When every step goes a long way

By SHAILA KOSHY and FLORENCE A.SAMY

sunday@thestar.com.my 

Sunday October 14, 2012

 

Champion of human rights : Tse hopes to create a community of people to ensure effective legal representation for every child, woman, and man in detention.

International Bridges to Justice founder Karen I Tse came to inspire lawyers but her drive is an inspiration to anyone who wants to make a difference.

A LITTLE Cambodian boy wriggled through the bars of the prison cells. His smile, like a ray of sunshine, lit up the lives of the prisoners he visits.

Vishna [Veasna] had never seen the outside world; he was born there as his mother was serving time for having committed a crime.

When International Bridges to Justice founder Karen I Tse first met Vishna, he was just four. It was a pivotal time in her life and to this day, he remains her favourite hero.

The trained public defender had gone to Cambodia in 1994 to carry out aid work for both the United Nations and the International Human Rights Law Group as a judicial mentor and to build a community of legal defenders. In the course of a prison visit, she came across Vishna.

“The guards had grown fond of Vishna and allowed him free range of the prison – he was small enough to climb through the bars.

“When I met him, though, he was getting older and could no longer get through the bottom rungs of the prison bars. But he could climb up to the third bar, which was slightly bigger, then slowly turn his head to the side and find a way to pass through the bars to the other side.

“Every day that I went to the prison, he would go through this process so he could run out to meet me. Then he would take my hand and go with me to every cell.

“At each of the 156 prison cells, he would reach his little hand or finger in to make contact with a prisoner. For most of them, he was their greatest joy.

“I often think of Vishna, a boy born into a prison without material or physical comfort. But a boy who had a sense of his own heroic journey and desire to give up a piece of his life to something greater than himself.

“I think of the contributions he made to the prisoners’ wretched lives both on an individual level as he reached out his hand so many times, and also of the contributions he made to human rights through me – for he so often gave me strength when I was not sure why I should continue on.”

Tse, the founder and CEO of International Bridges to Justice (IBJ), said this at the Bar Council’s recently concluded International Malaysia Law Conference 2012.

She also related the story of another child she met in prison – a 12-year-old who was in remand for trying to steal a bicycle.

“The boy had been beaten and refused access to a lawyer; he was scared, confused and no one had drawn any attention to his situation.”

Tse said she had not expected to see a child as she peered through the bars of a prison cell.

Not expecting to see a child in pre-trial detention, she thought of how boys like him had never even been the focus of her college-day rights campaigns.

But seeing him there drove home the need to help countries like Cambodia reform the criminal justice system and implement their own domestic laws consistent with human rights principles that help safeguard prisoner rights.

Tse said IBJ was “founded in the dorm room of Harvard Divinity School” after she returned to the United States in 1997.

In her dream, IBJ would create a community of people in the United States and Europe who would join forces with human rights defenders and legal aid lawyers in Asia “to ensure effective legal representation for every child, woman, and man in detention”.

IBJ works to guarantee the right to competent legal representation, the right to be protected from torture and the right to a fair trial for everyone.

Legal representation was a right under Cambodian law in 1994 as was the right not to be tortured, said Tse, but there were only 10 lawyers who had survived the Khmer Rouge and torture took place regularly because it was the “cheapest investigation tool”.

“A former police officer told us their superiors wanted confessions and the only way they knew how to get it was using torture.”

Undeterred, Tse decided that if people knew their rights it would be more difficult for the authorities to use torture on them.

The social entrepreneur believes in being partners with governments in their effort to develop a community of public defenders and to give them assistance.

IBJ also teaches police how to seek evidence and trains prison guards and judges, said Tse.

“IBJ creates the infrastructure so that the letter of the law on paper becomes a living, breathing reality. It was a leap of faith; I did it, not because I knew it would succeed but miracles happened and doors opened,” said Tse, to a question from the floor.

By its 10th anniversary in 2010, IBJ had made forays into China, Vietnam, Cambodia, India, Rwanda, Burundi and Zimbabwe.

Tse may be pint-sized and soft-spoken, but she is a giant in what she has tried to achieve. Building block by block, she and the people she has inspired have helped set in motion a path to ensure basic legal rights for every man, woman and child.

She stressed on the importance of perseverance, citing the example of the first 25 defenders in Cambodia in 1994 who kept on applying for “motions to suppress until they succeeded one day, and a legal precedent was set!”

Sharing her experience in Zimbabwe of overcrowding in a prison, Tse said a criminal lawyer known as Innocent Maja told her that “the lack of resources is never an excuse for injustice”.

Tse reminded lawyers here that each step went a long way and that every client counted.

She told the story of a young girl on a beach who was told it was hopeless throwing back into the sea a starfish she found because she could not save them all. “But the girl reaches down, picks up another starfish and says: ‘it makes a difference to this one’.”

Tse encouraged delegates not to feel beaten down by the system but to take the time to look at their values and to have hope and a vision.

“Our hope is that we realise that if we really want to do this, we have to believe it is possible. Some people told me I was widely idealistic to want to end torture. But they said the same thing about slavery and apartheid.

“It is important to take the step forward.”

Tse urged lawyers to be willing to stand up and do their part: “Torture is 100% preventable by having the proper laws and by using those laws.”

She talked about the time she felt like throwing in the towel in Cambodia.

“I went to see Sister Rose, an Indian nun who ran an orphanage that I volunteered at in my spare time.

“Her advice was simple: ‘You must find the Christ or Buddha in each person. Then you must work with that Christ or Buddha’.” And so, Tse overcame resistance with love.

As she pointed out, the biggest resistance is our own inability to believe in the possibility and hope for a future where there is no torture.