Tony Henderson

Green Party Hong Kong took the streets on Sunday 24 April 2011, allied by Humanist Association of Hong Kong, in support of a Greenpeace initiative calling on the Hong Kong government Environmental Bureau to put a stop to nuclear expansion.The Legislative Council is meeting on April 29 and the demonstration was to pressure the government to cease any expansion plans.

Our Humanist Association of Hong Kong Letter to the Editor appeared today in the South China Morning Post newspaper, April 18, 2011. Also appearing on Humanize Asia and Lantau Forum, eliciting comments from others. I replied to one critic that I quote the worst case scenario where nuclear fallout would poison the entire planet.

In his early thirties, Kamakura-born Koichi Nakatani will never forget the day he stepped outside his isolated Hokkaido home and began as usual to breathe in the beautiful day when the thought struck him…. ‘oh, radiation is in the air, I shouldn’t really breathe deeply; oh my open sea and sky, will I ever be able to breathe deeply here again?’

International Women’s Day – March 8, 2011 – is a special day meant to remind everyone that women continue to have particular disadvantages even today, despite general emancipation, owing to the unnecessary restrictions in our male-dominated societies. More than that, womens’ rights continue to be severely curtailed in many places.

I was working in Libya as a technician at the ship-shore radio station, Tripoli, when Muammar Gaddafi led the bloodless coup in 1969. I was on the overnight shift when the new regime, headed by the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), abolished the monarchy and proclaimed the new Libyan Arab Republic – thus launching Mr Gaddafi onto the grand stage.

After arriving in the United States, Espinet continued working with other exiled Siloists from Argentina and Chile in the Universal Humanist movement. He met Trudi at one of their gatherings in 1986, and they spent 25 years together, working and raising their five children, living in San Francisco, Argentina and finally Davis.

14 February 2011 marked National Domestic Workers Day in Indonesia that has around 2.6 million domestic workers. As in Hong Kong, these workers play a vital role in the household and overall economy. Yet Amnesty International has received many reports of domestic workers in Indonesia being subjected to physical and psychological abuse, as well as economic exploitation.

“Getting rid of dictators is not enough. Building a civic participatory society is not easy – Europe’s enlightenment did not come just from removing a few dictators,” a Palestinian friend said to me recently. “People’s expectation raised for change will dash against the reality that it will take decades to create systems of governance, accountability, economic justice…”

Nose-flute player and human rights activist Dom-an hails from Sagada, Mountain Province, in the Cordillera Central mountain range of north central Luzon, Philippines. November 28, 2005, her husband Pepe was killed by rogue elements among the military. Transcending her plight she has opened her search for justice to similarly distressed people.

*Nepal’s Maoists have relinquished control of their 19,000 fighters to government control. The young fighters wonder what’s next! The assimilation of the former fighters into society is viewed as a crucial step in Nepal’s peace process. Everyone applauds the move as constructive and the way forward. But the real work has only just begun.*