Where Are Human Rights?
By Francis Allenby
21 September, 2013
Countercurrents.org
Yesterday there was a program on television about the affair of Russian entrepreneur Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
I do not mean to comment his personal facts, because much has already been written about it.
I have been very concerned, instead, by a comment from a German Minister who was part of the European Commission that was supposed to judge the requests for review of his case, advanced by Mikhail Khodorkovsky himself .
The words of the minister impressed me for their rawness and sincerity : " They ask us to enforce the human rights and we are the ones who should safeguard these rights. And they ask as if there really were human rights to protect! But there have never been human rights ! "
I'm not outraged by these words: on the contrary, I admire the sincerity of that person.
Finally there is someone who admits it, once and for all: the human being has never had rights. There is, of course, a charter of human rights, which many, almost all the nations of the world, have signed. But what is written in that paper has never been put into practice.
Wars, massacres, killings, summary executions, genocide, child murders, disgusting and despicable butcheries that trample on human compassion have occurred – and they still happen - all over the world. But all of us, by the look of it, realize it later. And when someone shouts that all this can be avoided, that all this can be prevented, in most cases, almost every time, nobody pays attention to his words. Only when all the blood has been spilled they try to find the culprits and bring justice to the victims.
But, beyond these most terrible crimes, there are also the unjust sentences, the freedom denied: these are murders that linger over the time, destroying forever the will to live, as they bend the pride of a man and cancel his dignity. And a man without dignity is no longer a man. And because of this you can also die.
That German Minister did well to make public a consideration that many had already thought and kept for themselves: these famous human rights do not exist, actually, and the man has no rights.
But this is the reason why we need to fight: because every human being needs to preserve the dignity that somebody wants him to lose. This fight will be hard, even more difficult than before, against all odds, but it will be a fair fight .
And even though we will always have the world to hinder us, the cynical world with its selfishness opposing to suffering, to the pain and the sorrow, we must never give in: we must fight, always, even if this will cause us the ostracism of people, the exclusion, the expulsion from the group of those who know how to live in this individualistic world. A world that does not recognize the human rights.
Francis Allenby was born in Taranto, in 1960. He got the certificate of schoolteacher, but never practised teaching and preferred earning his living with all sorts of jobs. He started painting as a boy and refined his technique at an Art studio. He writes articles, as a free commentator, and novels. Francis Allenby has published a collection of short gothic stories, THE TALES OF THE STORM, and a novel in Italian: LO STOLTO DI CARDIZZINI (The fool of Cardizzini). Email:
[email protected]
Comments are moderated