Rewarding human rights defenders in the front line: Interview with Hans Thoolen, Executive Chairman of the Martin Ennals Foundation

On the 7th of April, the Martin Ennals Award of 2004 is handed over to Ms. Lida Yusupova, one of the very few human rights activists continuing to report on the challenging and dire situation in Chechenya. RWI has met with the Executive Chairman of the Martin Ennals Foundation, Hans Thoolen, who describes the history of this particular human rights award dedicated to outstanding human rights defenders.

Who was Martin Ennals? In what way does the MEA differ from other human rights awards? In what state of affairs is the current non-governmental human rights movement? A church with a lots of priests and no believers? This is a sample of the questions Mr Thoolen will address to you in this interview.

The Martin Ennals Awards (MEA) – http://www.martinennalsaward.org – was established in 1993 to honur ‘someone who has demonstrated an exceptional record of combating human rights violations by courageous and innovative means. Could you briefly account for the background of the establishment of the MEA and how the Award has developed throughout the years?

As often, it started of the spur of the moment. When Martin Ennals died in 1991, a number of friends and colleagues who knew and admired him decided to create an award in his name. Quite soon we discovered that a name, even a name of such importance as the one of Martin Ennals, is one thing, but you need a sharp focus for an award. We decided to focus on human rights defenders. I realise that there are many people who devote their lives to human rights through research and lobbying and this is extremely important, but this award is dedicated to people who basically risk their life, limb and freedom in doing human rights work. The MEA is an award for people in the front line. This is the first development that gave us our focus.

The second development came a bit later. We then realised that the board of the foundation which is running everything has to be separated from the jury. The jury, in its turn, which decides who is awarded the MEA, should have an independent existence and be broadly representative of the whole human rights movement. Half way through our existence, we changed our constitution and created a separate jury and the board no longer decides on the winning candidate. The jury today is composed of the following 10 human rights organizations: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, International Service for Human Rights, International Alert, International Federation for Human Rights, Defence for Children International, World Organization against Torture, Human Rights Desk Diakonie Germany, HURIDOCS and the International Commission of Jurists.

Martin Ennals was the first Secretary-General of Amnesty International. He was an extraordinary person devoting his entire life to the protection and promotion of human rights. Still, Martin Ennals is not widely known to the general public. In your view, why is that?

Sure, Martin Ennals is not widely known. I would say that even people in his own organisations, or in the ones he helped to establish, have no longer any idea of who he was. This has many explanations, of course. One of them is that generally in the human rights movement, memories are not very deep. You try to accomplish things while you are not very concerned of how things were done 10-20 years ago. This means that people who were crucial figues in the human rights movement have not been given the same recognition as in politics or in military history. The second reason is that Martin Ennals had a certain mode style, which is – or should be – characteristic to the human rights movement. An illustration is that when Amnesty International was given the Nobel Peace prize at the time when Martin was Secretary-General, he sent a victim of human rights violations to receive the award and did not go as Secretary-General himself. The implication is that there is little footage on Martin. We have made a film on his life and one of the main obstacles in that endeavour was to find images. Even Amnesty had very little film footage of the man who was its own Secretary-General for twelve years.

Although there is a lack of name recognition for Martin Ennals, we do know that he had a crucial role in the whole human rights movement. Not only did he create Amnesty International, but he played a very important role in the creation and establishment of other human rights organisations. Together with Martin, I was involved in setting up HURIDOCS, a network for human rights information and implementation. Together with Martin, we also worked on setting up International Alert, an organisation dealing with conflict resolution. Martin always joked that he started his life with working in Amnesty International, abbreviated AI, and he finished his life by working in International Alert, abbreviated IA. But he was also as a much more modest active member, involved in setting up organisations such as World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), International Service for Human Rights and Defence for Children International.

Martin had a very broad understanding of the concept of human rights, but believed that to act it was better to have a clear, narrow mandate. His answer was often that he did certain things in Amnesty and other things in other organisations. A second rule of Martin’s, and which I believe can be a lesson for others, is that you yourself and only then you can engage others.

What was his main driving force you think?

Human rights are worth a tremendous amount of energy and are worth fighting for; what was striking with Martin was this ultimate, total devotion. He wrote very little, but he was a very gifted speaker. When everybody was tired, angry and confused, he was able to set out clearly, in simple terms, what was the case and what action was needed to be taken. He was able to influence the whole direction of a meeting by simply this capacity of being so clear and dedicated. Martin was always one step ahead: even when a night meeting had finished at a very late hour and Martin would be the last person with a glass of wine in his hand, the following morning he would be standing by the oven making breakfast for everybody! He would then give you a copy of the minutes of the meeting he had typed during the night … I don’t know when he slept!

Is there a Martin Ennals of today?

I would be reluctant to mention anyone with the same influence in the non-governmental human rights movement. Firstly, because the movement has become so much bigger than in those days and secondly, because it would be unfair to compare Martin Ennals after a whole life with people who might just have started. But I think somebody with a similar reputation, influence and admiration in the non-governmental human rights movement would be my compatriot Theo van Boven. He has a similar capacity to be very true to himself, very dedicated and sharp on human rights. He can be very pursuasive but remains very principled and would never compromise on the hard core of human rights.

This year, the Martin Ennals Award goes to human rights activit Lida Yusupova, running the Grozny office of the Moscow-based human rights organisation Memorial. What made her the winning candidate? How does the MEA judge the human rights achievements of the suggested candidates?

We will certainly make more known of what Lida Yusupova is doing. The deliberations of the jury are not public record, but I can tell you that we took almost an entire day to agree on the winner of this year. It was not easy as there were some other extremely good candidates. What the jury ultimately paid a lot of attention to was the fact that Lida Yusupova remains one of the last remaining monitors in Grozny. There are almost no human rights or humanitarian agencies, whether non-governmental or inter-governmental organisations, operating in Chechenya. Freedom of movement is highly restricted, we even had big problems getting film images of her work which demonstrated that it is clear that she is working under extremely tough working circumstances.

She continues to monitor human rights violations in a very internationally correct manner, asking the right questions, accompanying the victims to see the federal Russian army officials. If she is able to identify the possible culprits, she will help people to take cases to court. Lida also continues to lecture law at the University of Grozny, to the extent it is functions… Two years ago, the Russian army surrounded her office with tanks and cars. She wasn’t in and once she arrived she told them to go away instead of running away. This one incident is sufficient to give an image of the conditions in which she works and of her outstanding courage. This is something which influenced the jury: while she has the option of going back to the office in Moscow, she stays on in Grozny in an office with four other people. It is important to point out that she does not work for a Chechen human rights organisation but for Memorial, the best known Russian human righst organisation of today.

What was her reaction when she received the news of the award?

Her reaction was first of all one of great joy. Secondly, she made clear that she accepted the award in the name of her colleages in the office. Thirdly, she expressed as an immediate idea that this would give her a guarantee against further violence and make her safer. But to be on the very safe side, she moved out of the office on the day of the announcement, 5th of December 2003, and stayed in the neighbouring republic for a couple of days.

Did any of the members of the organisations constituting the Martin Ennals Foundation visit Grozny before deciding on the award?

Some of the organisations have had missions to the Chechen area, including Human Rights Watch in 2000 and OMCT more recently, but few missions have been undertaken partly because it is so dangerous there.

In which ways does the MEA differ from other human rights awards?

In many ways! But let me first mention the ways in which we do not differ from other human rights awards: in the sense that all awards aim at giving recognition to the person and this should not be underestimated. Such recognition means a lot an psychological level as human rights defenders are not necessarily heros in their home country, as they may represent unpopular cases and may even be unpopular in their own family. Secondly, even small amount of money can make a difference because so many human rights defenders operate in very diffiult conditions. 15,000 euros are not a lot, but it can still make a difference.

Ways in which we do differ is in particularily one respect: we focus on the protection of human rights defenders. Protection can only take place with publicity. Most of other awards will get publicity in the city or country where the award is issued, but that doesn’t necessarily provide protection. We tend to get a fair amount of publicity and thus protection in the country of origin of the award winner, partly because the human rights organisations constituting the membership of the jury obviously mean something to the media of that country.

In addition, since a few years, we have been able to get the award ceremony as part of a scheduled TV-programme which is then broadcast world-wide. The best example of how the broadcasting can result in personal protection is perhaps the case of Jaquiline Moudena from Chad, who won the award in 2002. She got three interviews as guest of honor in different TV-programmes in the week following the award. Those interviews were all seen in Chad and by the same persons of the government who had tried to kill her. When she returned home, the situation had changed dramatically and the security police was more concerned about the routing she was going to get back home than interested in arresting her. Even today she says that she feels much safer, because the price of attacking her is too high.

The Martin Ennals Foundation is a splendid example of cooperation among various international human rights NGOs. How would you explain the non-governmental human rights movement of today – its main features, challenges and shortcomings?

One feature of the modern human rights movement is that it has grown and developed so tremendously. Some of the growth has unfortunately, in my opinion, led to a fragmentation: there are many small organisations with sometimes a loss of energy, depending on the situation. There has been a specialisation, which is sometimes a bit overdone and a phenomenon of professionalisation. The latter phenomenon is certainly welcome as you need people with experience and knowledge inside the movement, but at the same time it is worrisome. In the eyes of an old activist, I fear that we are creating a church with a lot of priests and no believers. Human rights should not be only a profession. One of the reasons why I admire Amnesty is that in local Amnesty sections you find farmers, housewives, students and other activists who sacrifice their time and energy to human rights. The acceptance of human rights has certainly gone up: it is very interesting to note that when I started working in the Netherlands in the 70s, human rights were very controversial whereas refugees were seen in positive terms. Today it is almost the opposite.

My main worry is that the human rights movement may loose its attraction as a grassroot movement. This worry is reinforced when you see how the machinery of the UN takes so much energy, but is very much meant for the converted.

The second thing is that I’m not sure that the human rights movement as a whole has been able to catch up with information and media developments . When the human rights movement started to grow in the 1970s, the written word – publication – was the most important tool of communication. Today, most people recieve information from the television in the first place, secondly from the radio, thirdly from the press and only lastly from the internet. The human rights movement of today seems to find it really difficult to make an impact through radio and on television, especially being present on your own terms (like in a publications as opposed to be (mis)quoted in someone else’s newspaper). I realize that to make a professional audiovisual program would exceed the annual budget of many human rights NGOs. Still, the truth is that the most important tool to reach out is through TV. Once a TV programme has been made, then – unlike with the written word – the costs remain the same irrespective of the number of people you can reach. I really think that human rights organisations indivdidually or, if that is too expensive, jointly, should try to do that, but we have to get ourselves organised. The existing film footage on human rights should be identified and indexed and be made available to the media. If you have images, it is more likely that mass media will pay attention to you.

Don’t you think that there is no risk of commercializing human rights?

Yes, there is a risk, but it is a risk worth to be taken. I believe part of the problem is that most human rights people are, or see themselves as, intellectuals. Many intellectual elites, not only in Sweden but in other countries, do not watch TV a lot or even look down on TV because they believe so many television programmes are stupid and respond to the lowest common denominator. But, if you try to make programmes for a certain niche you don’t have to sell yourself.

Also it is a question of building the right contacts and finding the right format. We are Zig Zag Café Special Martin Ennals every year and that programme has its own reputation and standards, run by a very good and serious journalist who would never allow a downgrading of the programme

When producing the ceremony of the MEA, are you doing so with a certain target group in mind?

Not really, but we do know the normal audience to watch the programme Zig Zag Café (slightly better educated people, but not the converted) and the hour of broadcasting in Switzerland, but because the programme is also broadcast later on French TV 5 in all parts if the world, it is very difficult to determine who is watching that programme, say at ten o’clock in the morning in Asia. Also, we make a particular effort vis-à-vis the human rights community to announce the timing of the programme (e.g. the next one is broadcast on 14 April on TV5 Europe!), so in this respect we try to almost ‘create’ an audience.

What is need among human rights organisations is to gain better understanding and recognition of how human rights can be covered within in a TV-programme; including the idea that it is worth a lot of effort and money. When I do fund-raising for the MEA, I have to convince people and I often meet resistence. People ask me “What do you do? Only one TV-programme?” And I say "Yes, we have an organisation with one full-time staff member, and we work the whole year for only one goal: a 50-minutes long television programme". This is sometimes shocking to people, but those 50 minutes can be seen by 8 million people. My question to you is very simple: When did you reach 8 million people the last time?

You have a very interesting background in working for the protection and promotion for human rights. You were the first director of the Human Rights Institute in the Netherlands, SIM, you are one of the founders of HURIDOCS, and you have several years of work experience in the former Human Rights Center of the UN and UNHCR. If you could chose to be another founder of something, what would it be?

(no hesitation) Human Rights TV. Yes, that is an ideal which might never become true, but the future of television is very much comparable to what you have in the radio and press. The technology of today renders possible a “niche TV” where you can create theme-oriented programmes. In my opinion, the human rights movement is big enough to pave the way for a world-wide channel called “Human Rights TV”. On such a channel, for example, a large group of human rights organisations and perhaps the United Nations would together agree on the programme of Human Rights News. Such a news channel would announce news like: “Today Human Rights Watch completed its investigation in ….” with images, interviews and so forth. Human Rights TV would also show already existing human rights documentaries, perhaps organised by themes. Once a week you could have a Human Rights movie night. There is a lot of film footage available. Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch run human rights film festivals and they have libraries with hundreds of ‘human rights films’.

When do you envisage that I can turn on the first broadcasting of Human Rights TV?

2064…! I hope sooner than that. I really don’t know. It is just an ideal, when it will actually happen I am at a loss to tell you.

Interviewer: Katarina Månsson
Photos: Mikael Ohlsson