'cipicchia! » Amnesty International

Google un-censor China

ximilian — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:40:38 +0000

It seems Google finally discovered the hot water, and taken a new approach to China.
Well done! Yeah, as an activist at Amnesty International, and idealistic person, I’m very happy about this decision.
Of course, who dare to not be happy? But, reading twice this piece of news a question arises.
Where was Google in the past years? With its head under the sand? Maybe they were blind by the shining of waving things…
Human rights are denied all over the world. China is one of the top-most repressive free speech: people are tortured, the justice is unfair, there are arbitrary arrests and detentions.
Suddenly, Google is attacked by Chinese hacker and they discover that, maybe, something is wrong. Because of this accident, they are reconsidering their approach to China. Fine. “Not to be evil”, is your motto, and finally you understand that was bad bow your head for the Chinese money. Now, you have the opportunity to show to the world that the change is possible.
Please, do not stop by just this episode. Keep opening the Internet, everywhere. Keep the free speech, well, FREE!

And then, we will forgive you this late second thoughts…

China Trip

ximilian — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 22:32:02 +0000

Today is an amazing day: I bought a Lonely Planet China!

Yeah, just buy a book it is not a good reason to be happy, but it means that I’m planning to visit China.

Like every year, next July I will partecipate to the RoboCup competitions, and after a week of hard work I will take a small trip with my friends. Are you wondering where? But in China of course!

To be honest I’m a little bit worried about what Chinese government are doing: they are killing Tibetan monk manifesting for their freedom. I’m very upset about any human rights violation (I’m a member of Amnesty International).
China is not an exception. Moreover with the Olympic Games held in Beijing, it seemed that something should have changed. I guess China is loosing opportunity to change the world.

This trip will the occasion to explore a small part of an ancient culture, which nothing have to do with current Government. It is a pity that they have such a awful behavior.
I will go there for the ancient culture and not for what China is now. And I’m sure that chinese people are not the same. In the future I hope they will understand how to tolerate and respect life of human beings.

CatchImprò

ximilian — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 22:58:30 +0000

For those that don’t know what CatchImprò is, they want to read this (Italian here).
CatchImprò is the name of a kind of Improvisational theatre, that start played just last year in Italy.

Next Febrary 9th, a show will be hold in my hometown.
I’m an active member of local Amnesty International group (here you can find our website. Try to guess who is the webmaster ) and we organized such event related to Amnesty International Campaign to promote defense of Human Rights in China.

I was charged to design the poster of manifestation and here it is the result:

Click here to download the poster

It is not a masterpiece, and maybe it is too childish, but I like draw and I was happy to do it.
After a very long time I kept a promise

Beyond any reasonable doubt

ximilian — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 16:18:59 +0000

The forfeiture of life is too absolute, too irreversible, for one human being to inflict it on another, even when backed by legal process.
Let the states that still use the death penalty stay their hand lest in time to come they look back with remorse knowing it is too late to redeem their grievous mistake.

These words were pronounced by Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of United Nations the December 18th, 2000. 3,213,974 people signed the petition for a moratorium on the penalty death.
This year, on November, the General Assembly voted to back a resolution calling for a global moratorium on executions.

The effort of Amnesty International against the death penalty is great. But people seem to be reluctant up change their mind.

“What would you do if somebody kill your son? Or your sister? Your mom? Would you like to kill him? Forgive him?”

These are my favorite questions. People reply with anger to violent crimes, when some of their relatives are involved in crimes.
But anger is not an answer. Human beings are different from animals. We have a brain able to think over simple natural instincts. Criminal should be judged correctly, with cold blood, they should be rehabilitate, not just punished.
Death penalty is the most cruel, inhuman and demeaning punishment. It never proved to be an effective deterrent. It is used as gender discrimination, against poor, as political repression tool.
It is irreversible and can be inflicted to innocent.

These days a plot from the movie “Twelve Angry Men” is played in some Italian theater. Directed by Alessandro Gassman, son of well-known Vittorio, this plot tells about twelve men, members of a popular jury, called to judge about murderer. The suspect is the son of the victim.
Thorough the analysis of witnesses and evidence, they discuss the fate of the boy. All of them are for a guilty verdict. Just one has a “doubt”. The discussion develops through many different opinion, prejudices, repressed angers, will to revenge against a unlucky past. They discovered their souls and doubts, they find that is not possible to judge the boy guilty, “beyond any reasonable doubt”.

I was very impressed by the power of descriptions, the characterization of member, by their weakness and resentment, they want to go out the room, as soon as possible, without care much the destiny of the suspect. The only man against all these does not try to change their mind. He lets they think deeply on the consequence of their decisions, reflecting upon incongruence of evidences and witnesses, remembering that the life of an human being is on their hands.

It is not so simple to change common opinion and the work of volunteers like me or others, engaged in social activities, seems useless, like a single drop.
That’s true. But the sea is made by drops, isn’t it?