Word: khans
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Last week it was Australia's turn. Khan was there to mark International Women's Day and wasted no time in criticizing Prime Minister John Howard's government's policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers. Howard, who was hosting the Commonwealth heads of government, claimed to be too busy to meet her. But in sessions with Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock and the Attorney General, Khan urged them to reconsider a policy she says is "contrary to Australia's human-rights obligations." Her meeting with Amnesty member Ruddock elicited special attention, with press reports speculating on whether Khan would...
Although never a refugee herself, Bangladeshi-born Khan knows the experience of being uprooted from a war-torn homeland. She first left home to attend high school in Ireland, a move she calls ironic since she left civil war in Bangladesh only to find herself in another strife-riven nation. After university in the U.K. - where she met her German-born economist husband - she studied law at Harvard. It was there that she developed an interest in human-rights issues. She has since spent her entire career in the field - until now at the U.N. refugee agency. Her Amnesty term...
TIME: What other issues are foremost for Amnesty right now? KHAN: At the moment, our big concern in Africa is Zimbabwe. We've been reporting on the escalating violence and human-rights violations there for some time now, and we are very worried...
TIME: Have you had any contact with the Zimbabwean government? KHAN: Yes. [Amnesty] has worked on Zimbabwe for a long time, and Rhodesia before that, so we have a long history of engagement in the area. At one point we'd even adopted Mr. Mugabe as one of our prisoners and worked on his case. But he has not been very positive toward Amnesty and has accused us of interference...
...KHAN: I hope to shift Amnesty from being an organization that has primarily focused on prisoner and prisoner-related issues to becoming a broader human-rights organization that takes into account the challenges of the 21st century in this area. With economic globalization there is at the same time a need for a globalization of human rights, a global values system. Human rights provides that framework...