Andrew Stroehlein is the European media director at Human Rights Watch. His work is to spread the stories of brave men and women who stand up against injustice and repression in the states in which they live, thereby risking their lives and freedom. Most of them end up jailed, sometimes tortured, sometimes dead. In a recent article at Persuasion, he offers a catalogue of some less famous heroes:
• Ilham Tohti. China has many living heroes. Among them is Tohti, an ethnic Uyghur economist and critic of the government. In the face of the authorities’ abuses and discrimination against the Uyghur population in the Xinjiang region, Tohti has been a voice of reason and decency. ...
Stroehlein asks in some bewilderment, how do these women and men find the courage to walk into danger, to choose to put themselves under the power of forces who may well kill them? Some excerpts from what he has learned:• Ahmed Mansoor. A prominent human rights activist in the United Arab Emirates, Mansoor was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2018 on charges entirely related to his statements on fundamental rights. Yes: a decade in prison for nothing more than telling the truth. ...• Sônia Guajajara. The Brazilian activist has become a powerful force in the cause of indigenous and environmental rights, strongly opposing the government of the populist Jair Bolsonaro for its disastrous policies, which have contributed to rapid destruction of the Amazon. ...• Bobi Wine. The Ugandan musician and opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi, better known by his stage name Bobi Wine, had the audacity to challenge the five-term president, Yoweri Museveni, for the country’s top post—even though Museveni holds all the levers of state violence and his henchmen aren’t afraid to use them. ...•Anna Politkovskaya. She refused to stop reporting on abuses by Russian forces in the Second Chechen War and was poisoned on a plane in 2004 ... She survived the poisoning but was shot dead outside her apartment in 2006.• Alexei Navalny This opposition politician returned to Russia in January despite having been poisoned there. Many asked, “Why?” He knew he would be arrested and was soon sentenced to more than two years in prison.
It’s the simplicity of their message that makes these dissidents effective. ... what’s true of all of them is this: They can’t see it any other way. ... a dissident sees the irrational as a calling. And if what’s “rational” means social consensus, then these paths do look “irrational.” But for the dissidents, it’s the authorities who are irrational.
... The fact is that most dissidents don’t end up persuading their societies to change. Many dissidents face an awful fate that they could see coming. It’s not that they don’t care about their own life; it’s that they want to make their one life matter.
... We see dissidents’ bravery and vision as inspiring, but also incomprehensible. We struggle to understand what makes them choose such a dangerous path.
But that’s just it: We see it as a brave choice. They don’t see any choice at all.
My emphasis. Against lies occupying places of power, there is only truth. For some few, that knowledge is inescapable. That may be a kind of insanity. But where would we be without some humans carrying that terrible burden? The rest of us do our best.
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