catapult magazine

catapult magazine
 

Vol 3, Num 3 :: 2004.01.30 — 2004.02.12

 
 

Wrong on rights

Fill in the blank of each fact with the appropriate country. The answers are below the quiz.

  1. Citizens of ____________ are divided into three main classes: the core class (20%), the instable class (45%), and the hostile class (27%). Food rations and medical services are given out according to one’s class. Members of the hostile class are under constant surveillance, may be executed “in an emergency case,” and are typically forced to rely on the black market as a source of food.

 

  • Thousands of children in _________ flee their homes at night to avoid being forcefully recruited in the service of the Lord’s Resistance Army as combatants, sexual slaves, cooks, porters and domestic servants. According to UNICEF, approximately 8,400 children were abducted between June 2002 and May 2003 and forced to carry out raids, burn houses, beat and kill civilians, abduct other children, and fight against the country’s military forces.

 

 

  • The country of _______ has no laws that specifically address domestic violence, exacerbating the problems of abused women in its overcrowded refugee camps. Women who leave their abusive husbands cannot obtain separate ration cards, necessitating a choice between food and safety.

 

 

  • Though professing the right to organize and bargain collectively for all of its citizens, the labor laws of _______________ are so weak that anti-union activities thrive and miniscule penalties for union-busting are so insignificant that they’re seen as simply a cost of doing business and a small price to pay for maintaining a union-free workplace. In the face of such abuses, workers are left no better recourse than endless, ineffective bargaining without the benefit of cooperation.

 

 

  • In __________, arrested individuals are routinely tortured to confess to crimes they may or may not have committed. With the confessions used as evidence in the subsequent trial and appeal, individuals are then executed in secret, leaving families unaware for years whether their relatives have been executed and where their bodies are buried.

 

 

  • In reported efforts to wipe out Christianity in ___________, authorities have gassed buildings where worship services are taking place, handed out poisoned sugar among believers, and put Christians into prison for “undermining” state and Communist Party policy.

 

 

  • ________ routinely uses the success of its military operations as an excuse to demolish thousands of homes and agricultural land, often in areas where two-thirds of the population lives under the poverty line, making less than US$2 per day. Displaced persons are then left homeless while forced lack of national identity makes navigating the maze of permits for rebuilding impossible.

 

 

  • Gender inequality plagues the justice system in _______ where, near two western cities in the past 10 years, over 300 women have been murdered, most after being sexually assaulted. The women are usually young and poor, working in the assembly plants that dominate the local economy. Cases are usually followed up poorly by local authorities, who reportedly have neglected to establish the identities of found bodies and to follow-up on reports of failures to respond to emergency calls.

 

  1. North Korea
  2. Uganda
  3. Nepal
  4. United States
  5. Uzbekistan
  6. Vietnam
  7. Israel
  8. Mexico

Sources of information:


Discussion topic: Rights work

How can we be responding as individuals to human rights abuses perpetrated by both organizations and governments? How should we be responding as a community of believers?

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