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"To us all towns are one, all men our kin.
Life's good comes not from others' gift, nor ill
Man's pains and pains' relief are from within.
Thus have we seen in visions of the wise !."

- Tamil Poem in Purananuru, circa 500 B.C 

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TAMIL NATION LIBRARY:
Human Rights

"...International law is political... We must abandon the myth that with law we enter the secure, stable and determinate. In reality we are simply engaged in another discursive political practice about how we should live.." - Dr Colin J Harvey [see also Human Rights & the Tamil Nation ]

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* Omer Yousif Elagab - International Law Documents Relating to Terrorism

"The book provides a single text covering all the basic documents in international law relating to terrorism, extracts from judicial decisions and the relevant UK material." more

Goodhart, Lord William et al. Judicial Independence in Sri Lanka - Report of a Mission to Sri Lanka (14-23 September 1977) by the Centre for the Independence of Judges and lawyers, Geneva Switzerland, 1998

* Primo Tregua LeviIf This Is a Man and the Truce (Penguin Modern Classics)

From reviews at Amazon.com: "If I had to nominate one book from the 20th century to give to a person from another century it would be this one.  Reading 'If This Is A Man' was a humbling experience in a way that no other book or movie I have encountered in my life has been.

People sometimes suggest that the Holocaust is old news, part of a long ago past. The day after I finished Levi's book I heard five English soccer fans singing songs about Belsen, imitating the sound of gas escaping and yelling "turn on the shower" - and laughing. I've debated with educated Americans who believe the Holocaust was exaggerated and that most of the deaths were caused by disease. One in seven French voters support a man who is in Holocaust denial. Perhaps these people would not be changed by this book, but I hope that a hundred years from now, millions of people will still be reading Primo Levi and learning from this sad, brave, modest man.

If you are a man, no matter if you're Jew or German or whatever else, you cannot read this book emotionless. This is something so strong words are not enough to describe it. Nobody must forget, nobody must repeat what's so honestly described in this pages. Primo Levi committed suicide 40 years later, never able to chase those days off his days and nights. We owe him and everybody who suffered that atrocity at least the promise to keep on reading his testimony, generation after generation, no matter our race, religion or gender..."

* Primo Tregua Levi - Survival in Auschwitz : The Nazi Assault on Humanity

From the Book Description: "In 1943, Primo Levi, a twenty-five-year-old chemist and "Italian citizen of Jewish race," was arrested by Italian fascists and deported from his native Turin to Auschwitz. Survival in Auschwitz is Levi's classic account of his ten months in the German death camp, a harrowing story of systematic cruelty and miraculous endurance. Remarkable for its simplicity, restraint, compassion, and even wit, Survival in Auschwitz remains a lasting testament to the indestructibility of the human spirit."

*Martin Luther King Jr. - A Knock at Midnight : Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr - Clayborne Carson(Editor), Peter Holloran (Editor). Paperback (January 2000)

from the inside flap: - a definitive collection of eleven of Martin Luther King's most powerful and spiritual sermons, moving and meaningful words to live by for everyone. 'Before I was a civil rights leader, I was a preacher. This was my first calling and it still remains my greatest commitment'.

*Martin Luther King Jr. - A Testament of Hope : The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. James Melvin Washington (Editor),  Paperback (January 1991)

"...The strong man holds in a living blend strongly marked opposites. Not ordinarily do men achieve this balance of opposites. The idealists are not usually realistic, and the realists are not usually idealistic. The militants are not generally known to be passive, nor the passive to be militant. Seldom are the humble self assertive or the self assertive humble. But life at its best is a creative syntheses of opposites in fruitful harmony.... truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in the an emerging synthesis which reconciles the two.

Jesus recognised the need for blending opposites. He knew that his disciples would face a difficult and hostile world, where they would confront the recalcitrance of political officials and the intransigence of the protectors of the old order. He knew that they would meet  cold and arrogant men whose hearts had be hardened by the long winter of traditionalism. So he said to them, 'Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves'. And he gave them a formula for action; 'Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves'. It is pretty difficult to imagine a single person having simultaneously, the characteristics of the serpent and the dove, but that is what Jesus expects. We must combine the toughness of the serpent and the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart...

...We do not need to look far to detect the dangers of soft mindedness. Dictators, capitalising on soft mindedness, have led men to acts of barbarity and terror that are unthinkable in civilised society. Adolf Hitler realised that soft mindedness was so prevalent among his followers that he said, 'I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few'. In Mein Kampf he asserted: 'By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell - and hell, heaven... The greater the lie, the more readily it will be believed...' There is little hope for us until we become tough minded... A nation or a civilisation that continues to produce soft minded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan..."

*Martin Luther King, Jr., Coretta Scott King - Words of Martin Luther King, Jr. / Paperback / 1992

Writings by Leo Kuper:

  • *The Pity of It All : Polarisation of Racial and Ethnic Relations , 1977
  • *Genocide : Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century , 1983
  • *The Prevention of Genocide , 1985
  • *International Action Against Genocide , 1982
  • * Race, class and power : ideology and revolutionary change in plural societies

*Robert Melson, et al Revolution and Genocide : On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust , 1986

 

 

Amnesty International

*Amnesty International mission to Sri Lanka, 9-15 January 1975

*Amnesty International mission to Sri Lanka, 31 January-9 February 1982

*Amnesty International: 1992 Report on Human Rights Around the World

*Amnesty International: 1993 Report on Human Rights Around the World

*Amnesty International: 1994 Report on Human Rights Around the World

*Amnesty International: 1995 Report on Human Rights Around the World

*Amnesty International: 1996 Report on Human Rights Around the World

* Amnesty International: Human Rights-Selected International Standards and Important Treaties on Human Rights

 

 

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