|
Pictured from left to right are USM LAC student and ISLOA member Kristopher McClure, Representative & USM Professor Elaine Makas and USM Professor Barry Rodrigue displaying the Maine Joint Resolution asking the U.S. Congress to take action to help the people of Chechnya and other parts of the northern Caucasus. |
May 2008
Professor Barry Rodrigue, an associate professor at USM’s Lewiston-Auburn College and advisor to the International Students Organization of Lewiston-Auburn (ISOLA), was recently instrumental in getting the Maine State Legislature to pass a Joint Resolution asking the U.S. Congress to take action to help the people of Chechnya and other parts of the northern Caucasus, who are under the strict military rule of the Russian government based in Moscow. The resolution passed easily in both the House and Senate.
Rodrigue asked Rep. Elaine Makas, D-Lewiston, to sponsor the resolution. It passed easily in both the House and Senate. Makas along with Rodrigue were joined by human rights scholars and activists from Maine at the Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine (HHRC) on May 21 at the State House in Augusta to announce their efforts and draw attention to the continued plight of the people in Chechnya.
“It is important for the people of Maine and the United States to not forget the horrendous struggle of these people for their basic human rights,” said Makas. “I am honored that Barry asked me to sponsor the resolution and excited that he and others from Maine will be able to take it to Congress and the Kremlin to show that we have not forgotten, and must not forget, the bravery and suffering of these people.”
Rodrigue and ISOLA students from USM’s Lewiston-Auburn College will be taking the resolution to Washington, D.C. this summer to lobby members of Congress to take a stronger stance in negotiations with Moscow to end the violence that has been ongoing for more than ten years in Chechnya and other parts of the region.
“This resolution from the Maine State Legislature is a very important act of solidarity,” said Rodrigue. “Chechnya has suffered through more than a decade of some of the worst warfare and human rights violations of the 20th and 21st centuries. This resolution is historic, and Maine can be proud of taking a moral stand against the destruction of entire families, communities, and societies in the Caucasus. The effect of such moral support cannot be underestimated.”
Rodrigue, who has traveled and worked in the former Soviet Union in recent years, will also be taking the resolution directly to Moscow to show lawmakers in the Kremlin and the people of Russia that the citizens of the United States are deeply concerned about the plight of the people in the northern Caucasus. He will also travel to Chechnya and share the resolution with civic leaders there. When he returns, the resolution will be donated, with other materials about human rights issues in the Caucasus, to the HHRC.
Visit the ISOLA web page
|
