In 2007, in the face of growing dangers that threaten the women and men who fight for respect for human rights, OMCT – supported by the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs – called upon several Swiss and international personalities to put their fame in the service of the protection of human rights defenders.
The main goal of the sponsorship project “Defend the Defenders” is to protect the defenders who have become victims of persecution and acts of harassment as a result of their activities in defense of fundamental rights and freedoms. By encouraging Swiss and international personalities to rally around these defenders, the project has created a chain of solidarity which extends beyond the restricted circle of “specialists” and aims at mobilising public opinion, the only real counterweight to the arbitrary power of States.
In the framework of this project and amongst other activities, OMCT organised solidarity missions in Mexico in 2008, the DRC in 2010 and in Brazil in 2011
Sponsors Noémie Kocher accompanied a first solidarity mission in September 2008, to support defender Marisela Ortiz Rivera and the struggle of the women of Ciudad Juárez against the wave of killings of women in that city.
Sponsors Dick Marty and Dimitri accompanied the second mission of solidarity in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in February 2010 to support defender Justine Masika Bihamba and alert the public to the fate of the Congolese human rights defenders struggling against impunity for the perpetrators of sexual violence committed against women in the east of the country.
In November and December 2011, Noémie Kocher accompanied a third mission in Brazil to meet indigenous defenders Megaron and Davi Kopenawa. One of the objective of the mission was to highlight how indigenous peoples' rights are jeopardized by the economic development.
Following this mission, 2 documentaries were produced by Daniel Schweizer:
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Ms. Noémie Kocher is an authentic actress, who has worked for many well-known directors, such as Pierre Aknine, Pierre Boutron, Miguel Courtois, François Luciani, Philippe Triboit, Bernard Uzan, Patrick Volson and Ariel Zeitoun. The Swiss actress who lives in Paris started her career at the theatre and has since then been seen on television, at the theatre and in cinema. Some of her cinema highlights are films such as 1 Journée (2006/Jacob Berger), which won awards at several festivals, Aime ton Père (2001/Jacob Berger), Les savates du bon Dieu (1998/Jean-Claude Brisseau), Une Femme très, très amoureuse (1996/Ariel Zeitoun), Les Agneaux (1995/Marcel Schupbach), and many more. Furthermore, she did several TV-productions, such as Julie Lescaut episode « Julie à Paris » (2008/Jean Michel Fages). |
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Mrs. Marisela Ortíz Rivera is the Director of the association May Our Girls Go Home, an organisation that militates for justice in the cases of women kidnapped and assassinated in Ciudad Juárez, State of Chihuahua, Mexico. The rape by strangers of an ex-student of the teacher Marisela Ortíz motivated the latter to protest publicly against the feminicide of Ciudad Juárez. This is how the association May Our Girls Go Home was created. Within the framework of her activities, Mrs. Ortíz Rivera has received threats in several occasions. Even if her actions have visualized the feminicide-problematic at an international level, the State and the authorities still hide under a policy of concealment, of silence and of intimidations. Mrs. Marisela Ortíz says that she will not surrender by all these threats and aggressions but that she will go on fighting for the purpose of peace and justice in Ciudad Juárez. |
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Mrs. Rosemarie Zapfl-Helbling is both a Swiss businesswoman and a politician. From 1974 to 1990 she served as a municipal councillor, from 1995 to 2006 she was elected in the national council and from 2002 to 2006 she was the President of the Christian Democratic Party (CVP) International. Today she presides the Swiss women association called Alliance F, the Federal Commission on Alcohol Problems as well as the Alliance Against Hunger. Furthermore she is the President of the Swiss Association of Foreign Affairs. Mrs. Zapfl is married and has three adult children. In addition, during her time as a Parliament member Mrs. Zapfl was the Vice-Chairperson of the Committee on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. |
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Mrs. Mao Hengfeng has been active in defending housing rights, opposing forced evictions and also in promoting women’s reproductive rights in Shanghai, China. She has been arbitrarily detained in May 2006, sentenced to two and a half years’ imprisonment in April 2007 and was finally released in November 2008. As a mother of twins, she was reportedly dismissed from her job in 1988 because she became pregnant for a second time, in contravention of China’s family planning regulations. Mrs. Mao refused to have an abortion, and was subsequently detained in a psychiatric hospital. After giving birth she was dismissed from her job. From 1990 to 2004, she petitioned repeatedly the authorities for redressing her dismissal from work and the denial of other basic rights. She also made several attempts to initiate legal proceedings against the authorities in relation to these abuses. During her years of petitioning, she has been forcibly detained several times in prisons and psychiatric facilities. She is in poor health condition and has several times been on hunger strike to protest against her situation. |
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Mr. Dimitri was born in Ascona/Ticino in 1935. At the age of seven he decided to become a clown. He first became an apprentice potter and at the same time he took theatre classes and studied music as well as ballet and acrobatics. Then he went to Paris where he studied mime with Etienne Decroux and became a member of Marcel Marceau's troupe. He appeared as Auguste with the famous white clown Maïss at Circus Medrano in Paris. In 1959 he appeared for the first time in a programme of his own and soon tours followed throughout the world, as well as three tours with the Swiss National Circus Knie. In 1971, Mr. Dimitri, together with his wife Gunda, founded the Teatro Dimitri, in 1975 the Scuola Teatro Dimitri and in 1978 the Compagnia Teatro Dimitri. In 2000, he founded together with Harald Szeemann the Museo Comico in Verscio. Mr. Dimitri is still considered one of the world's best clowns who not only makes his public laugh but also with his poetic mind and generous heart touches his audience deeply. |
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Mr. Rolf Bloch was born in Bern in 1930. He later became a jurist. Creating and protecting law and justice, as well as protecting people from injustice were central concerns to him. He wrote his dissertation on individual freedoms; freedom of religion, conscience and property rights. He took on his fathers chocolate factory Camille Bloch SA at an early age where he was chairman of the board until he handed the company over to the third generation, in 2005. Although interested in politics, he never pursued a party political career. But he took over an increasing number of positions as part of his activities for civil society. For ten years he was the head of the Jewish Community in Bern and from 1992 to 2000 he was the president of the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities (SFJC), where he had a powerful impact in the years of the controversy about the dormant assets of Holocaust victims in Swiss banks. At the European level, he was the vice-president of the European Council of Jewish Communities. He also presided the Food Industry Federation and the Swiss-Israel Chamber of Commerce. The basis of all these activities was not only his professional competence but also his deep human conviction. |
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Mr. Azer Samedov, a national from Azerbaijan, used to be the President of the Caucasus Centre for the Protection of Conscience and Religious Persuasion Freedom (KDEVAMM). In the aftermath of the 2003 presidential election he immigrated to Georgia, where he opened a branch of the KDEVAMM, which organises courses and monitoring in matters of human rights and religious liberties. Pursued in his country by the Aliyev regime, he was arrested by Georgian authorities in March 2006 to be extradited to Azerbaijan, where he feared to receive seven years in prison. After his release on bail in April 2006 following international pressure, he did not obtain the guarantee of any legal status and he lived in fear of an upcoming extradition. In August 2006, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) granted Mr. Samedov a pass, which was subsequently extended several times and, in October 2007, the UNHCR finally granted him the refugee status with a “protection letter” certifying that Mr. Samedov “has been determined to be a refugee falling under the mandate of the UNHCR” and, as such, “enjoys international protection”. In April 2008 he was invited to the Netherlands as a refugee. Shortly after, he and his family left for the Netherlands, where they obtained a regular refugee status. |
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Mrs. Gardi Hutter is a Swiss actress and author. She performs herself as a well-known clown-comedian. She wrote and presented several clown theatre plays; was a clown in the Swiss National Circus Knie for the season 2000; realised more than 2,700 performances in 22 countries on four continents; created sketches for TV and films etc. As a mother she writes and illustrates books for children. Today she is highly esteemed for clown-theatre all around the world. |
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Mrs. Maria Conceição Andrade Paganele Santos is the President of the Sao Paolo based organisation Mothers and Friends of Adolescents at Risk (AMAR), in Brazil. In 2006 she was accused of having caused suffering, inciting crimes, of conspiracy and of having helped prisoners to escape after she had denunciated acts of collective torture against prisoners minor of age. In addition, Mrs. Paganele has been involved in other police investigations in relation to two prison rebellions of the State Foundation of well-being of Minors (FEBEM) in 2005 and 2006. |
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Born in Ticino in 1944, Mr. Marco Solari graduated in social science at the University of Geneva. From 1972 to 1991, he was the head of the Ticino Tourist Authority and in 1988 he was also appointed by the Swiss Federal Council as responsible delegate of the official celebrations for the 700th anniversary of Switzerland. From 1992 to 1997, Mr. Marco Solari acted as a delegate of the board of the Federation of Cooperatives MIGROS, resigning from this appointment in order to take over the role of vice-president in the general management of Ringier, one of the major Swiss editorial groups, also active at an international level. He resigned from Ringier in 2004. In 2000 he has been appointed President of the Locarno International Film Festival. In 2007, he became President of the Ticino Tourist Authority again. |
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Mr. Donat M’baya Tshimanga is the President of Journalists in Danger (JED), a Kinshasa based independent and non-partisan organisation dedicated to the defence and promotion of the press freedom in the Democratic Republic of Congo and eight more central African countries. At several occasions, Mr. M’baya had to hide himself or to flee the DRC after receiving serious threats due to his human rights activities. In 2006 and 2007, Mr. M’baya and Mr. Tshivis Tshivuadi, JED Secretary General, received numerous threatening phone calls and were forced into hiding several times. This series of menaces against them started shortly after JED had published an article disclosing its preliminary conclusions about the murder of a well-known journalist. Up to now, the threats are ongoing. |
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Mr. Jacques Pilet is a Swiss journalist who collaborated, among others, with the Télévision Suisse Romande (Temps présent), where he produced the political show Tell Quel. In 1981 he created and headed the weekly newspaper L’Hebdo. In 1991 he launched Le Nouveau Quotidien. In 1998, he joined the board of Ringier in Zurich. Mr. Pilet still collaborates regularly with L'Hebdo, CICERO (Berlin) and Sonntagsblick/Sie und Er. |
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Mr. Ziyad Muhammad Shehadeh Hmeidan is a student at Birzeit University and a Palestinian human rights worker from Bethlehem. Since 2000 he has been a fieldworker with the Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq, which conducts research and advocacy works on human rights. The Israeli authorities, without charge or fair trial, detained him from May 2005 to March 2007 on the basis of “secret evidence” and "suspicion of involvement in terrorist activities" that were not disclosed to neither Mr. Hmeidan nor his lawyer, effectively rendering it unchallengeable in judicial proceedings and denying his right to a fair trial. Mr. Hmeidan’s administrative detention order was extended at several occasions, always on the basis of the “secret evidence” and he was finally released in March 2007. |
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Mr. Jean-Luc Bideau is one of the most famous Swiss actors. He made his debut on stage at the popular national theatre in Aturo Ui (France). In 1969, he returned to Switzerland, where he became a famous figure of Swiss cinema. From 1972 on he has also played frequently at the theatre with, in particular, his passing between 1988 and 1998 at the Comédie-Française. Since now he has played in more than 100 movies. |
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Mr. Jaime Amorim is a leading member of the National Coordination of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in the State of Pernambuco, Brazil. Within the framework of his work Mr. Amorim was arrested several times. In May 2008, Mr. Amorim was condemned to four months in prison in open regime, which means that he has the obligation to sleep in the prison, while remaining free during the day. Mr. Amorim, who had participated in a peaceful demonstration on 5th November 2005, in front of the Embassy of the United States, as a result of which he had been arrested on 21st August 2006, was accused of “incitement to commit a crime”. |
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Mr. Claude Nobs is the founder and General Manager of the Montreux Jazz Festival. After apprenticing as a cook, Mr. Nobs worked in the Montreux Tourism Office. At the age of 31, while he was director of the Montreux Tourism Office, he organised the first jazz festival. This new festival was an immediate success, and gained a reputation far beyond Switzerland. In 1973, Mr. Nobs became the Director of the Swiss branch of Warner, Elektra and Atlantic. During the 1990s, Mr. Nobs shared the directorship of the festival with Quincy Jones, and made Miles Davis an honorary host. The festival continued to diversify, and was no longer exclusively devoted to jazz. |
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Mr. Wilman Alfonso Jiménez Salazar is a member of the Programme for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders of the Regional Foundation for Human Rights Counselling (INREDH), a voluntary member of the Committee of Human Rights of Orellana and an active member of the Angel Shingre Network of Community Leaders, in Ecuador. In June 2006, Mr. Jiménez Salazar was detained for four hours and hurt by firings of rubber bullets shot by the police and the military while he was observing the violent dispersal of farmers occupying the premises of the Perenco oil company of Punino-Payamino (Amazonian province of Orellana) in protest against the harmful environmental repercussions of the company’s activities. After his release on bail on July 6, 2006 his case has been presented in front of the Penal Court of Orellana, Coca province, where he was tried to be condemned for terrorism and sabotage. According to the latest information from INREDH. the Constituent Assembly solved an amnesty for him, releasing him of any accusation by these facts. |
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Mr. Patrick Chappatte is a Swiss editorial cartoonist who works for the daily newspaper Le Temps, for the Sunday edition of Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and for the International Herald Tribune. Publications that reprint his drawings include Newsweek Japan, FT Deutschland, Jeune Afrique. Mr. Patrick Chappatte is a typical world citizen, who has a Lebanese mother and a Swiss father, was born in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1967, but raised in Singapore and Switzerland. He also worked as an illustrator for the New York Times and as a cartoonist for Newsweek, where he published the comic strip Rob the Cybernaut. Many of his cartoons reflect events in Swiss and international news, such as the 9/11 attacks, the Swiss political parties and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. |
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Ms. Cristina del Valle is a singer and Spanish activist who was born in Oviedo/Asturias in 1960. In 1980, she moved to Madrid for studying criminology and in 1976 she started to work in different groups of social action, NGOs and other organisations working against gender violence. Ms. Cristina del Valle made reality her idea of creating an organisation composed by women of the different artistic and cultural scopes – feeling responsible for the condition of women – with the purpose of adding all their forces for militating for the rights of women. Until now this organisation, called Women Artists Platform, accomplished several missions everywhere in the world. In addition, Ms. Cristina del Valle was the Director of the radio programme Word of Women and in 2004 she was appointed Ambassador of the United Nations for the Campaign of the Millennium Development Goals. As a singer, she began her career with the group Vodevill, but soon she edited her solo disc called Cris. Together with Alberto Comesaña, she formed the successful musical group Amistades Peligrosas, which split up in 1998 and was re-united in 2003. She has received several prizes from different women organisations and institutions all over Spain. In Viso of Alcor/Sevilla a Cristina del Valle-street was inaugurated as a tribute to her fight for defending women’s rights. |
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Mr. Dick Marty, who was born on 7th January 1945 in Sorengo, Ticino, is a Swiss politician of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and has been representing the canton Ticino in the Council of States since 1995. In addition, he is a delegate of the Council of Europe and member of the Human Rights Commission of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Mr. Dick Marty studied jurisprudence at the University of Neuchatel. In 1975 he was appointed Public Prosecutor of the canton Ticino. He was noticed in this function because of his energetic fight against organised crime and drug abuse. In 1989, Mr. Marty became Councillor of the canton Ticino. In this function, he led the cantonal finance department and was the councils’ President in 1992. After his election in the Council of States in 1995 he withdrew from this executive mandate. As a State Councillor, he was a member of different important commissions and played a key role with the consultation over the new Swiss Federal Constitution. Mr. Marty works part-time as a lawyer and economic adviser. From 1996 to 2007 he was President of the organisation mySwitzerland. |
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Mrs. Justine Masika Bihamba |
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Mr. Lars Müller, born in Oslo in 1955, is a Norwegian who lives in Switzerland since 1963. After an apprenticeship as a graphic artist and some years as a peripatetic student in the United States and Holland he opened his own studio in Baden in 1982. He then started to publish books on typography, design, art, photography and architecture. In addition he is a professor of graphic design at the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst in Basel. Lars Müller Publishers is an internationally active publishing house. It came into being as a result of the bibliophile passion of Mr. Lars Müller. Lars Müller Publishers has made a worldwide name for himself – and not just in specialist fields – with carefully edited and designed publications on architecture, design and contemporary photography. Since 1996 he has been a partner in the Integral Concept interdisciplinary design group, which operates in Paris, Milan and Baden. |
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Mrs. Maria Jackeline Rojas Castañeda is the Coordinator and Legal Representative of the Popular Women’s Organisation (OFP) in Barrancabermeja, Colombia. The OFP is set as a collective of women from the base consider themselves as political subjects with rights, who operate in the domain of training and popular mobilization. They implement projects aiming at a life in dignity and oppose themselves to any kind of violence (economic, social, cultural, civil and political). In this context, Mrs. Rojas presents a daily programme called la Mohana. The main objective of this programme is to denunciate the violation of human rights in the context of the armed conflict. In relation to her work for the defence of human rights she has received death threats and intimidations at several occasions. |
