Book Notes

Speak Truth to Power: Human Rights Defenders Who Are Changing Our World. By Kerry Kennedy Cuomo. New York: Crown Publishers, 2000. Pp. 256. $50.00, cloth.

Human rights lawyer and nun Digna Ochoa slipped by police guards at a military hospital in Mexico to acquire proof that a prisoner was being held incommunicado. Entering the prisoner’s room, she shouted at judicial police to force them to leave, buying herself two minutes in which to acquire proof that the prisoner was being held. When police tried to grab her on her way out, she assumed a karate position she had seen in movies, and the baffled police called for reinforcements to protect themselves from the dangerous nun. As they arrived, she recorded their statements about the “guy who was incommunicado” on tape recorder, then smuggled the cassette out of the hospital after security officers confiscated her tape recorder.

A coffee-table reference with portraits by Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Eddie Adams and interviews conducted by Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, Speak Truth to Power is a collection of fifty short profiles of courageous activists like Sister Ochoa from thirty-five countries who deal with a variety of human rights causes. Although several of the individuals profiled, like the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and Vaclav Havel, have achieved global stature, the majority are grass-roots activists. Among others, the book profiles Abubacar Sultan, an activist who worked to repatriate child soldiers in Mozambique, Ka Hsaw Wa, who documented atrocities conducted by Burmese military agents on behalf of a U.S. corporation, and Gabor Gambos an advocate for the mentally ill in Hungary. One of the profiles features “Anonymous,” a Sudanese activist teaching women’s rights whose identity was withheld for his or her safety. Anonymous is depicted on the cover with a hood and a hangman’s noose around his or her neck, underscoring the risk that many of the activists confront.

More than a collection of “war stories,” Kennedy Cuomo’s interviews delve into the psychological experience of the activists to understand why they undertake their work and how they persevere in the face of grave risk. Several activists said their initial experience of torture, rape, and imprisonment led them to their career. Others describe responding to an unmet need for protection of a specific class, such as Bruce Harris who works on behalf of street children in Guatemala. Still other practitioners viewed their work as arising from social responsibilities, such as Bishop Wissa of Egypt who in-

vestigated brutal interrogations of his parishioners and pushed to have the police officers involved prosecuted.

While the selection of activists reflects their exceptional achievements, the thesis of Speak Truth to Power is that each individual relies on common human beliefs and emotions to carry out his or her work. Kennedy Cuomo identifies three such common elements: religious or spiritual beliefs, righteous indignation, and a sense of humor. Although six of the activists are members of a structured religion, many of the remainder point to faith in a calling as a motivating factor for persevering. Many, like Ochoa, also describe righteous indignation at injustices they witnessed or experienced firsthand, as both a motivation to persevere and as a resource to be exploited. Kennedy Cuomo illustrates the role of humor in maintaining perspective with an anecdote from Harris, who joked about receiving a bulletproof vest “complete with a money-back guarantee.”

Along with a separate PBS video, an extensive Web site, and a traveling photographic exhibit, Speak Truth to Power is intended to serve as a pedagogical tool as well as a reference. As such, the three- to six-page interviews provide a concise presentation of the personalities of the activists, but only a peripheral treatment of the issues that they serve. For human rights practitioners, the value of the work is in promoting a broad culture that embraces several regions, diverse experiences, and alternate approaches to human rights. The inclusion of practitioners from several non-Western countries is a response to critical claims that human rights activists reflect Judeo-Christian or Western biases.

On October 19, 2001, Digna Ochoa was found murdered in her office in Mexico City along with a note threatening those working on human rights violations against Zapatista supporters. In the introduction, Kennedy Cuomo describes calling for an investigation into threats against Ochoa that arose shortly after her interview for the book in 1999 and demanding that Ochoa be protected by the Mexican legal system. Kennedy Cuomo notes the impossibility of measuring the success of such calls; in a sense, measuring their failure is all too easy, as governments and individuals continue in their attempts to silence those holding them accountable. By profiling Ochoa and the other fifty individuals, Speak Truth to Power succeeds as a testimony to the courage of activists around the world who refused to be silenced and as a tool to encourage others to take up their causes.

—Donovan Rinker-Morris

Copyright © 2002 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
Harvard Human Rights Journal / Vol. 15, Spring 2002