Self-Empowerment: the First Step to Human Rights Consciousness

For two and a half years, I have been involved in human rights activities. Conducting educational seminars, sending off advocating letters to various NGOs and fund raising. In other less formal occasions, I met representatives and ambassadors from other organizations. Apparently, these have been some fruitful and remarkable years. New friends and new connections were made. Knowledge was gained.

As a volunteer, however, I find myself full of limitations. I only work when I have the time to and it has always come second. My profession as a freelance writer (and now a full-time student) consumes most of my time and energy. Sometimes, even, my volunteer activities come the last: after full-time profession, family duties and household chores.

I do, however, consider my human rights activities a part of myself. It has and will always be here inside the very essence of my being. Not a day passes without the thoughts of suffering people in third world countries and injustices in cosmopolitans play around in my mind. Every time I read the news, every time I go to the market and every time I look at myself, I always remember where I come from and where I am standing today.

I earned my present self through a long journey of self-search to be brave: to stand up against discrimination, ethnic stereotyping and minority persecution. For generations, my family has witnessed minority persecution in one of the largest archipelago countries in Southeast Asia. We experienced the loss of family members, loss of possessions and, above all, loss of dignity.

For decades, we were belittled and taught to be embarrassed of ourselves by our own government. We were governed in a way that there was no other way than to surrender our self-dignity in order to survive, in order to be able to breathe.

We did breathe, we did live. But we breathed livelessly and we lived unpurposefully. We existed surrounded by hatred and unacceptance.

Yet, we did survive. We survived the ethnic massacre, we survived the prejudice-loaded society, we survived the self without dignity.

Though my experience as a human rights activist is limited, my existence has always been close to human rights activities. I taught myself to preserve elegant behaviors, to accept those who don’t accept us, to see beyond the surface and to reach out the true essence of being. These are the translations of self-empowerment.

Self-empowerment is the first step to human rights consciousness. It gives me grace, understanding and courage to change my environment. Above all, it gives me courage to change myself.