Inhuman Rights 1 Inhuman Rights The Western System and Global Human Rights Abuse By Winin Pereira The Other India Press, Mapusa, Goa, India The Apex Press, New York, USA Third World Network, Penang, Malaysia 2 Inhuman Rights: The Western System and Global Human Rights Abuse By Winin Pereira First published (1997) by: The Other India Press Above Mapusa Clinic, Mapusa 403 507 Goa, India Telephone/Fax: 91-832-263305 E-mail: [email protected] in association with: The Apex Press Suite 3C, 777 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017 Telephone/Fax: 800-316-APEX E-mail: [email protected] and: Third World Network, 228 Jalan Macalister, 102500 Penang, Malaysia E-mail: [email protected] Copyright© (1997) Winin Pereira Cover design: Orijit Sen OIP policy regarding environmental compensation: 5% of the list price of this book will be made available by the Other India Press to meet the costs of raising natural forest on private and community lands in order to compensate for the use of tree pulp in paper production. Distributed in India by: The Other India Bookstore Mapusa 403 507 Goa, India. Telephone: 91-832-263306 Fax: 91-832-263305 India ISBN No: 81-85569-33-9 USA ISBN No: 0-945257-79-1 Printed by Sujit Patwardhan for the Other India Press at MUDRA, 383, Narayan, Pune 411 030 India. 3 Publisher's Preface Many of us will recall that when we were young--even in a city like Bombay (name now changed to "Mumbai")--we avidly read comic books that narrated stories of cowboys and "Red Indians". One piece of education that must have stuck in many people's minds was the repeated observation of several Indian Chiefs in those comics that "the white man speaks with forked tongue." As the rest of the non-Western world has also now discovered to its discomfiture, that experience has not been limited to Amerindians alone. The West, as Winin Pereira shows in this book, has indisputably been the greatest abuser of the rights of people everywhere--witness the record of the past 500 years. It continues its relentless assault on the rights of others with even greater determination today through interventionist actions of its powerful financial institutions, war machines, wars, invasions, and a development programme that is threatening to wreck the very fabric of nature and human community across the planet. Despite this awesome, documented, undisputed, wholly banal record, the West continues to proclaim its championship of human rights, often against the projected and well advertised and allegedly miserable human rights records of Muslim-countries, Asians, Chinese, Iranians, Libyans: the list of proclaimed offenders is seemingly endless. The impression we have of the West’s human rights discourse is not just of one forked tongue, but--if one can stretch the imagery--two faces and perhaps six forked tongues. This scenario needs to be roundly exposed. Inhuman Rights does just this and does it well. For reasons the author himself briefly explains in the book, it refuses to go further than that. The normal expectations we have of writers is a detailed analysis of a problem, discussion of remedies, and some option including a possible agenda. Pereira does indicate possible directions and alternatives but does not attempt to present a new “universal” declaration since (he argues) this would be contrary to the establishment of universal justice. There are other compelling reasons as well. The present human rights debate, the nature of the human rights discourse- -the vocabulary used, the categories of thinking relied upon, the legal instruments in force--all these remain dominated and contaminated by the West, by its overt and covert political and economic interests. 4 The UN Declaration itself, as Pereira shows in this book, is an instrument that enables the West actually to overwhelm the rights of others. There is therefore nothing really "universal" about it. It remains a document that reflects the West, its ethnic concerns, its thinking, its interests. Such thinking may not necessarily be the thinking of intelligent people everywhere. There is no way therefore that the present discourse on human rights can be improved: the entire edifice may have to be sacrificed, beginning with the Universal Declaration on Human Rights itself. The relevant question to ask is whether this Declaration should not now be abrogated—because of its continued complicity in human rights abuse worldwide--in the fiftieth year of its ratification. This may seem to many an audacious proposal. However, valid, many huge and seemingly gargantuan structures have indeed collapsed without warning in our time and age. We are also witness to the decline and fall of several fake universals. The most outstanding of the latter was the possibility and promise of a universal culture binding diverse peoples in a common unity across the planet. The intellectuals of several non-Western societies are today convinced that the universal culture proposed during the past fifty years was nothing more than an elaborate westernisation proposal. No compelling reason has been advanced even today which might convince us why the West's ethnic culture-- and its thinking on human rights--should become the accepted value of every other culture on the planet. If anything, there are several compelling reasons to argue the reverse: to argue for limiting Western culture entirely in terms of time and space due to several of its features that seem wholly backward. The values that the West propagates today are not merely not universal, they are perverse. In addition, they are destructive of much that civilisations have held as valid, important and non-negotiable for centuries. Because of the discovery that the West is in essence a fake universal, there has now developed a vacuum and a search for alternatives to the West- dominated human rights discourse. Such alternatives perhaps cannot be provided by thinkers from the West for it is their collective misfortune that they no longer have any direct experience of alternative conceptions or visions. Many of them in fact are permanently damaged victims of a distorted educational system that gave them the wholly unreal idea that other cultures do not have any human rights concerns at all. 5 Historically, most non-western cultures have shown a far better understanding of human rights than the West. They do so even today. People everywhere, in fact, have continued to uphold their inalienable rights to their own cosmologies, epistemologies, interpretations of culture and rights since they are convinced they contain a greater component of humanity. China and Malaysia for example are insisting they have a conception of human rights that is different from that of the West. The West and its institutions--including the media for their part have been insisting these Asian countries have no human rights feelings at all! These Asian proposals advocating different, equally valid, universals must now be seriously considered. Their philosophical underpinnings and legitimation must be examined. People have a human right to subscribe to, or uphold, universals that compete with those the West has sought to impose so arrogantly on others. What are these rival universals? Or can there be any universals at all? If scholarly work on these issues was not done for the past fifty years it was solely due to the assumption that the planet was moving towards a global culture with a uniformly valid and applicable system of values. We can now see how nations can be as naive as individuals. We hope the publication of Inhuman Rights will enable scholars to examine these human rights issues with great seriousness, to work towards a perspective that provides new philosophical and conceptual solutions, and to fight as well to grant these adequate political space within the com ity of nations. Claude Alvares For the Other India Press Goa, July 22, 1997 6 Contents Acknowledgements Publishers's Preface Introduction, 1-6 Chapter I A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS, 7-25 Europe ? The Occupied Territories ? The Colonies ? The Industrial Revolution ? Wars ? The United Nations Organisation Chapter 2 THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS, 26-28 Chapter 3 THE RIGHT TO LIFE, 29-33 Violence Chapter 4 DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS, 34-62 The History of Democracy ? The Tyranny of the Majority ? The Private Corporate Tyrannies ? The Disillusionment ? The Continuing Colonies ? The US: The Champion of Democracy? ? Chile ? Guatemala ?Panama? ? Nicaragua El Salvador ? The Dominican Republic ? Vietnam Cambodia ? Indonesia ? Iraq Chapter 5 THE RIGHT TO DEVELOPMENT, 63-87 Resource and Environmental Rights ? The Trade in Human Rights The Trade in Aid ? The Trade in Poverty ? The Trade in Violence 7 Chapter 6 THE RIGHTS TO FOOD AND HEALTH, 88-109 The Right to Food ? Health ? Drug Abuse Health & the Environment Chapter 7 THE RIGHTS TO EDUCATION AND WORK, 110-121 The Right to Education ? The Right to Employment Chapter 8 CULTURAL AND COMMUNICATION RIGHTS, 122-136 Cultural Rights ? Communication Rights ? Expert Filtering ? Thought Control ? Distracting Entertainment ? The Invasion of Privacy Chapter 9 THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN, 137-145 Education and Working Children ? Children as Consumers Chapter 10 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN, 146-151 Empowerment or Enslavement? ? Women and Work ? The Marketing of Motherhood Chapter 11 THE FAMILY, 152-157 The Right to Work Versus Children's Rights Divorce and Children Chapter 12 THE POPULATION "PROBLEM", 158-172 Reproductive Rights of Women ? Birth Control: Who Gains? ? Contraception and the Rebirth of Fascism