Mandela receives top Amnesty Int'l award; Racist Botha is dead

[Sapphire Blue]

November 1, 2006 - 4:22 PM
Mandela receives top Amnesty Int'l award

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela received Amnesty International's 2006 "Ambassador of Conscience" award on Wednesday for being a moral beacon in a world plagued by human rights abuses.

The award was presented by South Africa's Nobel Prize winning author Nadine Gordimer in Johannesburg at the foundation Mandela founded to raise awareness for humanitarian causes, including HIV/AIDS programs and child rights.

"Mandela epitomises the human being of conscience, male or female," Gordimer said of the 88-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner who guided South Africa from apartheid to democracy and became the country's first black president in 1994.

"We have him still, carrying the consciences of freedom ... to the moral challenges of a new time in human responsibility."

Mandela said lifting people from poverty will restore human dignity and praised the work of Amnesty's 2 million members for their efforts to achieve world justice and prevent rights abuses.

"It is my fervent wish as I come together with human rights activists that we shine hope for the forgotten prisoners of poverty," he said.

Continued @ http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/international/ticker/detail/Mandela_receives_top_Amnesty_Int_l_award.html?siteSect=143&sid=7216831&cKey=1162399061000

1 November 2006
RACIST BOTHA DEAD AT 90

SOUTH Africa's last hardline apartheid leader PW Botha died last night aged 90. The feared "Great Crocodile" helped keep Nelson Mandela locked up for 27 years. President from 1978 to 1989, he was later found guilty of ordering numerous killings and bombings. But thanks to his failing health, he escaped justice and spent his final years living in seaside seclusion rather than jail.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_headline=news-&method=full&objectid=18024099&siteid=94762-name_page.html

[jobycom]

1. If you wait by the river long enough, you will see the body of your enemy

float by.

The good guy wins, sometimes. Nice to remember that in this day and age.

[wake.up.america]

2. Apartheid - what a terrible concept. A man who wasted his life.

[Odin2005]

3. It's about time that racist bastard keels over.

May he burn in hell for all eternity.

[Sapphire Blue]

4. "It is my fervent wish... that we shine hope for the forgotten prisoners of poverty," he said.

:kick: