HMD 2012

Every year on 27 January, the world marks Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD). This day provides an opportunity for everyone to learn lessons from the Holocaust, Nazi persecution and subsequent genocides and apply them to the present day to create a safer, better future. On HMD we share the memory of the millions who have been murdered in the Holocaust and subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur in order to challenge hatred and persecution all over the world. On Holocaust Memorial Day 2012, people across the world will be choosing to make their voice heard by taking inspiration from the past and challenging the language of hatred, carefully considering how to use our voice and telling others how we feel in a way that does not harm or offend, whether speaking, online or in writing.

First they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me

(Pastor Martin Niemoller)

50 years of Amnesty International

"Open your newspaper any day of the week and you will find the news that somewhere in the world someone is imprisoned, tortured or killed because his/her opinions or religion are unacceptable to his/her government." So began an article published on May 28, 1961 on the London newspaper The Observer, written by the London lawyer Peter Benenson after hearing that two Portuguese students had been sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment for raising their glasses in a toast to freedom. "The newspaper readers feel a sickening sense of impotence. But if these feelings of disgust all over the world could be united into a common action, something effective could be done. "

Started with this article and based on the campaign for forgotten prisoners that followed, Amnesty International was created in 1961.

Since then and for all these 50 years, many campaigns have followed, for the forgotten prisoners, against the death penalty, to the more current " I demand dignity." There are many actions, and many results obtained in half a century of work.

Hundreds of thousands of people have found freedom, or have had their lives saved thanks to an appeal. Several international standards, such as the UN Optional Protocol on Child Soldiers and the Convention on Enforced Disappearances have been developed with the help of Amnesty International. Amnesty International’s mobilization has opened the way for establishing the International Criminal Court.

Years of intense campaigns, together with prestigious allies, have prompted the UN to commit to a treaty regulating the arms trade, to prevent falling into the hands of regimes that violate human rights. While country after country, the world decided to put an end to executions, Amnesty International has been the focus of the coalition that convinced the UN to approve a global moratorium on the death penalty.

Together with the campaigns, including many mobilizations, from world tour Human Rights Now! in 1988, with artists like Peter Gabriel, Sting and Bruce Springsteen to Palamnesty set up by the Italian Section in 1998 opposite the headquarters of the UN Diplomatic Conference on the International Criminal Court.

However, words such as poverty, insecurity, deprivation, exclusion, discrimination, violence, torture, death penalty, arbitrary detention, unfair trials are still current. Until they become obsolete words, Amnesty International will continue to call on governments to respect human rights, to end the violations.

More than just a Game

While everyone knows of Nelson Mandela's incarceration on Robben Island, what is not so well known is how football helped the players to survive there. Mandela was barred from taking part, but current South African leader Jacob Zuma was involved.

The Makana Football Association, the jail’s league, came into being on Robben Island in 1966. Starting in December 1964, every week a prisoner, a different one every time, as punishments often followed such impunity, would make an official request to be allowed to play football and every week for three years, the prison warder would refuse.

Then, one day the authorities relented, figuring that the prisoners would have little energy after their hard work and would soon tire themselves out.The opposite happened. The inmates threw themselves into football and everything to do with it. Everything was organized; a copy of FIFA’s rule handbook, was, along with Karl Marx’s Das Kapital the most popular book in the prison library. Every result was recorded as were every yellow and red card and every disciplinary action. Referees were examined and players were registered, official letters were exchanged.


Fishing nets became nets of another kind at weekends as a league began to take shape. Most of the teams formed followed membership of the different political organizations in the prison. The Pan- African Congress and the African National Congress had their differences off the pitch but the game of football had them co-operating and working together, a lesson, if one may be so trite, for the future governance of the country as a whole.

But there was one team that was open to anyone and didn’t care which faction you belonged to as long as you had what it took on the dusty pitch - which Mandela could watch through the bars until the authorities blocked the view by building a wall to stop players passing messages to him. Manong FC drew its ranks from all walks of prison life and prospered because of that fact. Manong won eight out of nine titles and even featured current South African President Jacob Zuma.

Robben Island's football association has been written about in the book ‘More than Just a Game’ by Prof. Chuck Korr and Marvin Close, which was also turned into a movie.

So if you are already fed up with the World Cup, forget all the hype around it, all the money spent and wasted around it and for a moment think of the pride of the people of South Africa who, only a few years ago, would have never dreamt to be free to host an international event of this kind and remember that no other sport can bring so many people together as football.

In April 2007, Makana FA was awarded with the honorary FIFA membership. Makana FA was established during the dark years of Apartheid by prisoners incarcerated on Robben Island.

Tear Down the Wall

(Checkpoint Charlie now)

I was already studying in Germany when Ronald Reagan made his famous speech in Berlin, on the Western side of the Brandenburg Gate (for years the city's symbolic dividing line) on the occasion of the city's 750th birthday urging the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall”. It seemed just as utipic at the time as it had been the idea of walking on the moon before 1969. I had stood many times in front (or behind) the Brandenburg Gate wondering what it would have been like if the two Berlins had finally come together.

I had crossed the borders at Checkpoint Charlie or at Berlin Friedrichstrasse many times to meet an East Berlin author I was writing my dissertation about. The contrast between West and East Berlin had always seemed huge to me. Walking the few meters into the East side was like walking through a time machine, like leaving the modern age behind and stepping into the past. The contrast was striking, almost unbelievable. I used to “smuggle” writing paper over the border. Can you imagine? A rather famous writer who couldn’t find writing paper and was forced to write on pieces of scrap paper. But that was only a small need compared to what every Berliner felt every day. Like open-air prisoners.

(Irgendwann fällt jede Mauer. Eventually every wall falls)

Twenty years have passed since that night when the wall was brought down. I wasn’t in Berlin that night, but about 100 miles away and when the TV images started showing I couldn’t believe my eyes. The impossible dream had come true. All of a sudden thousands and thousands of East Germans finally could move freely in the “other” Germany and I hoped that one of my East Berliner friends could also come over. He wanted so much to see Italy and especially Venice. But the year before that November 1989 he had been caught by the border police while hiding in the boot of a French car somewhere in Hungary.



Last time his family and friends heard from him he was stuck in a prison in East Berlin. When the wall fell and the political dissidents were freed he wasn’t there. Nobody knew where he was. No papers about him could be found, it was as he had never been there. And nobody knows where he is now. I still hope he’s somewhere travelling around the world as he always wanted to do.

That’s why I’d like to dedicate this memorable day to you, lieber Karsten, wherever you are. I hope you've finally found your freedom.