Personally, it has been an opportunity long awaited for and May the 3rd was the day dream came true…for the first time I was fortunate (without any hiccups) to be sent abroad under the banner of YSS. I felt elated!!!! Thanks to Dr.Denison Jayasooria who had helped me through, via his nomination exercise.

Being my first trip to overseas, there has been a tremendous feeling of excitement within me. But I just ‘pretended’ to be normal under the pretext of ‘being cool’. I was just waiting for my first flight experience from KLIA (for all I was doing before was just receiving and sending people from the airport) and the plane took off at 11.30pm. Excitement aside, deep down I was actually debating on how best I could fare at the seminar I was about to attend. The seminar was on Human & Civil Rights and was sponsored fully by the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung (‘Foundation’).

After a near four hours of transit in London, I landed in Cologne at 7pm, 4th May (Malaysian time 1am, 5th May) and to my dismay I was actually stopped for carrying ‘ENO’. The custom officers gave me that IS-THIS-ENO-OR-DRUG kind of look and I had to spend almost an hour explaining the digestive properties of the product…and to my relief they let me go with an apologetic smile. This unscheduled stop over could have led me to miss the person waiting in the airport. But again to my great relief, the person was patient enough to wait for me until the last minute. We (together with another Russian participant) were brought to a hotel near the academy (for the academy wasn’t ready to accommodate our early arrival).

The next day, we were brought to the academy and the seminar was officially declared open after a hefty lunch far different from our kind of food. The keynote address by the Chairman of the Foundation emphasized on the relevance of the seminar in the light of increasing rate of violation. He also explained the group work base of the seminar. Some insights to the whole agenda of the program were shared, followed by an official ice-breaking session. There were 24 of us, predominantly lawyers, young politicians and real ‘hard-core’ human rights activist. While I was confident relating my job nature to the group, I was also mindful that I need to familiarize the actual Human Rights language others were engaged in. Nevertheless, I was able to endure the sessions with the humble knowledge I acquired in YSS. Dr.Denison and Dr.Vijay’s words of wisdom and their materials enabled me to articulate some of the issues in a liberal manner.

Basically, the first week of the seminar was heavier for we were made to read and reflect on legal documents, treaties and other HR covenants. But working hand in hand with actual lawyers enlarged my horizon. The first part of the second week was not so much ‘lecture’ orientated, instead we were taken to some interesting places (historically significant etc Buchenwald Concentration Camp & Leipzig ). The places we visit and the whole scenario (before the union of east and west or rather ‘east’ joining the west) portrayed clearly the violations of human rights. So, in that sense, the visits were rather emotionally strenuous. Beside visitations, there were also lecture sessions by some key officials representing a political party, police and local authority with a social worker from the Nazi era. After the three days stay in an exclusive hotel, we were back to the academy and it took a while for our group, especially the key ones, to get back to their real debating disposition.

The remaining days of the seminar were spent on concentrating documents by the Amnesty International, the role of NGOs, debate on the rule of law, issues related to enforceability and so on (some of the documents are readily available – contact me if you are interested!!). The exercises undertaken during this period of time were indeed enlightening. They shed light on the finer issues hampering gross development of mankind. Some real grassroots experiences were also shared. While some were similar to what is being experienced by YSS, some are rather new, I also realized that the Malaysian situation is not too bad after all.

The seminar has its own drawbacks and these were acknowledged via a comprehensive assessment done towards the end. Absence of practical solutions were among the key ones as the seminar was more theoretical in nature. Nevertheless it was all good!!! Personally it was a good exposure and had prompted me to do lot more in terms of my own personal development, knowledge acquisition, and above all speaking out things without fear or favour.

(Submitted on 10th Jun 2002)