October 19, 1999

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Human Rights First Honors Five Human Rights Defenders at
1999 Human Rights Award Dinner

New York —This evening Human Rights First celebrated more than 20 years of protecting human rights defenders at their 1999 Human Rights Award Dinner by honoring five lawyers and advocates who have risked their own lives to defend the rights of others. The honorees are Hina Jilani and Asma Jahangir of Pakistan, José Zalaquett of Chile, and Natasha Kandic of the former Yugoslavia. Ms. Kadic also accepted a posthumous award on behalf of slain Albanian Kosovar lawyer Bajram Kelmendi.

Tom Brokaw, NBC news anchor, was the evening’s master of ceremonies. The presenters Kerry Kennedy, Sigourney Weaver, and William D. Zabel spoke about the importance of the honorees’ work within their countries and around the world. Almost 800 people attended the dinner at Chelsea Piers, including prominent members of the legal community, corporate leaders, policy makers, and human rights advocates.

"The U.S. rights tradition took decades before it began to take shape with the contributions of men and women like Thurgood Marshall, who used the law and courts to see the actualization of guaranteed rights. This is being replicated around the world with individuals like this year’s honorees," said Michael Posner, Executive Director for Human Rights First . "These people are the heroes in their own time, and in their own countries. They are people who have both taken enormous risks, and are pushing their own societies to promote the rule of law, to protect human rights, and to provide basic fairness to their own people."

• Hina Jilani and her sister Asma Jahangir, through defending the rights of women, children, and religious minorities, using domestic laws and international human rights standards, have taken on the norms laid out in Pakistan. Despite repeated death threats the two created the Women’s Legal Aid Cell to offer paralegal training and eventually opened a shelter that has provided legal aid and shelter to more than 1,400 women. In 1986, the two sisters also founded the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, which has been in the forefront of every major human rights effort in Pakistan. Ms. Jahangir is also UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary and Arbitrary Executions.

• José Zalaquett was an instrumental voice for victims and their families during the Chilean Pinochet regime, when they had nowhere to turn. Jailed twice and eventually exiled, the lawyer emerged again with Amnesty International, as a moral and intellectual leader of the growing worldwide movement demanding accountability for past human rights violations. Zalaquett eventually returned to Chile and sat on the Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, which documented some 2,300 killings and disappearances.

• Natasa Kandic, director of the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade, did the seemingly impossible during the war in Kosovo, traveling back and forth between Belgrade and the shattered province, and providing a lifeline of information to the outside world about massive violations being committed by police and Yugoslav Army troops. Kandic continues her work, urging fellow Serbs to acknowledge the truth about the atrocities that were committed in their name. She is also busy documenting and denouncing revenge killings by Albanians, and criticizing the failure of the UN Mission in Kosovo to speed up access to legal representation by detainees, what ever their ethnic origin.

• Bajram Kelemendi, who was Kosovo’s leading human rights lawyer, was well known in Europe for his courageous defense of critics of the Milosevic government, and victims of Serbian violence. He was abducted by police and killed on the first night of NATO bombings March 25, 1999.

In closing, Executive Director Michael Posner called on those in the audience to reinforce the work being done by human rights defenders around the world. "These are people who need a lifeline when they are in personal jeopardy. They need our support. They’re taking chances and their ability to be effective depends on us."