Yale Daily News: "Kerry Kennedy cites Clinton know-how" (great story)

Kerry Kennedy cites Clinton know-how

Aaron Bray
Staff Reporter
Published Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Kerry Kennedy has experience in her own field of human rights. She wants to see experience in the White House, too.

Kennedy, the daughter of one-time presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy and the founder of the Center for Human Rights, named in his honor, has worked as a human-rights activist for almost 30 years. On Sunday, she campaigned in Connecticut for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton LAW ’73, even as her uncle, Senator Ted Kennedy, and cousin, Caroline Kennedy, accompanied Senator Barack Obama through a series of pre-Super Tuesday rallies across the country.

“I know Hillary Clinton from personal experience,” Kennedy told the News by phone as she left Stamford on Sunday morning. “I’ve been working in international human rights for the last 27 years. I’ve worked with her on issues facing women and children overseas, on torture, … on opening up the press in China.”....

She began by recalling Clinton’s drive and compassion in addressing human-rights issues. Kennedy told the story of Sister Dianna Ortiz, an American in Guatemala in the early 1980s, who traveled to Central America to teach indigenous Mayan youth how to read. In 1989, she was “captured, tortured and brutally raped” by members of the Guatemala military, Kennedy said. Although Ortiz escaped, Kennedy said, the U.S. embassy attributed her wounds to “a hundred cigarette burns” received in a “kinky lesbian love affair.” Ortiz has since sought to determine whether there is a link between her torture and the U.S. government, Kennedy said.

“I told Clinton about Sister Dianna , and within 12 hours, Clinton was talking to Sister Dianna,” Kennedy recalled....

More: http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/23331