Rape, torture, Nazis, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, World War I, World War II, Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, Dresden, Tokyo, Nanking, The Dirty War in Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, Cambodia, The Cultural Revolution in China, Armenia, Mylai, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Pinochet, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy assassinated, Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King assassinated, anti-war Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy assassinated, Malcolm X assassinated.

That was the 20th Century.

This is the 21st Century.

It started off with 9/11. Will it end with a whimper and the mother of all mushroom clouds? Not if the human rights movement, the worldwide effort to establish a just and peaceful world order, achieves its goal.

That is why the best universities in the world are establishing human rights and conflict resolution programs. And that is why here at the University of Massachusetts Boston the University of Massachusetts Boston Human Rights Working (UMBHRWG) group was formed.

You can find out more about the UMBHRWG by coming to our next meeting on Friday, January 21st from 12:30 to 2:30 in the Chiapas room on the fourth floor of Wheatley (W4-138) or by visiting our web site or both. To get to our web site go to the University of Massachusetts Boston’s home page (www.umb.edu), scroll down to the shortcuts and click on human rights.

The UMBHRWG is composed of students, faculty and staff at the University of Massachusetts Boston and human rights activists from the surrounding community. Its goal is to establish a human rights center at UMB which will administer an undergraduate human rights program, develop and manage a human rights web page, organize human rights forums and conferences, and engage in other human rights activities.

Already it has organized four well attended human rights forums at UMB, begun developing a human rights curriculum, established a web site, and assumed responsibility for a weekly Human Rights and Human Wrongs column in The Mass Media (of which this article is one example).

Now it is in the process of organizing an all day conference in May on the effect the war on terrorism has had on human rights in the United States. One of the major topics that will be discussed at the meeting on Friday, therefore, will be the form that conference should take and the issues it should address.

Recently, the University of Massachusetts has felt the impact of the war on terrorism directly when University of Massachusetts Amherst economics professor M.J. Alhabeeb, was confronted by government agents. Many regarded the questioning of Professor Alhabeeb which took place in his office on campus as an attempt to intimidate the academic community into muting opposition to and curtailing discussion of the Bush administration’s policies. Furthermore, many viewed the government’s action in singling out Professor Alhabeeb for questioning as an example of how the rights of anti war activists and Arab Americans are being systematically violated in a campaign which has been likened to the effort to destroy the lives and reputations of progressives in the McCarthy era or imprison Japanese Americans during World War II. Professor Alhabeeb is from Iraq.

“Under the guise of the national security,” says the American Civil Liberties Union, “Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Bush Administrationgranted themselves awealth of new powers, unleashed the full fury of the Justice Department on new immigrants, set up a vast new domestic spy network, and sought to interrogate 8,000 people on little or no evidence of wrongdoing.” Hence, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights, “with each passing day it becomes increasing clear that our civil liberties are being shredded under the guise of fighting the war against terrorism.” In addition there is alarming evidence that suspected terrorists arrested by U.S. authorities have been tortured and that the merits of using torture to acquire information from prisoners is being considered by government officials. The Washington Post, for example, quoted one U.S. agent responsible for supervising accused terrorists as saying, “if you don’t violate someone’s human rights some of the time, you probably aren’t doing your job (“US turns to torture to crack prisoners of war,” by Dana Priest and Barton Gellman, Washington Post, December 27, 2002).”

Whether human rights have been violated in the war against terrorism and if so what should be done about it are, then among the issues that will be addressed in the UMBHRWG’s conference in May. Anyone interested in helping to organize the conference or in any of the UMBHRWG many other activities is encouraged to come to the meeting on Friday, January 31 from 12:30 to 2:30 in W4-138 or to contact us at [email protected].