Human Rights: Making Exceptions “With Cause”
by Ms. Boomer-ang
In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, animals take over a farm and paint on a wall “an unalterable law by which all animals” there “must live forever.” This law was a list of commandments, one of which was: “No animal shall kill any other animal.” But eventually the leaders began having other animals executed. And one day, the commandment against killing other animals was noticed to have at its end two extra words, “without cause.”
Likewise, many of those who proclaim commitments to human rights, protections, and respect for everybody for all time, in practice come up with “sufficient causes” to reduce or deny these rights for at least some people at least some time. Some even appear willing to give up some rights in order to wipe out other rights efficiently.
Examples and observations follow:
Torture and Guilt
The US Constitution, the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the Geneva Convention, and other standards prohibit cruel punishments and torture, require humane conditions for prisoners, and require presumption of innocence until proven guilty. No exceptions.
But early this century, US agencies held alleged terrorists and alleged terrorist enablers in inhumane conditions and tortured them, without a trial.
Some of the torture centers lay in formerly Communist countries , even though during the Cold War, Americans had been told that one bad thing about Communist countries is that they had terrible prisons and tortured people.
The US also rendered people to openly brutal countries for torture.
Some support torture as a way of getting information or a confession. But people undergoing torture often make up false information or confess falsely. These do not bring investigators closer to the truth. And what about the presumption of innocence until proven guilty?
Several American officials claimed that the Geneva Convention did not apply, because the suspects were “enemy combatants.” What about that label is exceptional? In violent fights, all sides are combatants, and all call their adversaries “enemies.”
Could we see it coming? From 1984 to 2000, the US Army ran the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, which trained Latin Americans how to torture people in their own countries. (Though the curriculum did also include some lessons on human rights.) Did some North American mouths water? From Fort Benning to Abu Ghraib, is not the line logical?
Elections
Every country has a right to hold elections without outside interference. But the US and other countries have been trying to influence each other’s elections for over a century.
In 1970, presidential advisor Henry Kissinger claimed, “[We don’t] need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves!”
And what if the election still does not go as powerful outsiders want? For Chile in 1973, it was a violent coup.
Right to Bear Children
The western media has acknowledged forced abortions, infanticide, and other violence during China’s one-child regime. But Singapore, Vietnam, and sometimes India have also imposed family-size limits and declared them sufficient cause for reducing human rights for “excessive” children, mothers who carry them to term, and families who do not disown the mother. Punishments and discrimination include fines, surcharges, dismissal from jobs, and denying children admission to schools. In about 1990, I heard somebody who had lived in Asia report that in Indonesia when government officials call on homes, the family hides their children except the first two.
Meanwhile in the US, when I was in undergraduate college in the mid-1970s:
- In a Political Science class, the professor asked whether it was okay for a government use undemocratic techniques and to violate human rights to bring about development. The student who answered said, “Yes, because there are too many people.”
- About nine months after Indira Gandhi had left office, another fellow student, the daughter of a European Catholic and Asian Indian Buddhist, who lived in northwestern Europe, told me that Gandhi’s successor was a fascist because he had canceled some family-size restrictions that Gandhi had imposed. Calling such restrictions necessary, her voice suggested self-righteous contempt for bearing more than a certain number of live children.
Minorities and Unworthiness
Sometimes membership in certain groups is considered sufficient cause to deny equal rights. Race, ethnic group, religion, economic status, age, family member behavior, presumed “wantedness” before birth, abilities, and health can define these groups, depending on the country and community. A previous blog post goes into this.
Observed Attitudes
Many “causes” used to justify human rights violations include:
- Rights for “us,” not necessarily for “them.”
In college, a Political Science major told me that some “less developed” countries “aren’t ready for democracy.” She didn’t specify what qualified a place as ready for democracy.
- Rules for “them,” not necessarily for “us.”
Illustrated by the US torturing people in formerly Communist countries.
In addition, Mr. Kissinger “time and again displayed contempt for the idea that the powerful can and should be constrained by democratic safeguards.”
- Those who made the standards didn’t have this case in mind. Illustrated by the “enemy combatant” claim.
- Something like this has never happened before, so rules made ‘before’ don’t apply.
- Since the rules were made, morals, ethics, and lifestyles have changed.
- New technology, scientific discoveries, and medical practices make any standards made ‘before’ obsolete.
- The standards don’t take into account the inherent “rights” and “duties” that have been “recognized” after they were made.
- Some standards, like the UDHR (adopted 1948), were reactions to Naziism and World War II. Now enough time has passed for us to leave their shadow.
- Getting rid of a right or protection by simply declaring it an arcane reactionary “religious” practice. This flips the right, in the eyes of the “educated,” into an “oppression.” This has happened to the right to live from conception to natural death.
- Reversing definitions. Claiming the right to oppress another and convincing the world that being oppressed is the other’s “right.”
When officials and experts tell you that it is your “right” and “best interest” to die, that if you stay alive beyond a certain point you will lose your “dignity,” and that to want to stay alive in your condition is “irrational,” they really mean “it is the majority’s human right to live in a world unpolluted by burdensome you.”
Another example is the young woman’s calling someone “fascist” for tolerating large families.
- Willingness to give up other human rights in order to practice the “right” to violate certain other rights.
Illustrated by the two examples of college students accepting population control.
Actually, rejecting “human rights” as a goal, in order to keep abortion, recognizes that living from conception to natural death is a human right. More likely, they will redefine “human rights” to include sentencing dependents to death. In that case, it will be for people (like me) who object to this change to come up with a new term for what we now call “human rights.”
These attitudes are what human rights activists are up against. They are challenges to confront.
Defining and Redefining Human Rights
Over the ages, there have been many definitions of rights, protections, duties, and responsibilities. This can be the subject of many essays.
The violation of some human rights can make the violation of others less unattractive, but the presence or absence one human right does not guarantee the presence or absence of others. For one thing, democracy — the people having a major say in making the rules — is not a synonym for freedom or human rights. People can democratically vote to kill people for belonging to a certain ethnic group or having a certain disability. For another example, one can maintain free speech while waging a campaign to kill these people. In this case, we can say, write, and broadcast that the killing is wrong, without being arrested, as long as we are willing to be told, “You make logical points, but you lost!”
Are commitments to human rights for everybody for all time meaningless, because of how they are modified as circumstances and morals change? Are “rules” protecting human rights as meaningless as Animal Farm’s law against killing other animals became when they added “without cause”?
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For more of our posts from Ms. Boomer-ang, see:
Political Homelessness is Better than a Wrong Political Home
“Shut Up and Enjoy it!”: Abortion Promoters who Sexually Pressure Women
Asking Questions about Miscarriage and Abortion
The Danger of Coerced Euthanasia: Questions to Ask
Depicting Fatal Violence: A Double-Edged Sword
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