Facebook Herald

May 15th is Bloggers Unite for Human Rights event in the blogsphere. The idea behind the event is to raise awareness of human rights issues around the world by using the collective force of those within the blogsphere get the word out in a way that only we can. We are urged to write about topics involving the breach of human rights the world over, and though I will touch upon a qualifying case, I will mostly be covering two Facebook apps that are designed to help.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights App:

A little background before we go into it. Sixty years ago this December the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document with thirty articles detailing the view of the General Assembly on the guaranteed rights of all people. UDHR was part of the International Bill of Human Rights which was ratified into international law in 1976.

What we are looking at app wise is simple, elegant, and meant to spread knowledge. This app will randomly display one of the thirty articles from the UDHR on your profile. It does this in the hopes of making you think about the articles and how they are being breached the world over. Clicking the app icon in the app column will give you the full list.

Above we have a screen shot of Article 19 from the UDHR. I chose this screen shot because I want to talk a little bit about Shi Tao, a Chinese reporter that was sentenced to ten years imprisonment for sending an e-mail in China. Of course, that is the spin line, there is more information than that to be had.

On April 20th 2004 the Chinese government issued document Number 11 that spoke to the concerns for continued political stability. The document asked reporters to not report on any action that may result from the then upcoming Tiananmen Square Protest 15th Anniversary. Shi Tao, who was working for a business news publication forwarded a brief of the document to an over seas pro-Chinese democracy website via his private Yahoo! e-mail address.

When the Chinese government found that the information had been leaked they demanded the personal information of the send from Yahoo!’s Hong Kong Office, which handed it right over. In short, the Chinese government confiscated Shi Toa’s computer and documents with out permitted and arrested him. A closed trial resulted in a ten year prison sentence, and a two year loss of political rights on the charges of leaking political secrets.

We can probably all agree that this just plain isn’t right. The Free Shi Tao App allows you to sign the Amnesty International Petition to free Shi Tao. It takes you to a form which will add your name to the growing list, though you will not be able to add your location if you live outside of Canada so I included mine in the spot for a personal message. It allows gives links to Amnesty’s letter writing campaign.

I think all countries, including the United States, needs to look at the thirty articles of the UDHR again and start acting like human beings. Human Rights issues effect us all and stand in the way of a truly global community.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights App can be found here.

The Free Shi Tao App can be found here.

I encourage you to seek out other blogs today to see what Human Rights issues they are covering.

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