G`day mate! My name is Carrie O`donelly, and I am an aussie who lives in Sydney, Australia. Originaly I am from Melbourne, but I study technology at the university of Sydney.
I grew up with my mom back home in Melbourne, my dad was killed by a kangaroo. I`ve been going troug a tough time latley in my life,after I was hold hostage in a very tragic hostage-situation in Sydney this december. Two people got killed. Luckily I managed to get out alive, but it was very traumatic. My cousin James O`Donelly has been really supportive as not only my cousine, but also my best friend lately.
Video of when my father was killed by a kangaroo when I was six years old:
My speach about terrorism
Most people do hopefully not experience terrorism, because it is a terrible terrible thing that will affect you for the rest of your life in many ways. Even if you are not affected personally, its a bad thing. It scares a lot of people, but then again most people think that it will never happen to them. Just like I did. Terrorism is tragic. I think the most tragic thing about it is seeing how much hate a person have inside, to perform such an act like terrorism. It`s just awful. Even if Australia is quite a peaceful country compared to other countries in the world, terrorism still occur there.
It was a beautiful day in Sidney, and my friend and I sat inside a café. It all happened so quickly. Suddenly we were held hostage by an Islamic terrorist. He held eighteen people, included my friend and I as hostage for about five hours. Four of them was injured, and two people got killed. At the end of the situation, the police killed the terrorist himself. I never taught I would ever want to see anyone dead, but when the bullet hit him and he fell over I felt joy.
The worst thing about terrorism must be that it affects so many innocent people, everyone in every age. Women, men, old people and even kids. The terrorists doesn’t care about that. They only care about killing as many people as possible in one place. There must be something we can do to prevent terrorism, maybe not today, but at least in the future. The motive in almost every terror action is religion, included the Sydney hostage situation. If you ask me, killing innocent people has nothing to do with religion. Not in any ways at all.
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela was born and raised in South Africa. He came to the world in 1918, and he died in December 2013. He fought for freedom and equal rights for black and white people in South Africa, for this he was put in jail where he was to spend 27 years of his life. After he was realised from prison in 1990 and in 1994 he became the president of South Africa. He was the first black president in South Africa, and he was president from 1994 to 1999. In 1993, he received the nobels peace price for he`s good work for equal rights. He`s work did not only affect South Africa, but the rest of the world too.
Information found here: https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography
Malala Yousafzai
Malala Yousafzai was born in Pakistan in July 1997. She is a known fighter for girl’s rights to education. She also fights for women’s rights in Pakistan. She had a blog where she wrote about these things she stands for, and she criticized Taliban. Because she had so strong meanings and she was a girl, there was many members of Taliban who wanted to see her dead. One day when she sat on the school bus with twenty other girls a member of Taliban came on the bus and shot four times at Malala. She was shot in the head, but she survived. When this happened she was only fourteen years old. Now she is seventeen years old, and she won the nobel peaceprice in 2014 as the youngest winner of the price ever.
Information found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malala_Yousafzai
Similarities and differences
Both Malala Yousafzai and Nelson Mandela are people who speaks up for people who needs it, included them self. They both have fought for different human rights in their countries. They have not fought without a battle, both of them have struggled a lot on their way to reach their goals, but it have helped them to accomplish results in their cases. Nelson and Malala have both paid their price for speaking up for injustice. Nelson Mandela had to go to prison for 27 years because he wanted that black and white people should have equal rights in South Africa. Malala was shot in the head because she wanted equal rights for men and women in Pakistan. Whats similar for both of these situations is that even if they were at the bottom, they didn`t stop fighting for their case, and that gave results. They must have strong personalities because they`re not afraid of speaking for the case that’s not only about them, but involves a big part of the population in their country. It`s a big age difference between Malala and Nelson. Malala is one of the youngest freedom fighters in the world today, and she is very brave. Nelson died in 2013, but he reached a very high age. In his life, he started his fighting with joining the politic, so that is one of the differences between Nelson and Malala. Malala and Nelson are different in other ways to, I would say that it`s easier for an adult man to fight against so many people than it is for a young girl. Don`t get me wrong, I`m not saying Nelson Mandela had an easy fight for freedom, I`m just saying that Malala Yousafzai is a lot younger than he was, and she is a girl which makes it even harder to get heard.
Death penalty
Death Penalty is a very controversial theme today. Most countries have gotten rid of death penalty, but there is still countries who has death penalty, like USA. USA is actually one of the five biggest executioners today; the four others are China, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq. Amnesty’s work to provide death penalty has been very helpful and really made encouragement among people. Amnesty’s goal with their death penalty campaign was to get people’s attention around the theme, and this really helped with getting closer to their goal to stop death penalty. More than two thirds of the world's countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. In 2012, at least 682 executions were known to have been carried out in 21 countries worldwide. In USA, there are 32 states today who allows death penalty. The most common way to kill the criminals is with lethal injection, after that there is the electric chair, gas chamber is the third most common way, the fourth common way is hanging and the fifth most common way is firing squad. The criminals who gets death penalty has most commonly murdered someone, raped someone, robbed someone or committed a burglary. My personal opinion of death penalty is that it is terrible. I think it`s terrible because even if the criminal person have committed a crime, it`s still a person. What if the person actually is innocent, and this is found out after the system has killed him or her, they can`t exactly bring back that person again. If the person actually have committed the crime, he or she should get the chance to think so much about it I prison that they could regret whatever it is that they have done. I do believe that there must be other ways to punish a criminal person. Let`s say someone gets a death penalty for killing someone, would we be any better our self if we were to kill that person for killing someone? Isn’t it better to let that person pay in other ways, like in prison maybe. The criminal person should be able to think about what they have done, and maybe get a chance to fix it in the best way. Of course you can`t fix a dead person if you killed someone, but at least you can think about that for the rest of your life and regret it. However, I still don`t think it is right to punish someone by doing something that isn`t any better than what they did their self. I would personally call that double standards! In Australia death penalty abolished in 1985, and the last person was executed in 1967. Capital punishment was abolished in Queensland in 1922, Tasmania in 1968, The Northern Territory and the Commonwealth in 1973, Victoria in 1975, South Australia in 1976, Western Australia in 1984 and New South Wales in 1985.
Information collected at http://www.amnestyusa.org/
(Some information from the text is found in thin video made by Amnesty International.