The Future of the Human Rights Movement

What's the next phase of the human right's movement?

I have no idea. I am sure there are people out there have some idea. I think that it would be useful, and this has been attempted many times, to get upstream and to not be exhuming the graves after these atrocities have happened, Stover but to understand what can be done quickly to prevent periods of mass violence. I think clearly the need to change laws, national laws, to better enforce human rights.

Any time you start seeing, in any country, arrests of journalists and [lack of] open press and freedom [of expression], then you want to start getting worried. So start looking at how can you enforce and uphold the freedom of expression and so on. This is the canary in the mine-shaft that lets you know that worse things are to come once you start closing down the press. So I would definitely say freedom of expression. I think the Internet is going to play a big role in countries like China, getting information that people normally wouldn't have access to. That will be a very important area.

How would you tell students to prepare for work as a professional in the human rights field?

Well, probably don't do what I did. Don't have a misspent youth. It's not the same these days. It's a lot harder to get involved in human rights work. I think there are a number of things students cand o to prepare for this kind of work: one is definitely learn languages. A key thing is to learn to be focused. Immerse yourself. Set goals to get involved in the aspect that interests you, and stick to it. I think it's particularly important to get a medical degree and a law degree. Social scientists and anthropologists have a lot to offer, especially in increasing our understanding of the root causes of human rights violations. In fact, here on the Berkeley campus, growing numbers of social science students are doing dissertation topics related to human rights. I think this is very encouraging.

So Eric, what is your view of man and good and evil after all of this work? I guess you've started as an absurdist, have you ended up there?

I'm still an absurdist. I don't know if my opinion has changed at all. I think it's part of the process. You do the work. You document. I'm not optimistic, I'd rather say I'm hopeful. It's not all a dismal picture out there. There have been immense changes in Latin America in the past fifteen to twenty years. And that was done by groups of people coming together, like the Madres de Plazo de Mayo, and the Vicaria de Solaridad in Chile, and doing so at great risk to themselves. So I remain hopeful. And I think that as long as that effort continues, there is some kind of hope.

What moments are the most rewarding for you? Is it the face of a person when you've helped locate their lost one? Or is it on the grander scale when some piece of legislation or a criminal court is established?

I think it's small and it's large. The small part was watching a eleven-year-old girl in Argentina who had been abducted along with her parents. Her parents were killed. The actual abductor was a police chief, and had Mafia ties and so on, and this little girl was finally located living with this police chief. We located her biological grandparents and some of her aunts and uncles. And through the DNA testing, she was reunited. To be there at the moment when she was reunited with her grandparents was very important to see. It is also rewarding to watch the extradition struggle over Pinochet and to see that international law has finally come to a point where judges are willing to stand up and say that dictators need to account for actions -- these are important developments. But still keeping in mind that there is a lot more to do in the process.

In all of this you have to continue to believe in yourself and that there may be some small victories along the way.

Maybe you fool yourself by believing in yourself, but yeah. You have collaborations with other like-minded people, and that's what keeps you going.

Eric, thank you very much for taking time to be with us today and thank you very much for joining us with this Conversation with History.

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