Activism Archives - Page 157 of 161

Beate Klarsfeld

Beate Auguste Klarsfeld is journalist who, with her husband, became famous for investigating and documenting Nazi war criminals, including Kurt Lischka, Alois Brunner, Klaus Barbie, Ernst Ehlers, Kurt Asche, among others. From the time she was about 14 years old, Beate began to frequently argue with her parents, because they did not feel responsible for the Nazi era, focused on the injustices and material losses they suffered, and blamed the Russians, expressing no sympathy for other countries. Moving to Paris in 1960, she was confronted with the consequences of the Holocaust. In 1963, she married French lawyer and historian Serge Klarsfeld, whose father was a victim of the Auschwitz concentration camp exterminations. Beate has said that her husband helped her become “a German of conscience and awareness”.

Alice Nkom

Alice Nkom is a Cameroonian lawyer, well known for her advocacy in decriminalizin homosexuality in Cameroon. She has been a lawyer in Douala (Cameroon’s largest city) since 1969 when, at age 24, she became the first black French-speaking woman called to the bar in Cameroon.

Nyimasata Sanneh-Bojang

Nyimasata Sanneh-Bojang was a Gambian politician and activist. She became the first woman to be elected to the Gambian National Assembly when she won the seat of Northern Kombo for the People’s Progressive Party in 1982.

Jemimah Gecaga

Jemimah Gecaga was the first woman to serve in the legislature of Kenya. In 1952, she founded Maendeleo Ya Wanawake, an organisation that continues to advocate for women’s rights and gender equity in Kenya to this day. In 1958, she was nominated to the Legislative Council in Kenya and became the first woman to serve in the country’s parliament of the country, serving until 1962. She later served as President of the YWCA in Kenya, lectured in home economics at Jeanes School (The Kenya School of Government) and worked as a director at Skyline Advertising. In 1969, she was again nominated as a member of parliament in 1969, serving until 1974.

Tatiana Rusesabagina

Tatiana Rusesabagina is a Rwandan humanitarian who, with her husband Paul Rusesabagina, helped protect 1,268 Hutu and Tutsi refugees in the Hotel des Milles Collines during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Their story was used as the basis for the 2004 film Hotel Rwanda. When Tatiana was working as a nurse, she had faced discrimination because of her Tutsi ethnicity, and her mother was murdered in the genocide along with other family members and their bodies were thrown into a pit with many others. Her father had forged all of her family’s identification cards to say that they were Hutu, but the militia had other ways of tracking Tutsis, which the Hutu people were killing in mass in an attempt to make the Tutsi extinct. The conflict between the two ethnic groups dates back centuries in Rwanda. Paul’s family was of mixed Hutu and Tutsi which meant he was less of a target than a full Tutsi.
Paul had Tatiana come to the hotel, which he managed, for safety with the children. He tried to smuggle them out of the country by hiding in a truck that would take them to the airport, but the militia figured out their plan. Tatiana was a target for brutal beatings because the militia knew that she was the Tutsi wife of the hotel manager. She narrowly escaped death and made it back to the hotel, where she was bed-ridden for several days because of her injuries. The people taking shelter in the hotel were all saved because of Rusesabagina’s careful diplomacy with the government, which included bribing them so they would not enter the hotel and harm anyone
Once they were able to leave the hotel, Paul and Tatiana went to a refugee camp to begin looking for family; they were reunited with Tatiana’s two nieces, who were starving and covered in dirt when they were found. The family escaped to Tanzania and later settled in Brussels, where they often received threats. Paul received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005, with Tatiana by his side. The family is still active as advocates for genocide survivors and for the betterment of the Tutsi people in Rwanda. They created the Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation in 2005, with a mission to “prevent future genocides and raise awareness of the need for a new truth and reconciliation process in Rwanda and the Great Lakes Region of Africa”.

Alejandra Melfo

Alejandra Melfo is a Venezuelan physicist, known for her efforts studying and conserving glaciers, especially the Humboldt Corona, the last glacier in Venezuela.

Tawakkol Karman

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Tawakkol Karman is a Yemeni journalist, politician, and human rights activist.

Ilse Stanley

Ilse (Intrator) Stanley was a German Jew who, working with a handful of people including Nazi Gestapo members of the Gestapo and other Jewish civilians, secured the release of 412 Jewish prisoners from Nazi concentration camps between 1936 and 1938, before the devastating events of Kristallnacht (November 9, 1938).

Teresa Villarreal

Teresa Villarreal González was a feminist, labor organizer, and political activist who supported the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) and the Mexican Revolution (1910–17). She and her sister Andrea published the feminist newspaper La Mujer Moderna (The Modern Woman) in 1910. That year, Teresa also established El Obrero: Periódico Independiente (The Worker: Liberal Newspaper) in San Antonio, Texas, and published articles that addressed issues of the working class and called for mass involvement in Mexican Revolution’s struggle for a democratic government. Along with economic, educational, and cultural improvements for the masses, she advocated for the emancipation of women.

Zlata Filipović

From 1991 to 1993, Zlata Filipović wrote in her diary, Mimmy, about the horrors of living through the siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War as a child. Later published as “Zlata’s Diary,” the book became a bestseller and elicited comparisons to the diary of Anne Frank.
Filipović and her family survived, escaping to Paris in 1993 with the help of the United Nations. She has lived in Dublin, Ireland since October 1995, where she has continued to write and work on films and as an international activist. In 2011, Filipović produced the short film Stand Up! for BeLonG To, an LGBTQ youth service organisation in Ireland. The film, advocating against homophobic bullying in schools, has been viewed more than 1.6 million times on YouTube.
Filipović served on the Executive Committee of Amnesty International Ireland from 2007 to 2013 and is a founding member of NYPAW (Network of Young People Affected by War). She has spoken at schools and universities around the world on the topic of children in conflict.