| Show Human rights a personal agenda T MAGINE you are sleeping peacefully on a tranquil 1 IMAGINE night Imagine your bed warm bed warm and soft Picture your peace in a safe and comfortable occupation as a government government government govern govern- ment official a journalist an artist or student Imagine your life as it probably is quiet safe and assured Imagine as you sleep there comes a knock at your door Imagine urgent insistent shouts from outside You rise to answer but the door has already been smashed off its hinges Imagine darkly hooded figures spilling into your home They violently bind you with raw rope Imagine they drag you still sleepy and confused into the night Imagine they take you to an alley behind your house It is cold They bludgeon you with baseball bats without breaking your arms and ribs Imagine the way they beat you you savagely savagely brutally Imagine blood clotting the panicked pleas for mercy that struggle from your crushed windpipe Imagine they seize you and in a yellowish puddle of lamplight in an alley press you up against a concrete wall Imagine the gun Imagine the bullet L' L f P. P Imagine you are dead Imagine you arent aren't imagining In some corners of the globe this scenario is being played out on a nightly basis Though recent violent events around the world have been splashed across television screens in every home in the US as Americans we seldom recognize that there is a human cost attached to every political and social upheaval The quest for freedom in Romania which led to the downfall of the communist regime demanded a trade of more than human lives Most of those deaths made night executions look like picnics The real truth about such upheaval is not attractive The Horizon urges everyone to consider the human costs b behind hind the headlines from El EI Salvador Belfast Bogota Beirut Bucharest Managua Beijing and Panama City on Monday Jan 15 Human Rights Day provides us with a special opportunity opportunity opportunity for reflection While we are often tempted to dissociate ourselves from ugly affairs both foreign and domestic we must recognize that for some of us death terror and inhumanity inhumanity inhumanity in in- humanity are not matters of imagination |
