International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

By Dave Collett
Article from : www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglish-central-magazine-racialdiscrimination.htm
Visited on May 10th, 2009. 01:41am
The article about racial discrimination written by Dave Collett deals with the more important facts of Nelson Mandela’s life and with the apartheid. Beyond any doubt, Nelson Mandela is one of the world’s greatest heroes of the Twentieth Century. Not only did he fight to free the people of South Africa, but also to achieve racial equality. Because of his struggle he was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1962. He was released in 1990. Three years later, in 1993, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to abolish racial discrimination in South Africa. In 1994 he became elected president of South Africa and he retired in 1999. He is an inspiration to all the deprived and oppressed people in the world and has never tolerated any form of racism. Concerning the apartheid, its plan was created to repress and oppress non-white people living in South Africa. They were deprived of education, health care and jobs . Apart from this, it was obligatory for a black person to carry a passbook containing their fingerprints, photo and information whenever they wanted to enter a non-black area. In spite of the fact that they were in their own country.
Some years after the Sharpeville Massacre, which left 69 casualties and 187 wounded by the police, on March 21, 1960, the United Nations General Assembly declared that day as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and called on all international communities to work together to fight against racial discrimination as well as to commemorate this tragedy in hopes of a better future for the world.
I think that everybody should get to know about Nelson Mandela’s life. Apart from being a heroe, he is an example because of his courage and commitment to his ideals. He said about his ideal of a democratic and free society: “It is an ideal, which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die".
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