Rights gone wrong - do human rights really exist? - Part II :

WESTERN INTERFERENCE in the guise of HUMAN RIGHTS

Jinadasa BAMUNUARACHCHI

Saddam Hussein

In fact the human rights corpus, though well meaning, is a Eurocentric construct meant for the reconstitution of non-Western societies and peoples with a set of culturally biased norms and practices. For instance values in a patriarchal society like ours have no place in the Western value system which provided the ideological basis for Universal declaration.

In the post-Cold War era, this Human Rights regime was nakedly used on the pretext of resolving conflicts and prevents humanitarian disasters around the world. In the 1990s, a series of military interventions were carried out in the name of human rights. In 1999, the first so-called ‘humanitarian war’ was carried out in the former Yugoslavia by NATO forces without the formal approval of the UN.

The principle of non-intervention, the idea that states should refrain from intervening in the affairs of other states, has long been considered an important rule of international relations. The United Nations Charter prohibits states from attacking other states. Only the Security Council can authorise the use of force in order to protect international peace and security.

Today virtually every cause seeks to cloak itself in the righteous language of rights. But even so, this universal reliance on the rights idiom has not succeeded in creating common ground and deep agreement as to the scope, content, and philosophical bases for human rights. This is because the current Human Right regime is heavily Eurocentric in nature and has no correlation to the oldest cultures in the world.

The idea of a right to humanitarian intervention was pioneered in the 1960s by a group called French humanitarian organisation Médecins sans Frontières (MSF). When there are human rights violations, MSF argued, international actors have a right to intervene to stop them.

‘Humanitarian war’

The 1990s witnessed an unprecedented number of interventions ostensibly carried out in defence of human rights.

Military interventions were justified on human rights grounds to varying degrees in Iraq in 1990-1991, Somalia in 1991-1993, East Timor and Sierra Leone in 1999, and the former Yugoslavia throughout the 1990s.

In 1999, NATO launched a six-week bombing campaign against Serbia.

Serbia’s alleged atrocities government forces said to have begun to commit in the province of Kosovowas taken as a catastrophic situation and a military intervention was designed to prevent what allies called a humanitarian disaster - the forcible expulsion of Kosovo’s majority Albanian community by Serb forces.

The first so-called ‘humanitarian war’ was controversial because it was not sanctioned by a UN Security Council resolution as the Charter mandates.

Destruction caused by the 1999 NATO bombing in Serbia

This was because two permanent members of the Security Council, Russia and China, were opposed to any intervention in Kosovo. They argued that the Western powers were using human rights as an excuse to interfere in the affairs of other countries.

NATO went ahead with the campaign without the UN sanction. Serbia ultimately surrendered and Kosovo became independent.

The Kosovo case provided a most recent example of Balkanisation put in place by the US led allies. Balkanisation is defined as the process of fragmentation or division of a region or state into smaller regions or states that are often hostile or non-cooperative with each other. The division of regions and states is major item on the western political agenda at the present time. R 2 P is being used to achieve this political goal.

US President Bill Clinton and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke of the emergence a new world order where foreign policy decisions are motivated by their own theory of R 2 P in the protection of human rights.

By taking military action to protect one community, however, the rights of another suffered. The NATO dropped 23,000 bombs on Serbia in order to protect much cherished Human Rights. It is a clear case in recent history that Human rights Regime was used to divide a country against the will of its people. What a smack of hypocrisy.

Certainly the existence of human rights in this backdrop is a myth. The regime is widely abused, for political and economic objectives.

Human Rights regime is currently being used as a political tool by the America and its western allies. The extent, to which the use of human rights has become a political tool in the hands of super powers, can be discussed in relation to recent use of power to bring down regimes in the Middle East by the USA and its allies.

Invasion of Iraq in March 2003, by coalition led by the U.S. and U.K. provides a classic case in point. British Prime Minister Tony Blair accused Saddam Hussein of possessing weapons of mass destruction and having ties to Al-qaeda. This allegation is unproved even to this day.

However, on November 5, 2006, Saddam was convicted not for having WMD but on charges related to violation of Human rights and killing of 148 Iraqi Shi’ites in 1982 and was sentenced to death by hanging. His execution was carried out on 30 December 2006.

Is it justified to use violence to promote human rights in this manner? Isn’t this clear smack of hypocrisy?

Is it only the West that can speak of Human Rights? What are non-Westerners position vis-a-vis Human rights?

The world’s first Human Rights discourse was first made known and gifted to the mankind by Gautama the Buddha in 6th century BC. This is a fact unknown to the west. The Buddha preached a comprehensive and complete way of life which is an embodiment of all or more rights at a time Western man was in the jungle as a primitive creature. One does not need to go on extensive study of Buddhism to find out this fundamental truth. The ‘panchaseela’ or pansil (five precepts) the elementary teaching would through the light on this question.

Five precepts

Most religions have moral and ethical rules and commandments. Buddhism has precepts, but it’s important to understand that the Buddhist precepts are not a list of rules to follow. In some religions, moral laws are believed to have come from God, and breaking those laws or transgression is going against God. But Buddhism doesn’t have a God, and the precepts are not commandments. The five precepts (five virtues) are commitments to abstain from harming living beings, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying and intoxication. Undertaking the five precepts is part of both lay Buddhist initiation and regular lay Buddhist devotional practices.

Five precepts are not formulated as imperatives, but as training rules that laypeople undertake voluntarily to facilitate practice.

The simple meaning of the first precept is that I abstain from harming or killing any living being. What does this mean? This is nothing but accepting the right to life which is not a Human Right as declared in the Human rights charter or any other human rights discourse promulgated by the west, but essentially a Fundamental right of all living being. The Human Rights charter does not recognise the right to life of non-human beings. This is one of the fundamental prerequisite that is lacking in the Western Human Rights discourse. This is the reason for daily slaughtering millions of animals for human consumption.

According to Western thinking and ideology slaughtering animals is not a violation of animal rights, because they are not humans and hence animals can be killed at will. If the western ideology accepts the right to life as a fundamental right of all living being they cannot continue with daily slaughtering of millions of animals for their decadent life style.

Also to treat animals by clipping their beaks and claws, putting them in vast clucking concentration camps, packed into cages so small they’re unable to move, where they are drip-fed drugs to artificially enhance their breasts, before being executed. So they have termed the phrase as Human Rights to exclude the non-human beings that have a right to life.

The second precept means that I undertake to abstain from taking what is not given (steal). This is the right to property or respecting the right to retain ones property whether they are human or non-human being.

The third precept means that I undertake to abstain from sexual misconduct. One could well comprehend relevancy and the propriety of the third precept in relation to safety security and well being of the institution of family in terms of one’s right to privacy and decent livelihood without being infringed by others. This is the right to dignity and freedom from sexual abuse. The scope of the fundamental right in Buddhist doctoring is thus extended to cover the protection of family life in society.

Fourth precept is means that I undertake to abstain from lying or false speech.

This has become one of the most important fundamental rights in the current political scenario especially in relation to the conduct of national and international media.

Buddhist teachings

This is the right to know the truth or not be lied to. Everyone has a right to information, it’s not mere loading information designed to mislead people for sinister purposes or to manipulate with the objective of covering truth in order to achieve desired results. Everyone has the tight to know the facts and truth however unpalatable it is. That is the importance and the bearing of the fourth precept in private or public life where everyone speaks the truth and nothing but the truth.

The last of the five precepts is not meant as a right but as a rule of discipline that help protect safety security and well being of the man kind.

The meaning of this precept is that I undertake to abstain from taking intoxicants or from fermented drink that causes heedlessness.

A direct application of these five precepts yields, a right to life, a right not to have one’s property stolen, a right to fidelity in marriage, and a right not to be lied to. Many other human rights, such as the rights to liberty and security can either be deduced from or are extant within the general corpus of Buddhist moral teachings. A right not to be held in slavery, for example, is implicit in the canonical prohibition on trade in living beings.

These rights are the extrapolation of what is due under Dharma; they have not been “imported” into Buddhism but were implicitly present.

According to western thinking Rights are natural and natural rights have come from the creator. Buddhism does not accept a creator and no one has given rights to humanity. Buddhism accepts the natural rights that are necessarily relates to the Fundamental Laws of the Nature. Therefore humans have to co-exist with the nature and it is this bit that is not found in the Western thinking.

Buddhism, more than any other religion, places a high emphasis on freedom of thought and freedom of expression in terms of its doctrinal ethics clearly articulated in the discourses of the Buddha.

The fundamental Buddhist doctrinal positions on freedom of thought, freedom of expression and intellectual debate are clearly represented in the Dharma. The Buddha taking an unprecedented move attacked the cast system of India and raised the status of the woman by establishing the Bikkuni order.

Western writers who study Indian thought in most cases have either misunderstood or misinterpreted socio-political conditions prevalent at the time. They prefer to use the word despotism which does not provide the true position in relation to the socio-cultural relations that existed in the contemporary society. This usage has created the impression in the English reader’s mind that in Asian lands it was a case of despotic monarchs tyrannising over a helpless people. The type of oppression of the peasant by the lord as was witnessed in Europe before the French Revolution was never seen within the boundaries of Buddhist India or Sri Lanka.

The Western man is trying to define our social relations in terms of his knowledge in relation to the evolution of European political thought. This is absolutely without any basis and based on the wrong premise and belief.

Human Rights violations

If one looks at the Sri Lankan case, and what’s happening in the international arena in relation to the country’s alleged Human Rights violations, one could foresee the events to follow. Methods likes use of economic sanctions and embargoes would not apply on the same scale in our case as there is an obvious contrast with the conditions that prevailed either in Iraq or Egypt. Human Rights crusaders are well aware that overt and covert operation to bring in Arab style spring will not succeed as it could turn in to an Arab winter in our country. Human Rights crusaders may be having an overall assessment of the ground situation and associated issues concerning the Sri Lankan case.

The modus operandi of bring the accountability issue before the Human Rights council and pursing this issue for several years more is undoubtedly form part of a long-term strategy aimed at regime change. This is indicative of the US move to bring a “procedural” resolution as a follow up to the UNHRC in March 2012. How long will the follow up to go on? Where is the end to this follow up? Who does the so called dispassionate investigation? Why such a bleak picture of Sri Lanka is being painted at Human Rights Commission based on unproved allegations? When will the US and its allies take their hands off Sri Lanka honouring the country’s sovereignty?

Sri Lanka as a country has suffered a lot and bled profusely on account of terrorism. It is now being taken to task for crushing terrorism. Isn’t this an attempt to get the country probed under Genocide Convention? Aren’t they presenting Sri Lanka’s victory of crushing terrorism as violation of Human rights? Hasn’t Sri Lanka got the right to protect its sovereignty from those who challenge it? Will USA and its western allies ready to give a part of their respective countries to Al-qaeda? Aren’t they aware that LTTE was the blood brothers of Al-qaeda? Will this not stop until the US and its allies achieve their political objective of establishing hegemony in the region in the name of Human rights?

Any objective analysis of Sri Lanka’s political landscape during the post-war period will suggest that our country does not stand lower than other countries in terms of human rights; and it is a fact that there are no probes against those countries where basics of human rights are not observed. Before I conclude I wish to point out the true nature of western hypocrisy with one example.

The President of the European Court of Human Rights, Sir Nicolas Bratza warned Western political leaders against using “emotion and exaggeration” to criticise the court’s workings. He made his comments as he released figures detailing the court’s rulings during 2011. The figures revealed that the court ruled against the UK on eight occasions.

Political tool

British Prime Minister David Cameron who was annoyed with ECHR once called upon in the House of Commons for reform of the court, saying the volume of cases and the triviality of some meant it was in danger of becoming a “small claims court”. Such was his attitude toward the Court ruling against UK.

Finally it must be emphasised that a human right by definition is a universal moral right, something which all men women and children everywhere, at all times ought to have, but being misused as a political tool for regime change by those who have the means and might to do so. Our country is in grave peril of being coerced. The road ahead of us is a tortuous path to tread on. We need to close ranks and design a well thought out effective foreign policy orientation to cope up with the situation.

The present Human Rights regime emanating from the West is necessarily Eurocentric based on Judeo-Christian morality and hence lacks universality (applicable everywhere). The regime is also not egalitarian (same for everyone).

And has been used as coercive political tool for proliferation of superpower hegemony, if it was to succeed, it must move away from Euro centrism as a civilizing crusade and attack on non-European peoples. Only a genuine approach to human rights can make it truly universal. Indigenous, non-European traditions of Asia, Africa, the Pacific, and the Latin Americas must be deployed to deconstruct - and to reconstruct - a universal bundle of rights that all human societies can claim as theirs.

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Concluded