September 5, 2003

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Dear Colleague:

I write you again to ask for your support of colleagues persecuted by their
governments because they have dared to peacefully express their beliefs
and/or protest injustices.

In a world full of armed conflicts, poverty, hunger, and all kinds of oppression,
it might seem unimportant to worry about the violation of the human rights of
individual academics and other professionals. Some might even argue that this
distracts from the bigger issues involving injustices to whole groups. In addition
there are unfortunately many places in the world where governments are so
oppressive that there is not even a chance for any open dissent.

I believe however that the opposite is the case. There is ample evidence in history
that individual freedom is a necessary, albeit not sufficient, requirement for peace
and genuine improvement in the living conditions of all people in a society.
Those colleagues who have willingly endangered themselves by peaceful protest
therefore strongly deserve and urgently need our support - support which might
indeed make a difference. As put by sociologist Saad Eddin Ibrahim from Egypt
(one of our success stories), "When a human rights defender becomes himself
vulnerable to human rights violations by his own government, and as a result,
fear paralyzes his academic peers at home, one could easily feel utter despair.
And that would be the case for hundreds of prisoners of conscience in the third
world if it were not for the watchful and compassionate eye of [concerned]
groups."

With this in mind I invite you to endorse petitions which I will send, in an
appropriately respectful style as recommended by Amnesty International, on
behalf of colleagues in Belarus, China, Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Vietnam.
This is clearly only a subset of all cases of this kind but I think they
are representative.

In a different vein but also of great concern is the treatment of foreign visitors
and immigrants in many western countries. This is affecting in very adverse ways
the lives and professional activities of many colleagues with no connection to
violence. As an example I include here the case of Dr. Branislav Djordjevic,
who is currently imprisoned in the US and threatened with deportation because he
did not follow proper judicial procedures.

Please add your name (and ask colleagues, friends and others to add theirs)
by going to the web page
http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~lebowitz/petition/index.html
where you can also obtain information about these cases. You will also find
there links to other parts of my web page with additional information, as well as to
the web pages of various human rights organizations.

Your comments and suggestions are welcome.

Thank you and best wishes,

Joel Lebowitz

Please add my name to petitions on behalf of the following:
--ALL
--Imprisoned Professor, Yuri Bandajevsky, BELARUS The petition to Belarus
--Imprisoned colleagues in CHINA The petition to China
--On behalf of Oscar Elias Biscet and Martha Beatriz Roque, CUBA The petition to Cuba
--On behalf of Hashem Aghajari, IRAN The petition to Iran
--On behalf of Hayder Tamboor and Nasr Eldin Tamboor, SUDAN The petition to Sudan
--Imprisoned Doctor, Nguyen Dan Que, VIETNAM The petition to Vietnam
--On behalf of Branislav Djordjevic, UNITED STATES The petition to the United States Defense fund site for Branislav Djordjevic
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For Comments or suggestions please write to lebowitz@sakharov.rutgers.edu