Rights gone wrong - do human rights really exist? :
HUMAN RIGHTS INDUSTRY AND WESTERN HYPOCRISY
Jinadasa Bamunuarachchi
US invasion in Iraq. File photo
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Oscar Wilde, perhaps the wittiest man to come from British Isles once
said that England was the native land of the hypocrite. Oxford educated
playwright journalist and a poet Oscar Wilde may have had his own
reasons to say so - but it often seems to me that 113 years on of his
death, hypocrisy may have been the British and the Western leaders’ most
successful export, in terms of their foreign policy orientation based on
‘Human Rights Regime’ which I prefer to call as Human Rights Enterprise.
After the conclusion of the Second World War and the experience of
the holocaust, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights on December 10, 1948 and with it a profusion of norms,
processes, and institutions to define, promote, and protect human
rights, came in to being.
My attempt in this article is to deal with the popular myth
concerning the regime known as Human Rights, its origin, the
philosophical foundation and nature, scope and the purpose for which the
regime is being used by those claiming to be Human Rights champions
world over. The Western concept of Human Rights is of recent origin and
they are largely practiced by the former Slave-Masters who are keen to
again enslave people of Asia-Africa and Latin America through the cosy
medium of Human Rights in lieu of shameful naked direct intervention.
Human Trafficking
Tony Blair |
Bill Clinton |
Western Human Rights regime is considered to be the offspring of
natural rights, which is said to have evolved from the concept of
natural law. Natural law, which has played a dominant role in Western
political theory for centuries, is the ‘Judeo-Christian morality’
against which all other laws are said to have adjudged and application
of natural law is meant to contest the injustice of human-made law. In
order to achieve this end, in terms of Western thinking, one has to
appeal to the greater authority of God. Accordingly Western concept of
natural law means the god given Law. It is this God given law that is
masquerading as Human Rights which is being relied upon by the Human
Rights crusaders to intervene in world affairs. The founding fathers of
the USA in the declaration of independence in 1776 based their
constitution on this ‘secularized Judeo-Christian morality’. This is
explicitly clear in the preamble to US constitution, which stated:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness -
That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”
The echoes of American constitution and the Western thinking are
unmistakable in the language of the UN Human Rights Declaration of 1948
in that the article one starts with “All men are born equal’. This is
instead of “all men are created equal” that is provided for in the
American constitution.
If one surveys the reason why such a heavy emphasis is placed on ‘all
men are created equal’ and ‘all men are born equal’, one would realise
the stark truth.
David Cameron |
Europe emerged from slavery. Such a miserable state of condition as
slavery was never witnessed in the recorded history of mankind. Slavery
was a fact of life in their countries. Slavery was a system under which
people are treated as property or commodity to be bought and sold, and
are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time
of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave,
to refuse to work, or to demand compensation. In chattel slavery, so
named because people are treated as the personal property, chattels, of
an owner and are bought and sold as commodities, is the original form of
slavery.
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When taking these chattels across national borders it is referred to
as human trafficking especially when these slaves provide sexual
services. In the night, slaves were kept tied to trees or kept
imprisoned to prevent them from being flee. A slave although a human
being had no right to life, because it was considered a commodity and
had no right to life and can be killed at will.
Killing a slave was not an offence in their societies. The modern
world accepts that slavery is a great evil and there are many
international documents that denounce it and make it illegal. Between
1815 and 1957 around 300 international agreements were implemented, with
varying degrees of success, to suppress slavery. Many of these
agreements lacked adequate institutions and procedures to ensure that
they were enforced.
Government Intervention
The social system that was based on slavery in medieval Europe began
to break away, in the 17th Century and a new system called and known as
capitalism took the place of slavery in Europe. Under slavery, slave
master had the absolute ownership of the slave whose labour was obtained
free. In the system of capitalism, labour was no longer free as a price
had to be paid. Capitalism is defined as a social and economic system
where capital assets are mainly owned and controlled by private persons,
where labour is purchased for money wages, capital gains accrue to
private owners, and the price mechanism is utilized to allocate capital
goods between uses.
The extent to which the price mechanism is used, the degree of
competitiveness, and government intervention in markets forces are other
factors in capitalism.
The next stage of capitalism was the imperialism under which people
of Asia Africa and Latin America suffered for centuries and finally
gained independence mostly in the 20th Century following liberation
movements in their respective countries.
Colonial Masters Lost their lavish wealth and income upon the
departure and a way out had to be found to retain the grip over former
colonies. There are several political tools which are being used for
this purpose.
The number one among these tools is the UN Human Rights regime that
consists of 30 articles drafted by Principal Drafter John Peters
Humphrey, a Canadian national who was assisted by Americans and
Europeans and inappropriately presented itself as a guarantor of eternal
truths without which human civilization is impossible.
To be continued |