Kerry
Kennedy, President of the Robert F. Kennedy Center (third from right), with
Grameen Bank members.
Last
week, at the invitation of my friend Muhammad Yunus, I traveled to Bangladesh, a
truly humbling and inspiring experience. I met so many incredible people
struggling to improve their country and their lives. I wrote a letter to my
daughters about my travels, which follows:
Dear Cara, Mariah and Michaela,
Visiting Bangladesh has been a lifelong dream of mine, but all that I had heard
about a people who love freedom so much that they have withstood great armies,
famine and intractable poverty could not prepare me for what I've seen in the
last three days.
The Bengali patriots' courage and endurance in the face of the Pakistani army
forty years ago is the stuff of legend in our family. I remember your Great
Uncle Teddy telling us about his visit to the Calcutta refugee camps, where
tens of thousands lived not in tents but in sewer pipes. The people in these
camps had fled the mass killings -- some would say genocide -- that the United
States had failed to stop, as the Nixon Administration's official policy was to
choose our relationship with Pakistan over those who shared our love of freedom.
Great Uncle Teddy promised to return when the country gained independence, and
a few months later, he and Uncle Joe were among the first international
visitors to the newborn country of Bangladesh.
Given what I'd heard from Uncle Teddy, I suppose I should not have been
surprised by the inspiring people that my colleague Lydia Allen and I met in
Bangladesh, people who endure extreme hardship for the freedom that they love
and that they demand for their country.
In a small wooden room packed with women in bright saris, we met a proud
shareholder of the Grameen Bank -- the transformative microlending institution
founded by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus -- who borrowed 5,000 taka
(about $80) and bought a rickshaw, and then 20,000 taka ($240) and bought a
cow, and then 30,000 taka ($480) and bought land. Thanks to her hard work and
the Grameen Bank, she now has a house full of furniture, a field full of food,
water, a working toilet, and a television set. She saves 100 taka per month,
and this year she will receive 100,000 taka ($750) from her savings.
We met a store owner and her husband, who borrowed from Grameen to buy solar
panels, which have allowed them to expand their storefront and provide light to
the brick house they share with three siblings and their in-laws.
We met a young woman on a Grameen scholarship who will be the first woman in
her family to go to college. She is majoring in computer science and plans to
start a business in the IT sector that will transform her neighborhood.
We met ten women who sit on the board of the Grameen Bank, borrowers all.
They're angry at the government and concerned for the future of the bank. The
government recently ousted Dr. Yunus from the board of his own bank on the
pretense that he had overstayed the mandatory retirement age of sixty. Then,
finding no other legal way to do so, the government cajoled the rubber-stamp
Parliament to change a banking law for the specific purpose of ousting the
impoverished women from the Grameen board and replacing them with ruling party
toadies, who, the women fear, will transform the multibillion-dollar bank that
has helped so many escape poverty into just another slush fund for kleptocrats
to draw upon.
We met a dozen women, many of them lawyers, all of them leaders of NGOs that
address pressing issues like indigenous rights, due process of law, violence
against women, dowry battles, rape, and environmental justice. Many have been
arrested, and many live under daily threat. One said her husband had been "disappeared"
in apparent retaliation for her work. They are scared of the nation's security
forces, which are known for kidnappings, torture and extrajudicial executions.
And yet they wake up in the morning, kiss their children and their husbands,
and return to work, a daily show of quiet courage.
We met a woman who worked at the collapsed Rana Plaza sweatshop who said she
never wants to work in the apparel industry again. I met another who said the
same thing, but added, "But we are poor, and we must work."
They were among a crowd lining the hallway and sitting at intake tables at the
offices of the Rana Plaza Claims Administration, the nonprofit group charged
with addressing reparations for the victims of the Rana Plaza collapse. It is
an impressive operation, manned by a team of dedicated professionals in labor,
law and computer science, intent on making payouts to every single victim for
physical and psychological injuries and to the scores of dependents who lost
the family breadwinner in the tragedy. They have $17 million to hand out, and
calculate the need will be closer to $40 million, but the fund is voluntary and
no law compels the brands to pay their fair share. While some have been
generous, too many others have refused to participate, because no law compels
them to do so.
We met U.S. Ambassador Dan Mozena, a man singularly committed to advancing U.S.
interests abroad by protecting basic rights and increasing the prosperity of
the people of Bangladesh. He invited me to visit the Edward M. Kennedy Center
and the Ted Cafe, a gathering place created by the embassy for NGOs to meet and
speak in safety, and for young people to learn about our country.
Michaela, the book shelf of one entire room was jammed with SAT prep books,
looking all too familiar. Thanks to Ambassador Mozena, you will have plenty of
competition from young Bangladeshis as you apply for college, determined to
gain an education at U.S. schools, and return to their homeland with new hope
for the future.
We met Adil Rahman Khan, who has organized a team of 400-plus human rights
monitors and defenders across the country to investigate and report on
violations of voting rights; on crackdowns on free speech and assembly; and on
torture, extrajudicial execution, disappearances, and more--holding the
government accountable for its failures to protect the freedom that the
Bangladeshi people won at such great cost 40 years ago. Adil seeks
accountability in a country where 197 anti-corruption officers are presently
under investigation for corruption themselves. For his actions, Adil lives
under a constant threat of death. Last year, after issuing a report documenting
a massacre by government forces of 61 protestors, he was taken away and held
without trial for 62 days in a filthy cell, ridden with bedbugs and rotten food.
How proud Uncle Teddy would be to know that this man, who personifies all the
values that Teddy and Grandpa Bobby so admired, will receive the Robert F.
Kennedy Human Rights Award later this year.
And, of course, we met with my dear friend Dr. Yunus. He invited us to come to
Dhaka for Social Business Day, where people from scores of countries across the
globe gathered to share their designs and experiences with creating businesses
which seek not profits for shareholders but solutions to problems like housing
or food access.
You were still in diapers when Dr. Yunus came to our home nearly
15 years ago and I interviewed him for my book Speak Truth to Power. I have
always been struck by the sense of peace and joy he conveys in the many lectures
I have since seen him deliver. But I never appreciated how incredible that was
until I saw him in Bangladesh. He is under unremitting pressure from a
government that seeks to destroy all he has given his life to build. And yet he
endures, and invites us to somehow find peace amidst the chaos in our lives and
find our joy through service. His steady bearing reminded me of these lines
from Rudyard Kipling's poem "If":
"If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
If you can watch the things you gave your life for, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools...
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings -- nor lose the common touch...
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it..."
By this measure, Dr. Yunus has achieved the world.
What an amazing place, what an amazing country. As we in America celebrate our
own Independence Day this week, I hope we can take inspiration from the people
of Bangladesh and rededicate ourselves to democracy and freedom, knowing that
the price may be high, but the sacrifice is well worthwhile.
Love,
Momma
First published in The Huffington Post, July 7, 2014
Kerry Kennedy is President of Robert F.
Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights
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