For freedom

Once upon a time there was Freedom.
My husband’s, Amin Abofetileh, 28 years old.
Mine.
That is, Kate Yang, just 20 years old.
We have tried so many times to ensure that our Freedom obtained the due certificate, but we have collected only excuses.
They say that, as refugees, we deserve to be treated for crimes against humanity.
Yet, Amin escaped from Iran in 2012 just to survive another persecution by his government.
We thought we were safe, here.
That's why we got married in 2016 on the island of Manus, in Papua New Guinea.
For us, for the love that unites us.
And for her, Freedom.
Or, Liberty.
Our daughter…

Kate and her daughter Liberty

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Universal declaration of human rights 70 years video

The 10th of December 2018 we will celebrate the 70th

Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Storytellers for Peace, an international network born in 2016, formed by storytellers who tell stories through clips, made a special one for this great occasion.
The artists, as much the tales, come from all over the world and speak about justice, equality, human rights and peace.

The project was created and is coordinated by Alessandro Ghebreigziabiher, author, playwright, storyteller and stage actor from Italy.
Human rights regard all of us, not only artists or activists.
That’s why, Storytellers for Peace have involved in their new video also colleagues, relatives, friends, or anyone else who wanted to join the work.
Because, more than ever today, we have to say that this wonderful Declaration is still the best words we have.
The 30 articles are told in their respective first language from 31 artists, educators, teachers, journalists, or just persons who care about human rights from all over the world (the video is subtitled in English):

Famine is a weapon

It is a bad story, this.
For how it started and, above all, because of the outcome.
It's an old one like the world itself, where someone wrote earth, you'd better read a planet at war.
However, like any storytelling that takes root in the viewer's imagination, convincing him that it is just another fairy tale he should get used to, it also meets the rules of box office success.
An evocative title: Famine is a weapon.
A simple and immediate synopsis, already used, but that’s why it’s a winning one: the usual powerful nations, as Great Britain and United States, sell weapons to the umpteenth brutal coalition, this time led by Saudi Arabia.
A plot that unfolds in a predictable, but linear way, according to the inhumane, modern logic: eighty-five thousand children have died since 2015 and at least five million are at risk of doing the same death because of the most effective weapon of mass destruction in history.
Hunger used like a weapon, yes its, exactly like the title.
Hence the final moral of this filthy feature movie: where the bombs will not be enough, starvation will defeat Yemen.
Yet, there is still time to get up from our comfortable armchairs, turn on the lights and stop this damn film...

How to help:
Save the Children

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The right words

Once upon a time the US mission to the United Nation and its desire to eliminate the word “gender” from UN human rights documents.
Once upon a time, indeed, the aim to replace it with “woman”, seemingly a consequence of Trump’s plan to erase transgender lives on earth.
So, once upon a time the right words for the neofascist dictionary.
Where you might say good citizen, you should think about white and rich men.
And where you could imagine a criminal and poor guy, you must see an immigrant or just a man with African origin.
Where you want to figure out a normal family, you have to draw a whole blond group of smiling dad and mom, sons and a black maid, if you need it too.
And where you need to consider a perfect contrary example, you just have to change the color of the skin and the quality of the neighborhood.
Where you'll say peace mission, it will mean war, and while you'll hear screaming war, it will be so, but it will too late for running out of the nightmare.
Because every dictatorship, strong or soft it might be - like today is, it needs leaders and soldiers, but it should also know how to spread the usual, old and new right words... 

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Willy Toledo freedom of speech

Once upon a time a man.
Or whoever he might be.
Once upon a time Guillermo Toledo.
Or whatever his name could be.
Once upon a time a Spanish actor.
Or whatever his choice to express life would be.
He has got the natural freedom of speech.
His freedom is ours.
His losing freedom is ours too.
Even if he happens to offend your personal gods, with his maybe too much instinctive words.
Surely he doesn’t deserve to be jailed for that.
Otherwise, if you should be coherent with your beliefs, once upon a time another world.
A place where, considering to be arrested all the ones who daily insult your creator and creations with actions - not just a facebook post, there will be no more space in prison…

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Trump stops family separation? Children and parents are not bricks

Children and parents are not bricks, like the wall’s ones, that you can pull up and then throw down, and raise again, depending on the umpteenth, delirious tweet of the moment, that you can spit out from your teeth and a moment later attribute to an elusive expiatory spokesperson, justify your word as the always useful misunderstanding. Or, at best, deleting it.

Parents and children are not a group of shares, which you can divide and sell in different markets, and then merge into a new business and if the stock requires to shatter everything and try not to end up in loss.

Children and parents are not those damn weapons, to be religiously disassembled and reassembled, cleaning and oiling the pieces properly.

Parents and children are not even the parts of your perennial presidential campaign monologue, to systematically disunite between them and above all from every sort of context, and then rekindling them in bulk, so that nothing could be understood and the obtuse cry could be heard everywhere.

Children, parents, children, parents, are not the protagonists of a video game, the designated targets, which as digital variables, in the form of sacrificial characters in a populist shooter, you can divide and add up without losing points.

When you remove a son from his mother, if you subtract a daughter from her father, when you break up a family, you can also try to remedy the crime, but the damage remains.

For that you will have to answer, sooner or later.
Better the sooner, though…


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WW1 Centenary 2018 story

Dear ancestors,

These lyrics are for you, that in two dissimilar lands refreshed, detached by a sea whose waters turn out to be each day more and more confused.
In life you have never encountered, and thanks to the freedom of a sheet and particularly the occasion to write on it - which we should continuously be thankful of, I see you joined, maybe standing in a normal living room, animated by the feeling of the instant and from the unavoidable amount of reminiscences to be traded.
Between the many, the one that happened precisely in July 1914, only to end, for favorable luck of all the characters, just over four years after…

From Storie and News

Human Rights Stories of immigrants and faith

Thanks to a disturbingly eventuality the most racist governments on the issue of migration used to proclaim themselves as the most spiritual ones, including the new Italy administration.
A few days ago, I came in the Sanctuary of Rivotorto, in Umbria, and inside the so-called Hovel of Saint Francis of Assisi, even though knowing it, I read the Canticle of the Creatures, but with my actual eyes.
I am not a faith man, I tell you, but those arguments seemed to me further blessed, when modified to the necessities of the many mortified human creatures…

From Storie and News

Human rights stories from Haiti

Lovely Earth, I imagine to write you from Jalousie, Haitian slums.
Outside the limits of world’s insanity, we’re living by aptitude, we endure by need.
We create real tales, for the sake of those looking for us, on the skyline that will have the blessing to appreciate the next dawn.
After the quake, after the wicked look that the unpleasant dice called destiny presented us, we are here, well joined.
Therefore, while in your nations your leaders aren’t able to decide on the authority increased over hate and dishonesties, we attempt to study how to change the rules.
When it will occur, because it will do, don’t recognize us.
Give us comfort now…


From Storie and News

Human Rights Stories about Syria

The much exploited childish candor, unsuited to deal with the complexity of the global tangle of interests and power.
Otherwise, by facilitating the immature objection, you may find yourself in highly prohibited areas by government syntax.
Asking who manufactures chemical weapons and who finances them, who sells them and who protects their trade, who legislates in favour or just abstains hand and conscience.
This would lead to an unacceptable scenario for regime screenwriters.
The one based on the idea that things are much easier to understand than they seem.

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Human Righs Stories of Solidarity

Once upon a time there was a law.
An equal for all one, otherwise what are we talking about?
Yes, what, I've been wondering that for some time.
The law for all was simple: giving support to a criminal represents an equally prohibited act.
Therefore, I understand the burdens of a pious heart, brother, and I am aware of the uncomfortable symptoms of the good-natured virus, sister. Setting aside for a moment the famous dictates of the philosopher Agostino,
deservedly practiced by Martin Luther King, about nobility of disobedience to a norm considered inhuman, where you find yourself foraging someone, always remember to check his criminal fed. Note to listening Christians: see it as a sort of unavoidable amendment to the famous, evangelical Works of mercy, on quenching and feeding the derelicts.
For all the others, just remember that, period.

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