Download a printable pdf  for this event HERE

Friday, January 20^th,  2012 – 7:30 pm

   BARRY A. FISHER  

Kurdistan: Crossroads in the Crosshairs

An overview of Kurdistan, its geography, peoples, strategic location and role in the current middle/near east turmoil.

Mr. Fisher will speak also about Kurdish culture and the current suppression of language and music.  Also presented will be a taste of Kurdish language with music by Murat Daslik on bağlama with vocals.

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Barry A. Fisher is a partner at Fleishman & Fisher.  The law firm’s practice emphasizes international issues and includes major trial and appellate litigation, ranging widely from commercial to constitutional, civil to criminal.  Mr. Fisher serves as a court-appointed receiver in securities fraud cases, has been elected to the California Academy of Appellate Lawyers..  He has assisted the drafting of constitutions and legislation for countries including Romania, Moldova, Albania, Bosnia, and Belarus, and has consulted on legal matters in many countries, including Russia, Mexico, Spain, Argentina, Canada, Germany, and England. A UCLA law graduate, he clerked for the Alaska Supreme Court Chief Justice, was a U. of Pennsylvania Law School R.H.Smith Fellow, and a founding attorney of the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund. As board member of  FIDOF(International Federation of Festival Organizations) he judged music competitions in many countries, including Greece, Romania, and Egypt and as a professional world music musician he has performed nationally and internationally.

Mr. Fisher served on the multinational negotiation teams and as counsel in the German and Austrian Holocaust settlements, as well as court-appointed class counsel on the Swiss Banks Holocaust cases.  Mr. Fisher is a signatory to the resulting treaty with Germany and Austria.  He serves as counsel on behalf of Chinese, Korean and other Asian victims of the sexual slavery and slave labor systems of wartime Japan. He has been counsel on behalf of many different ethnic, racial, and religious minorities including Kurds, Roma(so-called Gypsies), Armenians, and many religions.

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Recipient, NogunRi Peace Prize (Seoul ROK Nov.2008); Consultant, has served as Vice President, Human Rights Advocates International; Chairman, Religious Freedom Subcommittee, American Bar Association.

He has spoken at conferences worldwide, including North Korea, and has authored many writings on human rights.  Some examples are as follows: Speaker, Turkey/Kurds (European Parliament, Brussels May2011);Speaker, Kurds-Discrimination (Berlin State Parliament, Germany Nov. 2010);

Author, Notes From The WWII Redress Trenches: The Disparate Treatment of Victims East and West(32 Loy.L.A. Int.&Comp.L.Rev.93(2010); Author, Comfort Women and the Courts: Coordinating Legal Strategies, in Erzwungene Prostitution in Kriegs- und Friedenszeiten: Sexuelle Gewalt gegen Frauen und Mädchen (Barbara Drinck & Chung-Noh Gross eds., Kleine Verlag, Bielefeld (Germany), 2007) (Wissenschaftlicher Reihe, Band 160).Author, Roma in 3 Human Rights Encyclopedia 876 (James R. Lewis & Carl Skutsch eds., Sharpe Publ’g 2001).