Day of Remembrance Blog

March 24 is Argentina’s Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice (Día Nacional de la Memoria por la Verdad y la Justicia). This day is a national holiday honoring the victims of state terrorism during the Dirty War, and the date was selected because March 14, 1976 was the day the coup d’ètat that would go on to enforce state terrorism occurred. We were fortunate in being able to attend the Buenos Aires parade commemorating the 2023 Día Nacional de la Memoria, which was at the Plaza de Mayo. 

My name is Ella Ross (’23 IRE/HMR). This week I’ve been part of the team representing UC Davis Human Rights Studies and the Article 26 Backpack at the UNESCO 2023 World Forum on Human Rights (FMDH) in in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Backpacker, Go!
Winter/Spring 2023 Newsletter 1.4

Emma Tolliver, Editor
UC Davis Backpack Guide Collective

This quarter, we have information about free academic credentialing resources and fellowship opportunities. 
 

First, we have an introduction from Backpacker #1: Keith David Watenpaugh, Professor and Director of Human Rights Studies. 

The greatest concentration of Syrian refugees in the world is in the zone of destruction created by this week’s earthquake in Turkey.  

Already living on the political and economic margins and often in substandard housing, refugee communities in the region will disproportionately suffer from this natural disaster.  At Article 26 Backpack we stand with them and all those harmed by the quake.  

British-Ghanian architect David Adjaye’s design of the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington, DC grabs you by both shoulders and demands that you not look away as it draws you down into the painful story at the heart of America’s past.

This year’s O’Brien Prize for Individual Achievement in Human Rights Education went to Professor Susan Katz of University of San Francisco School of Education for her work creating the West Coast’s leading Human Rights Education graduate program, and graduates from her program have worked with us here at UC Davis and with great success.&nbs

The University of California, Davis Human Rights Studies Program recognizes that University of California graduate students, researchers, student employees and postdocs have engaged in efforts to secure fair wages, benefits and working conditions.  Considering these efforts, we express our support for our fellow academic workers and call on the UC to bargain in good faith and hope a just and fair agreement can be achieved quickly.   

We also reaffirm our support for Article 23:3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

On a warm Fall afternoon in 1915 in Syria, a Protestant missionary lifted a five-year-old Armenian boy, Karnig Panian (1910-1989), onto a train headed to Beirut. From there he was taken to a small village called Antoura, where a boarding school had been established to transform Armenian and Kurdish children into Turks. Panian’s family had been murdered over the previous months as part of the World War One-era genocide of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire.

The UC Davis Human Rights Studies Program stands in solidarity with the people of Iran as many have taken to streets in protest of the death in custody of a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman, Zhina Mahsa Amini. She was arrested and beaten by members of Iran’s Gašt-e Eršād or Guidance Patrol, more commonly called, the “morality police” for allegedly wearing her hijab — a legally required headscarf — improperly.

Today is the 56th anniversary of the premier of Star Trek.  Unique among Human Rights Studies programs globally, at UC Davis we emphasize the role of literature, the arts, music and film and television in human rights thought, practice and advocacy.