Daily News Online
http://www.liyathabara.com/   Ad Space Available Here  

Tuesday, 26 March 2013

Home

 | SHARE MARKET  | EXCHANGE RATE  | TRADING  | OTHER PUBLICATIONS   | ARCHIVES | 

dailynews
 ONLINE


OTHER PUBLICATIONS


OTHER LINKS

Marriage Proposals
Classified
Government Gazette

Rights gone wrong - do human rights really exist? :

HUMAN RIGHTS INDUSTRY AND WESTERN HYPOCRISY



US invasion in Iraq. File photo

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.

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

EMAIL |   PRINTABLE VIEW | FEEDBACK |

KAPRUKA - New Year Gift Delivery in Sri Lanka
www.news.lk
www.defence.lk
Donate Now | defence.lk
www.apiwenuwenapi.co.uk
LANKAPUVATH - National News Agency of Sri Lanka
www.army.lk
Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL)

| News | Editorial | Business | Features | Political | Security | Sport | World | Letters | Obituaries |

Produced by Lake House Copyright © 2013 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.

Comments and suggestions to : Web Editor