A personal journey of fighting for justice around the world.
Elaine Pearson
Scribner RRP $34.99
These are the words of Leila de Lima, the fearless and tenacious lawyer and chair of the Philippine Commission on Human Rights who was the first Filipino official to seriously confront the mayor of Davao City, Rodrigo Duterte, who would later go on to become the President of the Philippines and order the killing of thousands of citizens he called “drug smugglers”.
Elaine Pearson, Deputy Asia Director at Human Rights Watch and author of “Chasing Wrongs and Rights” was speaking of her work in the Philippines from 2007. She writes of her admiration after witnessing the extraordinary bravery of people like Leila de Lima: “She paid a heavy price for her advocacy against the many extra judicial killings across the country sanctioned by the government,” says Elaine. “De Lima was imprisoned for five years at the Philippines Police National Headquarters often incommunicado and remains one of my human rights heroes. Despite her incarceration on politically motivated charges, she is still inspiring a new generation of younger Filipinos and activists world-wide,” says Elaine.
However she is not the only victim of abuse. Another woman who dared to challenge Duterte’s actions is Maria Ressa, journalist and founder of website Rappler.com, and winner of the Nobel Pearce Prize for her courageous journalism in 2021.
Elaine Pearson has spent her career, since graduating as a lawyer from Perth’s Murdoch University, travelling the word documenting war crimes against humanity, writing reports for agencies such as the United Nations Security Council, attending conferences and giving speeches about the conditions and injustices that exist world- wide. She shows courageous determination and unflappable energy in the face of often personally dangerous situations in order to accurately record the human rights that are being violated so frequently.
In her book, “Chasing Wrongs and Rights” she details the history of people struggling against oppression. Through the valuable work of Human Rights Watch she challenges the brutal acts against people who agitate against oppression, human trafficking, genocide, torture, the crime of enforced disappearance practiced by dictators in countries such as Sri Lanka and the inhuman detention by Australian governments on the Pacific Islands of Manus in New Guinea and Nauru.
Paradoxically, Elaine’s desire to spend her career uncovering uncomfortable truths and exposing injustices that are often ignored or buried, was initially sparked by Senator Pauline Hanson who began her parliamentary career railing about Australia being swamped by Asians.
“Something in me snapped,” she says. “As someone who is Asian and whose family had tried desperately hard to assimilate when we migrated to Australia, those words felt like a kick in the guts.
Prime Minister John Howard blamed the protesters and not Hanson’s racism which made me even more furious,” she admits.
Elaine was determined to spend her life documenting abuse. The idea of social justice and how the law could be used as a tool to empower people meant she needed a law degree, which also meant defying her Asian “tiger mother” who wanted her to do a business degree. er
On graduation, Elaine spent her first three years with Anti-Slavery International interviewing victims of trafficking and human slavery, writing reports and learning how to navigate the hotly contested definition between trafficking and sex work.
In Kathmandu, Nepal, she was arrested while in a crowd of 30 women activists and robbed in Uganda’s capital of Kampala while volunteering to work for an organisation investigating the horrors inflicted upon children forcibly recruited into the Lord’s Resistance Army.
After a number of years focusing on trafficking, migrant workers and women’s rights, Elaine decided she wanted to concentrate on the bigger picture of human rights. When she was offered the chance to join the world’s leading human rights organisation – Human Rights Watch – at the age of 32, she saw it as her dream job. Suddenly she was responsible for a range of countries, staff and a kaleidoscope of issues.
“Thank goodness we are a team at Human Rights Watch, for as divisional editor my job was to interrogate the facts presented, measure the alleged violations against international law, as well as edit the style, structure and coherence and then test the logic and strength of our arguments.”
“In Human Rights Watch there are also emergency researchers whose job it is to interview victims, their families, lawyers and activists and gather as much detail as possible”, writes Elaine.
In view of the current consideration we are all giving to those wonderful women in Iran who have been fighting for months for the right to throw off the hajib, perhaps the most fascinating chapter in her book, is the one about controlling what women wear in Indonesia. “You might not think that a woman’s right to choose what she wears is not the most pressing concern in Indonesia,” says Elaine. “Talking to women throughout the country they all say it infringes on their human rights and want the freedom to decide whether to wear it.” Human Rights Watch agrees, calling the actions by the Sharia police if left unchecked, as opening the door to even more abuse.
Most distressingly, Elaine found it discriminates against poorer women enforcing them to hear the Jilbab, while wealthy women in cars and those politically connected are not stopped at checkpoints by the Sharia police.
Elaine says her lasting memory of Manus which she visited twice, is of the haunted look in the eyes of the men she met there, banished like criminals and locked up by the Australian government.
“Our government claimed this harsh system of detention was necessary to deter asylum seekers and the media aided successive governments who sought to demonise these people as ‘queue jumpers’,” she says.
Human Rights Watch saw this as manufactured cruelty and Elaine admits she was shocked. There were serious human rights violations that deserved more international attention.
The first people she and her cameraman met on Manus on her second visit was Aziz and the Kurdish Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani. Both were strong advocates for other detainees and natural leaders.
Another writer on Manus Elaine was keen to meet after much emailing was Imran Mohammad who fled Rakhine state at the age of sixteen due to the Myanmar government’s repression of his people. He reminded her of how the impact of detention is like being a caged animal.
“I spent a week on the island and noticed a significant deterioration in the mental health of these people. Self-harm and suicide among refugee men was escalation in all ages, religions and ethnicities,” she says.
In Australia resettled refugees think they are safe, but Elaine found they were regarded by their authoritarian governments as ‘errant citizens’ who must be punished for their actions. “They were sending not only abusive officials here from abroad, but detaining or harassing family members who remained, to silence criticism as this brought ‘shame’ on the government.”
Human Rights Watch, as a global organisation, is well-placed to investigate these sorts of disturbing allegations. It records victim statements of these abuses, speaking out publicly even though it may carry serious risks of reprisals. However, it is only by documenting human rights abuses for there to be any hope of the arrest and possible prosecution of a state leader.
This book is a truly remarkable personal story by Elaine Pearson and gives extraordinary insights into how injustice can be confronted and how hope and justice can ultimately prevail.
As Geoffrey Robertson QC AO writes . . “It is essential reading for those who want to help, because it illuminates the courage, commitment and collegiality needed to work towards a better world.”
Sherry Stumm.