorship but continued to be plagued by brutal military rule. He has written extensively on a range of human rights issues, with more than 160 articles and chapters to his name, devoting special attention to issues of international justice, counter-terrorism, the foreign policies of the major powers, and the work of the United Nations. -- Tim Wilson Tim Wilson, well known for many years as a conservative commentator with the Institute of Public Affairs, became the centre of controversy late last year when appointed by Attorney-General George Brandis to the Human Rights Commission – a body the IPA has long sought to have abolished. Tim was named freedom commissioner, tasked by the AG with preserving freedom of the speech, freedom of the press and artistic freedom. He is particularly opposed to section 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act, under which commentator Andrew Bolt was found guilty in 2009. Previously Tim was the Director of Climate Change Policy and the IP (intellectual property) and Free Trade Unit at the IPA and a Senior Fellow at New York's Centre for Medicine in the Public Interest. In 2009 he was named by The Australian newspaper as one of the ten emerging leaders of Australian society. He has previously worked in consulting and international aid and development, as well as for a number of State and Federal Members of Parliament. He was also twice elected President and Chairman of the Monash University Student Union and was also elected to the Council of Monash University. He completed a Masters of Diplomacy and Trade from the Monash Graduate School of Business and a Bachelor of Arts from Monash University. He has several international diplomas and is a trained carbon accountant. Tim is a member of a large number of civil society organisations, including the Australian-American Association, the Australian Institute of International Affairs, Melbourne Football Club, Melbourne Cricket Club and the National Gallery of Victoria. -- Mona Eltahawy Mona Eltahawy is an award-winning columnist and an international public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues. She is based in New York. She is a columnist for Canada's Toronto Star, Israel's The Jerusalem Report and Denmark's Politiken. Her opinion pieces have been published frequently in The Washington Post and the International Herald Tribune and she has appeared as a guest analyst in several media outlets. Before she moved to the US in 2000 Mona was a news reporter in the Middle East for many years. She was the first Egyptian journalist to live and to work for a western news agency in Israel. Mona is a lecturer and researcher on the growing importance of social media in the Arab world. She has taught as an adjunct at the New School in New York, the University of Oklahoma and the UN-mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica. Mona was born in Egypt in 1967 and has lived in the UK, Saudi Arabia and Israel. She calls herself a proud liberal Muslim. In 2005 she was named a Muslim Leader of Tomorrow by the American Society for Muslim Advancement and she is a member of the Communications Advisory Group for Musawah, the global movement for justice and equality in the Muslim family. -- Lucy Siegle Lucy Siegle is a UK journalist with The Observer who specialises in environmental issues and ethical consumerism. In 2004 she created the paper’s Observer Ethical Awards (OEAs), dubbed the Green Oscars, which have been running for over eight years. Lucy has worked across all UK channels on different formats and themes, but her connection to The One Show has been her most high-profile vehicle. She has used her knowledge and experience to present hundreds of films on subjects ranging from the popularity of naked photoshoots to rescuing trout. In September 2012 she directed and produced Green Cut, a lauded fashion short film on sustainable style, and she has published a book called To Die For: is fashion wearing out the world? which explores the issue of the need for reform in the fashion industry. This substantive book on the humanitarian and environmental fall out of the fashion industry, was longlisted for the UK's prestigious non-fiction prize, The Orwell Prize. Lucy and Livia Firth founded the Green Carpet Challenge. Together they have worked extensively with some of the biggest names in the fashion arena to bring the issue of sustainable style to mainstream fashion events – namely and most impressively the Oscars. -- Ilwad Elman Ilwad (Elle) Elman runs the Elman Peace and Human Rights Centre in Mogadishu with her mother, Fartun. Her father was an ardent peace activist in the 1990s, spreading the mantra "Put down the gun, pick up the pen" around Somalia. He was assassinated in 1996. Elle returned to Mogadishu three years ago while the conflict still raged on in the city. She works closely with victims of rape and sexual assault, as well as rehabilitating child soldiers by teaching them vocational skills. -- Audience: Coalition 45%, ALP 31%, Greens 14%. NOTHING LIKE A DAME Tim Collier asked: Australia has developed a proud multicultural identity, with 1 in 3 people born overseas, including many from non-British backgrounds. After their abolition 28 years ago, do Imperial Honours – the return of knights and dames - really have a place in modern Australia? RIGHT TO BE A BIGOT Robert Maynard asked via video: Tim Wilson's comments to ‘The Age’ this weekend, calling it 'bizarre' that racial terms may be used freely within communities of colour, but not by white people(!), and claiming that free use of the n-word would restore equality, revealed a breathtaking lack of basic comprehension, that words may carry different meaning depending on the speaker, akin to not understanding that knives can both stab and butter bread. RIGHT TO BE A BIGOT Frank Lavorico asked via video: Mr. Wilson, if the Government changes 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, will the Human Rights Commission change its educational messaging to say that "Bigotry is acceptable in Australia! You can offend, insult, humiliate anyone you like as long as you do not vilify or intimidate!”? Will this not create a new generation of bigots? FREE SPEECH BEST MEDICINE Peter Connell asked: My question is in support of free speech being the best medicine for the bigotry disease. How can the issue be discussed if a person's words (for or against the issue) are forbidden to be used? SRI LANKA HUMAN RIGHTS Iyngaran Selvaratnam asked via video: Last week the UN Human Rights Council finally approved an independent investigation 5 years after the final months of the civil war in Sri Lanka during which up to 70,000 predominantly Tamil civilians are thought to have died. This was in the face of mounting evidence that many of these deaths were likely as a result of human rights abuses and war crimes committed by both sides including the Sri Lankan government's armed forces. What does it say about our own government that has done nothing but openly praise the current Sri Lankan regime and gone to the extent of gifting them with Navy patrol vessels to help stop the boats to Australia? EGYPTIAN DEATH SENTENCES Kevin Brennan asked: Mona, how in a civilised country like Egypt, an Egyptian judicial system can possibly get away with sentencing over 500 people to death because they were Muslim Brotherhood members in a country that is 80-90% Muslim. This is surely just political tyranny is it not? EGYPT, MORSI & MONA Hossameldin Ibrahim asked: After the worst human rights violations in Egypt since the July military coup and with more than 3000 dead, can you now admit that you have made a huge mistake in working against a freely elected president that protected freedom of speech and freedom of expression during his one year in office? AUSTRALIA HUMAN RIGHTS Laura McManus asked: Over the weekend Prime Minister Tony Abbott celebrated 100 days of having stopped the boats. However, just a few weeks ago the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said the recent violence on Manus Island underscores the need to review resettlement arrangements with PNG and Nauru. In her speech Dr Pillay mentioned Australia among other serious rights violators including Sri Lanka, Syria and the Ukraine. Tim Wilson, is it not of utmost concern and an embarrassment that Australia is now known worldwide as a human rights offender and that our government is normalising human rights violations? PACIFIC SOLUTION Andrew Wilson asked: The death at Manus Island was a tragedy. People are obviously desperate when they've paid thousands to people smugglers and have no hope of coming here. Yet why did the ABC show no similar outrage for the thousands of deaths caused by the dismantling of The Pacific Solution? FOLLOW UP - PACIFIC SOLUTION An audience member asked: If people know the countries quota will they stop coming after it has been reached? We can take more people but we will always get to a point where a quota has been reached? FOLLOW UP - AUSTRALIAN HUMAN RIGHTS Laura McManus also asked: Tim, The Australian Human Rights Commission doesn’t have access to Manus or Naru, do you think this is of concern?