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Building a Commonwealth of Freedom

12 August 2004

What does it mean to be free? This was one of the topics of the recent Commonwealth Essay Competition organised by the Royal Commonwealth Society. Based on this year's Commonwealth Day theme -- 'Building a Commonwealth of Freedom.'

One of the entries in this years competition.

The top prizewinner for the Under 12 category, New Zealand's Kate Morten, equated freedom to a bird in flight.

"I soar upwards. As my glossy, feathered body bursts through the leaves, a dazzling brightness blazes into my eyes. I peer around at my surroundings -- the blue sky, the green leaves -- this is what it means to be free."

The writer contrasted the life of this bird to that of a jailbird: "I stare at the mouldy, scratched, concrete wall of my tiny cell. I lie back on the hard, tattered bunk that is my bed. My heart longs for my wife, my kids, my home. I was imprisoned for speaking out, for having an opinion." 

Twelve-year-old Kate won £150 for her essay. The Chief Examiner, Dr Charles Kemp, commended Kate for her depiction of the political prisoner "to convey the grim reality of imprisonment and the loss of liberty."

Canadian Rodalia Abdellaoui, also 12, said in her essay: "In some countries, freedom is something some people dream about. I asked my parents why we left our country, our house, our family, all the material things we had, our roots. My parents told me that they traded all of this for us, my brothers and sisters and me, so that we could have freedom."

Rodalia was one of the four winners of the Commonwealth Question Prize category of the essay competition, which carries a cash award of £100.

Another winner, 13-year-old Nazeerah Chohan of South Africa, looked at life in the apartheid era -- "For many years, people struggled to get their freedom. The first step to our freedom was the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990. Another historic moment came on 27 April 1994 when we, all South Africans over the age of 18 could vote." 

Sixteen-year-old Ashleigh Peters of Australia states that "people born with freedom are rarely required to reflect on its meaning or conceive of a society where it is absent. If freedom today is the ability to make choices and to carry them out, then it also requires an awareness of choices, the power to decide amongst them, and the means and opportunity to do so. Only with a strong foundation can freedom be extended throughout the world, communities be developed, and mankind bettered."

Jayashree Arunachalam, 17, of India, explored the issue of freedom through one of his characters -- a caged tiger -- who "had never come across the word before". The tiger, who had been born and bred in a zoo, longed for freedom. "He wanted to run until his muscles ached, until he could run no more, and then he would keep on running, even if it got him nowhere."

Dr Kemp said Jayashree presented an original, intelligent and interesting exploration of what freedom means to different people.