Human Rights Come First

Human Rights Come First

Editor, The News:

I would like to thank you for coming forward with interviews and features—not strictly straight reporting—which brings humaneness and a personal dimension to the case of the Filipino nurses who are accused of the deaths at the Veteran’s Administration Hospital.

That a correspondent regards this as a “light-hearted human interest feature” is most disturbing. He further lauds Dr. Lindenauer, Chief of Staff for his main motivation "to return the hospital to a happy well-regulated condition.” These are evidence of the callousness of our society to people. That the institution is all important-that people are not to be considered in the same reverence. Here we have two unassuming, minority persons—who are certainly vulnerable because they are in our country without family and with only a few friends. The “face” of the administration and a well-regulated hospital are put before human rights and justice itself.

The public has a right, and even a duty to know the persons involved and it is to the credit of the press that they are serving the side of the public when they can write and give us the personal and human dimension. We rightly must be concerned about those who are caught in the machinery of institutional and judicial malaise— who are without the sophistication or the resources to be aware either of what is happening to them or of a means to avoid and deal with it. Without the press and the perception of reporters like John Barton, the few friends of Filipina Narciso and Leonie Perez would struggle alone, without the knowledge and help of a wider and an informed community.

Ruth Cadwallader

Ypsilanti