Affirmations of the Power of Just One

While working on this week’s batch of editorials--one about police encounters with the mentally ill, another touching on government responsibility for homeless drug addicts--I happened to meet some people who made me see these problems in an entirely different light.

They are six people who have dedicated their lives to working for human rights in places far more challenging than Ventura County: Argentina, Iran, Indonesia, Nigeria, Northern Ireland and Russia.

If they are able to make progress toward restoring civility, dignity and justice amid the bloody upheaval of such atrocity-haunted countries, surely we too can take some steps toward improving life for the poorest and weakest members of our own community.

I met these six heroes through the international nonprofit organization Human Rights Watch, which gathered them all in Los Angeles last week to be honored at an awards dinner. Their itinerary included a meeting with The Times’ editorial board, which occasionally hosts coffee-and-conversation sessions with newsmakers from all over the world--heads of state, religious leaders, military chiefs, authors, artists and others. Sometimes these opportunities are tempting enough to lure me away from my Ventura County beat to spend a few hours in downtown L.A. This was one of those occasions.

I heard:

* Mercedes Doretti describe how her team of forensic anthropologists uses scientific methods to locate and identify the remains of people who were “disappeared” during Argentina’s “dirty war” of 1976-’83 and return them to the victims’ families. Even now, 15 years later, thousands remain unaccounted for. “When they can finally bury their loved ones,” she said, “in a way it is the end of their anguish.”

* Shirin Ebadi tell of her efforts to improve the lot of women and children in her native Iran. A lawyer and former judge, she founded an organization that successfully pushed a law giving child custody to a woman if the father is proved to be an unfit parent. (Previously, mothers had no legal claim at all for custody of boys older than 2 or girls older than 7.) Now her organization is working to raise the minimum age for marriage from 9 for girls and 14 for boys to 18 for both.

* Hendardi, an Indonesian activist, describe efforts to establish accountability for abuses under the now-ended regime of President Suharto and to ensure that things will be better under the new government of B. J. Habibie.

* Clement Nwankwo, a lawyer from Nigeria, recount more than a decade of challenges to one of Africa’s most brutal dictatorships. His organization has campaigned for such issues as the right to bail, freedom of expression and fair administration of justice.

* Martin O’Brien describe the movement for peace in Northern Ireland, in which he has participated since he was 12. “When they started drawing up the peace accord, it seemed to us they were not addressing the fundamental issues of justice and fairness that had been at the heart of the conflict,” he said. Through the efforts of several organizations with which O’Brien is involved, the accord was refocused toward resolving the causes of the conflict and not merely minimizing the effects.

* Marina Pisklakova tell of her efforts to change the place of domestic violence as an accepted, even expected, part of the culture of her native Russia, a country that records 3,500 domestic homicides each year. “Tragedies that take place behind the closed door of an apartment, unlike street brawls, don’t make it into the newspapers, but they are no less frightening for that,” she said. “There is the humiliated, mutilated woman; the neglected, terrified children and the husband whose constant guilt doesn’t make him any less dangerous to those around him.” Pisklakova founded Russia’s first domestic violence hotline and has launched a related campaign against child abuse.

What can we in Ventura County learn from these six people, each of whom has defied death threats and personal hardship in the course of working to stamp out injustice and abuse in her or his country?

Simply that one person can make a difference. That there is an alternative to meekly accepting unfairness and injustice--whether at the hands of a drunk husband or of a brutal military dictatorship. That all people have a basic right to live in peace and with dignity, no matter what their circumstances.

If people like these can risk so much to stand up for these truths in situations far more dangerous than our own, we surely owe it to our consciences, our children and our neighbors to do the same.