Human Rights and Natural Law: Facts and Correlation - Essay Example

1 Human Rights and Natural Law: Facts and Correlation During the second half of the 20th century, the worldis treated with a succession of films that depict various abuses of human rights and all sorts of violations against humanity of men. It ranged from a simple trampling of basic human right to wholesale decimation of a race that is abjectly heinous. These are not mere figments of imagination of screenwriters but they are based on true to life novels by authors who are either mute witnesses of the events or through research, vicariously partook of the experience. Moviegoers shudder in their seats as scenes of bestiality and hatred depicting man's inhumanity to man are paraded before their eyes. Indeed, the cinema is the best medium to illustrate how human rights are wantonly violated all over the world. Such films force everyone to fling their cloaks of apathy and go down from their ivory towers and make a stand or a reaction to such abuses. In the holocaust movie Schindler's List, images of Jews being stripped naked and gassed to their deaths after being hunted down like vermin will most likely endure in our consciousness. Practically all rights proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were violated i.e. "the rights to life, liberty, and security of person; to freedom from arbitrary arrest; to a fair trial; to be presumed innocent until proved guilty; to freedom of movement and residence; to asylum, nationality, and ownership of property" and so on.1 The Last King of Scotland, meanwhile, illustrates how a demented ruler, so intoxicated in his powers, can heap so much suffering and destruction to everyone who crosses his path. Idi Amin of Uganda in the 1970's ruled as a dictator and "forced most of the Asians who lived in Uganda to leave the country and had many of his opponents massacred".2 One scene showed his Scottish doctor-adviser hanged on a tenterhook with the hook piercing his chest. 2 The Killing Fields is Cambodia's version of Europe's holocaust. Like the Schindler's List, there's gore galore and human rights abuses to the max. It's so poignant and compelling that critic Rex Reed was made to comment i.e. "no film in my memory has more harrowingly telegraphed the ravages of war than The Killing Fields".3 The most affecting scenes are the scenes of torture ; the one where emaciated Cambodians had to eat live lizards in order to survive and the one where fathers and mothers were mercilessly slaughtered by their brainwashed children. The Killing Fields saga is faithful to history as attested by Amnesty International USA and by the Genocide Studies Program of Yale University. Says the latter "The Cambodian genocide of 1975-1979, in which approximately 1.7 million people lost their lives (21% of the population) was one of the worst human tragedies of the last century".4 It further continued, "the Khmer Rouge regime of Pol Pot combined extremist ideology with ethnic animosity and a diabolical disregard for human life to produce repression, misery, and murder in a massive scale". One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was transported to the screen from the novel by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Russian Nobel Prize winner in Literature novelist, was himself incarcerated in the same gulag that he wrote about and thus his tale was almost biographical. The gulag or a "network of forced labor camps in the former Soviet Union"5 was a symbol of Russian brutality and godlessness during that communist regime. The character Ivan represented the suffering of those who had to do "hard, manual work for 12 hours a day in temperatures of minus 40 deg.C" 6 in the harsh climate of desolate Siberia. Ivan's cry for justice is the same one experienced by those who are incarcerated for trumped-up charges and for speaking their minds 3 out. Ivan synthesized the anguish, the boredom, the resilience, the loss of all human rights of those enslaved by the gulag. "As of July 1989, there were still 38 gulags left in Russia" 7 despite the glasnost. Although the harshness had been mitigated, still we are reminded of the dark days of the gulag in the 60's and 70's. One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich will be immortalized because it illustrates "the adaptability and resilience of the human spirit in the face of a dehumanizing environment".8 Hotel Rwanda, released in 2004, is another true-to-life genocide movie. The horrendous atrocities depicted in the movie were rooted in the age-old enmity between the ruling minority Tutsis and the majority (90%) Hutus. Caught in the maelstrom of hatred was Paul Rusesabagina, a Hutu married to a Tutsi woman. Horrified by all the killings around him, Rusesabagina, against all odds, fought to save as many lives as possible by converting his managed hotel, the Belgian-owned Millie Collines, into an impromptu refugee camp. Using all his wiles and through bribery, he held the Hutu militiamen at bay, safely away from their quarry. In effect, he was able to save himself and his family and over a thousand Tutsi refugees and stopped them from joining the lot of almost 800,000 mainly Tutsis who brutally perished in that fateful Rwanda Crisis of 1994. To my mind, the big screen is the best medium to depict horrifying abuses against human rights but there are still many others which haven't been recorded in cinema. One case is the apartheid in South Africa. Defined as a "formerly official policy of racial segregation practiced in the Republic of South Africa"9, apartheid strictly limited the human rights of non-whites. "With the enactment of apartheid laws in 1948, racial discrimination was institutionalized. Race laws touched every aspect of social life, including a prohibition of marriage between non-whites and whites, and the sanctioning of 'white-only jobs".10 Not only that, black schoolchildren 4 cannot be allowed to enroll in schools for whites. Also, in violation of Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which provides that "everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state"11, non-whites are forced to reside only in assigned territories exclusively for them and are allowed to enter the rest of South Africa upon presentation of passports which they termed as 'passbooks'. These designated territories in which non-whites were jampacked like sardines were the only areas where they can exercise political rights and other rights. The latter cannot be exercised elsewhere thus, they became foreigners in their own country. In 1960, 69 blacks died and 187 were wounded when the government, empowered by the Public Safety Act and the Criminal Law Amendment Act, which gave it powers to declare a state of emergency and punish dissidents, attacked protesters who refused to carry their passports. The aforesaid laws violated articles 9,10,11 and 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 9 provides that "no one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile". Article 10 says that "everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him". Meanwhile, article 11 provides that, "everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence."12 The hereinabove laws lasted until 1989 and its most distinguished victim is Nelson Mandela. Looking back, the Institute of International Studies, UCLA Berkeley has this to say, "thousands of individuals died in custody frequently after gruesome acts of torture. Those who were tried were sentenced to death, banished or imprisoned."13 5 Everywhere in the world today, people's human rights are being arbitrarily trampled . It is as if there exist no rule of law, no moral, ethical or natural laws which hinder the performance of despicable, illegal and immoral acts. In Darfur, Sudan, Amnesty International USA has catalogued murders, rapes, mutilations, destruction of properties, displacements of more than 2 million citizens by the government of Sudan and by its executioner, the Janjawid militia. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, those who committed wartime atrocities during the 1992-1995 war, where 7,800 Bosnian Muslims were butchered and many more disappeared still remain at large. In Myanmar or Burma, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, is still languishing in jail after 12 years of house detention. Most of those who were beaten, clubbed, gassed, and tortured for the simple 'crime' of peaceable assembly remain incarcerated. Meanwhile, China still remains unperturbed by complaints against it by human rights groups who allege "arbitrary detention, torture and ill treatment of prisoners, severe restrictions on freedom of expression and association and violations specific to women."14 China especially rears its ugly head in its conquered province of Tibet where 6,000 Buddhist monasteries were decimated and where Buddhist nuns and laywomen were abused , raped, and tortured. In Sri Lanka, 'disappearances' reminiscent of Argentina's 'desaparecidos' during its brutal military regime have become common occurrences in that country. Over the 2 decades of conflict between government forces and the Tamil Tigers who are seeking independence of northern Sri Lanka, have resulted in the killing of more than 65,000 people. If there's a country which had fought so hard for its freedom and paid a high price to attain self-determination, it is East Timor or Timor-Leste. The passion to attain freedom and to risk 6 everything for that goal has produced Nobel Peace Prize awards to both Bishop Don Ximenes Belo and activist Jose Ramos Horta in 1996 and more importantly the status of being a free nation. But leaving in its wake were the dead bodies of more than 200,000 Timorese and the displacement from their homes of more than 500,000 Timorese. For 24 years, East Timor had to suffer the brunt of the desire of the Jakarta government, who left no stone unturned, to make it its 27th province. During that span of time, East Timor experienced all sorts of humiliation, torture, massacre etc. Indonesia was bent to use everything in its arsenal to force the little nation to kneel to submission. Primarily because of the horrors exposed in these movies as well as exposes by the media of different abuses of human rights and because of pressures from human rights groups who were radically inflamed by such movies and such exposes, practically all nations now are forced to enact legislations to protect its citizens from human rights abuses. In the United Kingdom, the Human Rights Act of 1998 was enacted "to give greater effect to rights and freedoms guaranteed under the European Convention on Human Rights".15 Previously, the European Court of Human Rights (EHCR) was established to "interpret and apply the Convention".16 "Since 1966, people have had the right to bring cases against the British government in the ECHR" who in turn found that the UK has repeatedly "breached the Convention".17 The problem in the filing of the cases with EHCR is that it takes several years before the court decision sees the light of day. Thus, the enactment of the Human Rights Act shook the whole legal system of UK as people effectively obtain redress for breach of their human rights via the courts of law. Another important development is the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen which defined "a set of individual rights and collective rights of all the estates as one. 7 Influenced by the doctrine of natural rights, these rights are universal; they are supposed to be valid in all times and places, pertaining to human nature itself".18 It's not only in UK that protection of human rights are now safely ensconced. Except in China and other communist countries, nations had come up with ways to ensure the well-being of their people. All members of the UN have to comply with the Declaration of Human Rights or else they become international pariah. We have to remember that the said declaration was unanimously adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 1948. Its purpose was to "promote and encourage respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms".19 The declaration is memorable because it "proclaims the personal, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of humans, which are limited only by the recognition for the rights and freedoms of others and the requirements of morality, public order, and general welfare".20 When the UN General Assembly drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, they were guided by "standards of morality that are derived from, or entailed by, the nature of the world and the nature of human beings". (This is the core of the Natural Law Moral Theory). They were also guided by existing laws "that depend for their authority not on some pre-existing human convention, but on the logical relationship in which they stand to moral standards".(This is the core of the Natural Law Theory of Law). In the above case, where "the concepts of law and morality intersect", we have what is called as the 'Overlap Thesis' of Natural Law. This what is adhered to by H.L.A. Hart who looks at natural law as part "moral objectivity and part union of law and morals"21 i.e. legal theory and moral theory are being fused. To my mind , this is the best basis for human rights because human rights violations are inherently evil and at the same time it violates the laws of nations as well as moral values. 8 Natural Law is defined as "a set of principles, based on what are assumed to be the permanent characteristics of human nature, that can serve as a standard for evaluating conduct and civil laws. It is considered fundamentally changing and universally applicable".22 If the natural laws guide the UN assemblymen in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it should be concluded that the constitutions of nations, criminal and civil laws of nations are guided by the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Proof is, if we study the constitution of the USA, we find that they are littered with the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We can immediately conclude therefore, that there is a direct relationship between human rights and natural laws. Thus, if there is a growth of interest in human rights, it follows that there must also be a revival in interest in natural law as both terms are interrelated. Natural Law is the mother and human rights are the offsprings. For Christians, both natural law and human rights have the same beginning i.e. at the time of the creation of man by God, who created man in His image. Besides, man's body is considered as a temple of God. Therefore, man is especial and part of his attributes should be the possession of human rights and natural laws should govern all his actions and all his relationships with other human beings. Besides, man is a rational being and possesses an undying soul. A few principles that are being articulated as part of the natural laws of man are the Golden Rule in which man is admonished not to do to others what he doesn't want to be done to him; the Christian injunction of loving one's neighbor as we love ourselves ; and to respect life and humanity in general. As we go through life, natural laws should guide us in all our actions as we try to keep our human dignity intact and cherish our human rights, which are God-given. If man is not ruled by natural laws then he becomes categorized with the Barbarians, the Vandals, the Visigoths who plunder, pillage and ravage without remorse. He becomes no different from Hitler or Idi Amin. 9 With the revival in interest in natural law comes also its development. Parallel to natural law development is the development of the doctrine of human rights. From the simplistic classical natural law theories of Plato, Heraclitus and Aristotle which tried to stem off "the evident evils of anarchy" and stressed that "political authority is a remedy for anarchy, injustice and impoverishment ".23 When they mentioned 'injustice', abuses of human rights were the farthest things from their minds. Human rights came into the picture when St. Thomas Aquinas intimated that violations of human rights cannot be stopped if there are no laws to enforce non-committal of them. In effect, St. Thomas believed that human rights should be incorporated into laws . St. Thomas further propounded that it is imperative that evils (and violations of human rights are certainly evil) be curtailed "because such behaviour is not in the nature of human beings".24 He further stated that "men are rational beings and it is morally appropriate that they should behave in a way that conforms to their rational nature".25 Thus, Aquinas derives the moral law from the nature of human beings (thus natural law). St. Thomas propounded four points which comprise his classic natural law theory. These are important in the light of the enactment of human rights into laws: 1. Law establishes reasons for action. 2. That its rules can and presumptively do create moral obligations that did not as such exist prior to the positing of the rules. 3. That the kind of legal-moral obligation is defeated by a posited rule's serious immorality (injustice). 4. That judicial and other legal deliberations, reasoning and judgment includes, concurrently both natural (moral) law and purely positive law. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 1) 10 Presuming laws had been enacted to protect humanity from abuses of human rights, the next question then is whether these laws are valid or whether they are enough. St. Thomas again had an answer for that. He said that these laws can be valid only if they conform to the natural law. Aquinas puts it pointblank: "Every law has just so much of the nature of law as is derived from the law of nature. But if in any point, it deflects from the law of nature, it is no longer a law but a perversion of law."26 It can be observed that there are so many presidential proclamations, enactments , and ordinances that have the force of law and in which the aim is to curtail crimes against humanity such as rape, robberies or murder. A good example is UK's "Prevention of Terrorism Act of 2005 which provides for control orders to be made against individuals in UK suspected of involvement in terrorism. Control orders may impose curfew and other substantial restrictions of human freedom."27 Other than curfew, there is frisking of one's person and belongings and even martial law. All these may constitute violations of human rights. The issue of whether these are unjust and thus evil is responded by William Blackstone who insisted that a norm that doesn't conform to the natural law is intrinsically invalid. St. Thomas added that an act is evil if the Act is contrary to reason. Herein, Aquinas holds a natural law theory of morality and subscribes that good and evil are both objective and universal. He said: "What is good or evilis derived from the rational nature of human beings". William Blackstone added: "This law of nature , being co-eval with mankind and dictated by God Himself, is of course superior in obligation to any otherno human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them are as valid derive all their force and all their authority..from this original."28 St. Augustine contributed, "an unjust law is really no law at all". 11 The aforesaid laws that may violate human rights as said, found their ally in both Plato and Aristotle who stressed that political authority is needed to clamp down anarchy. Lon Fuller joined them by stressing the importance of the rule of law. He claimed that "it is clear that the procedures and institutions of law are in the service of substantive purposes; the restriction of violence, theft and fraud etc.".29 It is noteworthy to observe that both classical natural law theories and modern natural law theories are merged when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights chose to start with "Art. 1. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."30 Today, human rights is an intense and passionate subject as more people are being made aware of their rights and are now intolerant of the trampling of their human rights. Two topics are hotly campaigned against by human rights groups and individuals i.e racial discrimination and discrimination of women. Because of the highly intensified interest in human rights, intellectuals, scholars, writers and activists joined forces to come up with natural law theories to buttress and fortify their positions. These are the Feminist Theory and the Critical Race Theory. Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Simone de Beauvoir and so many others dedicated their whole lives to remove stigma, injustices and inequalities that had befallen women since the days of the Patriarchs. It should be observed that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not remiss in protecting the rights of women and racial minorities. In fact, Article 1 stressed that" all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights." Article 2 states that "everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour , sex". Article 7 pronounces "all are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law".31 The Human Rights Act of 1998 supported these by defining the rights of women and of racial minorities. Yet, despite 12 all of the above, women and non-whites are continually being harassed and discriminated against. The more the discrimination, the more actively the human rights groups rise up to stifle discrimination. Because of the continuing injustice against women, Claire Dalton, Simone de Beauvoir, Susan Kingsley and Nancy Cott had come up with a Feminist Theory. This theory encompasses all area in which women are involved. Its objective is to make the whole world "understand the nature of inequality and focus on gender politics, power relations and sexuality. While generally providing a critique of social relations , much of feminist theory also focuses on analysing gender inequality and the promotion of women's rights, interests and issues."32 In the past , the suffragettes were able to win for the women the right to vote. Then women campaigned for property rights, divorce, access to higher education, equal pay and protective legislation for women workers. Then the women's libbers fought for a welfare state system, the use of the pill and even the right to abortion. The most vocal perhaps of the women activists is Simone de Beauvoir who in her book The Second Sex (Le Deuxeme Sexe) decried the relegation of women to second-class status and to 'inferior' jobs such as housekeeping, secretarial work and the like. She lamented that men had forever painted the image of the "woman in the home"33 and the implicit assertion that women are forever inferior. In her time, it is possibly true but today women are now in the forefront of politics and in areas where once it was unimaginable for women to be involved in. De Beauvoir further accused men of dehumanizing women. In her book, "Women: Myth and Reality, she sought to break down a "myth which conceptualized women as the weaker sex, a myth invented by men to confine women to their oppressed state".34 Nancy Cott, meanwhile, claimed that the first suffragettes fought for woman, as a universal 13 entity, then as years passed women's movement focus is on social differentiation, with emphasis on individuality and diversity. Today, issues dealt more with "woman's condition as a social construct , gender, identity and relationships within and between genders".35 Claire Dalton, on the other hand, propounded the Feminist Legal Theory in order that the injustice and unfairness to women by modern laws be brought to the fore . She has actively sought the amendments of these laws. She opined that this can be done by "studying the connections between law and gender as well as applying feminist analysis to concrete areas of law."36 Women still get the blame for so many things. Rape victims are blamed for their situation. Author Katha Pollitt said, "Charles Murray, Bill Clinton, Dan Quayle, National Review and the New York Times accuse women of causing poverty. All agree that unwed mothers, particularly teenagers and divorced moms, are the driving force behind poverty, crime and a host of other ills".37 If women's libbers rankle, men fighters against racism sizzle. They're just as passionate and determined. Today, racial discrimination is one evil that governments have failed to contain through laws and edicts mainly because looking down at someone because of his color or race cannot constitute a criminal act. It is when violence is applied or oral defamation is uttered that crime is committed. Although there are no more Ku Klux Klans or apartheid, yet racism still exists by way of discrimination in jobs and in opportunities for self-advancement. It is however diminishing as we see Condoleeza Rice, Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama occupying positions of power. Yet, the fact is racial discrimination refuses to bid goodbye. Almost all of today's critical race theorists are inspired by the Civil Rights Movement instituted by Martin Luther King, whose 'I Have a Dream' speech is a classic piece of oration 14 condemning racial discrimination. King may have passed away, a victim of an assassin's bullet, but he left a legacy of hope and inspiration that refuses to fade away. Derrick Bell, Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, Richard Delgado are all in one in opposing the continuation of all forms of subordination, in emphasizing the socially constructed nature of race and in considering judicial conclusions to be the result of the workings of power. The investigations and studies inquiring on the three above issues and involving racism and racial subordination is termed as 'critical legal studies' Critical race theorists question legal judgments and claim that it is not the demands of principles and precedents but the preservation of the interests of power that guide jurists to form legal judgments that reek of racism. Derrick Bell, expressing frustration and dissatisfaction with the US Constitution, posits that "the framers of the US Constitution chose the rewards of property over justice".38 He added that "whites will promote racial advances for blacks only when they also promote white self-interest." Finally, in The Price of Racial remedies, Bell argues that whites will not support civil rights policies that may threaten white social status". On his part, Richard Delgado, "argues that people of color speak from an experience framed by racism. Delgado argues that the stories of people of color are born from a different frame of reference and therefore impart to them a voice that is different from the dominant culture of hegemonic whiteness and deserved to be heard".39 Delgado pleaded for governments to take action against those who insult and defame because of racial prejudice claiming such produce "serious psychological harmon its victims" Critical race theorists of late, have been successful because in cases where racial minorities are blatantly oppressed, Critical Race Theory thoughts have been applied in several litigations. 15 Not only that, Critical Race Theorists have been asked to serve as amicus curiae and have been allowed to critically examine the outcomes or rulings of these cases. In conclusion, the fights are not yet over for both the feminist theorists and the critical race theorists as the wall is tough to crack. But they should take cognizance of the fact that today, there are so many medium available for the activists to air their grievances. As they said the pen is mightier than the sword and journalism definitely is a potent medium. Also, people are no longer afraid to go out and be counted and fight for their rights and voice out their frustrations. Also, there is a fresher exposition and revival of natural laws. In this essay, I have tackled the relationship between human rights and natural laws and how natural law developed into what it is today. The hottest topics that involved activists today are racism and discrimination of women and thus I present herein, both the Feminist Theory and the Critical Race Theory. Through true-to-life movies, I herein vividly describe the various violations of human rights in practically the four corners of the globe and thus showed why human rights is a pressing problem. Through these movies, I pointed out what articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were violated. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Human Rights Act of 1988 and so many laws protecting the citizens from abuse of their human rights are already in place and thus the future looks good for human rights. . 16 BIBLIOGRAPHY The American Heritage Dictionary. Dell Publishing. New York:373. Bell, Derrick. The Constitutional Contradiction. China Human Rights Fact Sheet. March 1995. www.christusrex.org/www1/sdc/ Classical Natural Law Theory. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.www.i.eputm.edu/n/natlaw Cott, Nancy. The Grounding of Modern Feminism,New Haven Yale University press. De Beauvoir, Simone. Le Deuxeme Sexe. De Beauvoir, Simone. Woman: Myth and Reality Delgado, Richard. Critical Race Theory:The Cutting Edge. Philadelphia. Temple University Pr. Feminist Theory. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. En./wikipedia.org/wiki/fem Funk and Wagnall's Encyclopedia. Vol. 26.Funk and Wagnall's Corp.:312,351 Genocide Studies program. The Cambodian Genocide.Yale University. Gray, Robert. One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich:A Review.dooyoo.co.uk. Hart, H.L.A. HLA Hart's Understanding of Classical Law Natural Theory. Ojls.oxfordjournals.org/ogi/context/abstract. Human Rights Violations. Globetrotter Educational Module.Inst. of Int'l. Studies, Berkeley. Lye, Keith. The Portable World Factbook.Avon Books, New York:320. Reed, Rex. Reed's Guide to Movies on Tv and Video. Warner Books Ed:276 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. UN General Assembly. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Dec. 10,1948. Read More