Injustice may pain the body, mind and heart, but the soul shall heal all of these. Indifference—to not care, to just stand by, to look away—this bleaches the soul entirely and justice disappears, leaving the rest as invisible. W. Santiago

 
We memorialize this year’s human rights effort on behalf of Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist who was shot dead in October of 2006 in Moscow. Politkovskaya had planned to file a lengthy story on torture practices believed to be used by Chechen security detachments loyal to pro-Moscow state officials. Politkovskaya tirelessly chronicled human rights in Chechnya and elsewhere in Russia's North Caucasus, and published a book called A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches From Chechnya, which painted a picture of brutal war in which thousands of innocent citizens had been tortured, abducted or killed at the hands of Chechen or federal authorities. One of her investigations was about the massacre of children at Beslan.

 

The killing, torturing and imprisoning of journalists contribute to the inevitable erosion of freedom of speech and expression, which are protected in the USA by the First Amendment, and internationally, by Article 19 of The Declaration of Human Rights. Unfortunately these are violated regularly throughout many parts of the globe and even right here in the United States.

 

Since 1989 the James Joyce Ramble added to its mission the effort to make people aware of human rights. We have petitioned on behalf of such writers as Vaclav Havel, Xu Wenli, Aung and several others. Our focus continues to be on journalists, whose safety all over the world has become a great concern for those who believe in and practice democracy.

 

We dedicate this year’s race to Serkalem Fasil, 26, one of many journalists who, along with entire newspaper publishing companies, political parties, leaders of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD), various human rights defenders are being tried for "treason" in Ethiopia.  The European Union had called for release of the defendants and is concerned about the fairness of trial and violates Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The trial contradicts guarantees of media freedom in the Ethiopian Constitution, as well as in the International Covenant on Civil an Political Rights and the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, both of which Ethiopia has ratified.

 
Pregnant when arrested, Fasil has given birth in prison. Her partner, Eskinder Negga, is jailed in a different prison, notorious for its name—“the end of the world.”

 
Human rights advocates consider the CUD leaders prisoners of conscience who have not used or advocated violence and calls for the immediate and unconditional release of Serkalem Fasil and other prisoners of conscience; for fair trial for all her co-defendants and for exclusion of the death penalty as a possible sentence; assurances that defendants are treated humanely; and that any allegations of torture or ill treatment are investigated independently and impartially.