• by Kerry Kennedy
• Friday, September 04, 2009
• Inter Press Service

For 30 years, Senator Edward Kennedy was the human rights movement's strongest ally and its soul on Capitol Hill, writes Kerry Kennedy, President of the Robert F. Kennedy Foundation of Europe.

In this article, the author writes that when Haitian refugees were being detained and deported, Kennedy stood with us and with Haitian activists like Ray Joseph to demand an end to arbitrary detentions and sham legal proceedings. Ray, whose life was literally saved by Teddy, is now Haiti's Ambassador to the United States.

When asylum seekers were denied legal standing, Teddy authored and engineered the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980, helping to create a legal right to asylum. When the US government turned a blind eye to South Africa's State of Emergency and torture of young children, Ted Kennedy led the fight to pass the Anti-Apartheid Act of 1985, bringing US policy into alignment with our values.

Wherever freedom's sons and daughters have been on the march for liberty -from the Soviet Gulag to the streets of Central America, from Marcos' Philippines to the killing fields of Cambodia, Uganda, and now Darfur, Teddy was their drum major for justice.

(*) Kerry Kennedy, President of the Robert F. Kennedy Foundation of Europe.

//NOT FOR PUBLICATION IN THE UNITED STATES, ITALY AND ARGENTINA//

//NOT FOR PUBLICATION IN CANADA, CZECH REPUBLIC, IRELAND, POLAND, THE UNITED STATES, AND THE UNITED KINGDOM//

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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