Zainab Alkhawaja ' 07青年校友奖录取通知书
Zainab Alkhawaja: Let me first begin by saying what an honor it is for me to receive this award, 能被选中，我是多么的谦卑. The time I spent at 十大菠菜台子 helped equip me with some of the very tools that I have been using in the uprising in Bahrain – in doing my part to fight for human rights and democracy in my country. 我在伯洛伊特的教育不仅影响了我, but throughout the revolution I would remember lessons and professors who left a great mark on how I worked or thought. Let me mention a few, although they all had their impact, and I am grateful to all for their efforts.
当我在社交媒体上发关于抗议的推特时, it was Shawn Gillen’s journalism classes that taught me how to express myself better. 当我被书包围在牢房里的时候, it was his deconstruction classes that made me consider through which lens I was reading each of them. It was Beth Dougherty’s classes that taught me to be 更多的 of a realist. 我曾经是一个纯粹的理想主义者, and I think if I had not had all those lessons in history and human rights atrocities, I would have not been able to handle a lot of the things I was exposed to. The truth is Dougherty’s political science classes and Gillen’s guidance in my Arabic lit project also taught me so much about my own history and language. 当我父亲进行最长时间的绝食抗议时, 我们担心他的生命安全, John Rosenwald’s poetry classes gave me the ability to express my feelings through poetry, 我现在知道这是一种生存方式, 能够表达自己. 当然, some of the classes I took did not help improve my skills at all, 让我的一些教授很失望, and I must admit I still have a big problem with run-on sentences.
尽管他在伯洛伊特大学上过公开演讲课, I continue to not be a very 强大的 public speaker except when I feel the issue at hand is of great importance. 当我在四方广场谈论伊拉克平民被杀的时候, I sure do hope my classmates don’t remember my speeches in class on Arabic dishes and pet peeves. 我想我把我的手藏起来了，这样他们就不会看到我在颤抖.
过去的六年并不容易. 把我所经历的事放在一边, I must say being a witness to the suffering of so many others has been very heartbreaking. 是的, 我被殴打和侮辱, but I have documented hundreds of cases of other people who were tortured in ways that even hearing the details of was unbearably painful, 包括我的父亲, 叔叔, 和丈夫. 是的, 我被囚禁了, but I have to live with the fact that I have been released while most of the people I know are still inside those prisons, with sentences that could keep them in prison for the rest of their lives. I have been injured, but I have also seen protesters shot in their eyes. 我见过死去的和平抗议者的尸体. 孩子的尸体，年仅14岁. 我无法忘记的面孔，我哀悼过的家人. 尽管我们努力奋斗了很长时间, we the people of Bahrain are living in a worse situation today than when this revolution started. It is very frustrating to realize that not only monarchies are allied against us, but also democratic governments who feel being friends with dictators is 更多的 beneficial to them.
While it is fun to listen to Colbert and others and laugh at the expense of Trump, it is not as funny when you know a few words from this man have gotten people killed in my country. Several days after Trump assured the king of Bahrain that there would no longer be any “strain” in the relationship between the two countries, 当局袭击了一次和平的静坐, 杀死五人. 唯一一家非政府报纸被关闭, 仅存的最后一个政治社团已被关闭, and the few remaining activists on the ground were tortured severely and told that nobody in the world cares about them now. 但只谈论特朗普是不公平的.
Generation after generation in Bahrain have faced extrajudicial killings, 系统的折磨, 任意逮捕, and the use of excessive force amongst other tools of repression. What has always been very obvious to the Bahraini people though is that the oppressive regime in Bahrain would not have been able to survive the way it has, had it not been for the support it receives from its western allies. 在所有的U.S. 政府, 民主党还是共和党, 巴林获得了武器销售和经济交易, 并且回避了国际责任. 简单地说，美国.S. administration has played a very big role in keeping the dictatorship strong, 强大的, 在我的国家武装起来. And I believe Americans who truly believe in human rights and democracy have the responsibility to make sure the government that supposedly represents them is not involved in helping dictators repress pro-democracy movements.
我希望你们所有人, 我的校友们, 今天听这个, 你会在你的国家使用你作为合格选民的特权吗, 在你们的职业中发挥影响力, 与巴林人民团结一致. 我希望你们能打电话给你们在国会的代表, 以及白宫和国务院, to demand that they have a better stand on human rights in Bahrain. I also hope that you will raise awareness about the situation in Bahrain with all those around you.
Even if it’s not Bahrain, I hope each of us is always fighting for a just cause. It is those difficult issues that give our lives a meaning that is larger than us. And it is those difficult struggles that speak of our lives even after our death. Finally, it is easy for us to talk about how great Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr.以及纳尔逊·曼德拉. It’s easy for us to say that we would have stood by them and supported them in their struggles had we had the opportunity. 但甘地的名字就算没有几百个，也有几十个, MLK’s and Mandela’s sitting in prison cells right now around the world. 选择支持他们，选择站在他们旁边. 如果不是为了他们，那也是为了你自己的人性.
谢谢你！.
