Human Rights Stories (19): The Rise of the Meritocracy

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Michael Young’s 1958 satire “The Rise of the Meritocracy” is about the diminishing importance of hereditary aristocracy in Britain and what it does to the lower classes. Poor Brits now feel that they somehow deserve their poverty, and the rest of society wholeheartedly agrees. In the words of a fictional historian:

Now that people are classified by ability, the gap between the classes has inevitably become wider. The upper classes are, on the one hand, no longer weakened by self-doubt and self-criticism. Today the eminent know that success is just reward for their own capacity, for their own efforts, and for their own undeniable achievement. They deserve to belong to a superior class … As for the lower classes, their situation is different too. Today all persons, however humble, know they have had every chance. They are tested again and again … if they have been labelled ”dunce” repeatedly they cannot any longer pretend; their image of themselves is more nearly a true, unflattering, reflection. Are they not bound to recognise that they have an inferior status – not as in the past because they were denied opportunity; but because they are inferior. For the first time in human history the inferior man has no ready buttress for his self-regard. (source)

Of course, this is more than a fictional story. It accurately reflects some widespread opinions about the undeserving poor. You can read these here, here and here. More human rights stories here.

Human Rights Stories (18): A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies

illustration for A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, by Bartolomé de las Casas

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“A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies”, written by the Spanish Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas in 1542, is one of the first attempts by a Spanish writer of the colonial era to depict the mistreatment of the indigenous peoples of the Americas in colonial times. The description was sent to then Prince Philip II of Spain. It’s remarkable in the sense that it was written during the early stages of the Spanish conquest.

The Spaniards first assaulted the innocent Sheep, so qualified by the Almighty … like most cruel Tygers, Wolves and Lions hunger-starv’d, studying nothing, for the space of Forty Years, after their first landing, but the Massacre of these Wretches, whom they have so inhumanely and barbarously butcher’d and harass’d with several kinds of Torments, never before known, or heard. …

Those that arriv’d at these Islands from the remotest parts of Spain, and who pride themselves in the Name of Christians, steer’d Two courses principally, in order to the Extirpation, and Exterminating of this People from the face of the Earth. The first whereof was raising an unjust, sanguinolent, cruel War. The other, by putting them to death, who hitherto, thirsted after their Liberty, or design’d (which the most Potent, Strenuous and Magnanimous Spirits intended) to recover their pristin Freedom, and shake off the Shackles of so injurious a Captivity. …

Bartolome de las Casas

Finally, in one word, their Ambition and Avarice, than which the heart of Man never entertained greater, and the vast Wealth of those Regions; the Humility and Patience of the Inhabitants (which made their approach to these Lands more facil and easie) did much promote the business: Whom they so despicably contemned, that they treated them (I speak of things which I was an Eye Witness of, without the least fallacy) not as Beasts, which I cordially wished they would, but as the most abject dung and filth of the Earth; and so sollicitous they were of their Life and Soul, that the above-mentioned number of People died without understanding the true Faith or Sacraments. And this also is as really true as the praecendent Narration (which the very Tyrants and cruel Murderers cannot deny without the stigma of a lye) that the Spaniards never received any injury from the Indians, but that they rather reverenced them as Persons descended from Heaven, until that they were compelled to take up Arms, provoked thereunto by repeated Injuries, violent Torments, and injust Butcheries. …

[T]he Spaniards …, mounted on generous Steeds, well weapon’d with Lances and Swords, begin to exercise their bloody Butcheries and Strategems, and overrunning their Cities and Towns, spar’d no Age, or Sex, nay not so much as Women with Child, but ripping up their Bellies, tore them alive in pieces. They laid Wagers among themselves, who should with a Sword at one blow cut, or divide a Man in two; or which of them should decollate or behead a Man, with the greatest dexterity; nay farther, which should sheath his Sword in the Bowels of a Man with the quickest dispatch and expedition. They snatcht young Babes from the Mothers Breasts, and then dasht out the brains of those innocents against the Rocks; others they cast into Rivers scoffing and jeering them.

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More human rights stories here.

Human Rights Stories (17): A Hanging

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Possibly a true story, reported by George Orwell when serving in the British Imperial Police in the 1920s, describing the execution of a criminal in Britain administered Burma (an Indian province until 1937, when it became a separate, self-governing colony; Burma attained independence in 1948):

It was in Burma, a sodden morning of the rains. … One prisoner had been brought out of his cell. He was a Hindu, a puny wisp of a man, with a shaven head and vague liquid eyes. He had a thick, sprouting moustache, absurdly too big for his body, rather like the moustache of a comic man on the films. Six tall Indian warders were guarding him and getting him ready for the gallows. Two of them stood by with rifles and fixed bayonets, while the others handcuffed him, passed a chain through his handcuffs and fixed it to their belts, and lashed his arms tight to his sides. They crowded very close about him, with their hands always on him in a careful, caressing grip, as though all the while feeling him to make sure he was there. It was like men handling a fish which is still alive and may jump back into the water. But he stood quite unresisting, yielding his arms limply to the ropes, as though he hardly noticed what was happening. …

George Orwell

Suddenly, when we had gone ten yards, the procession stopped short without any order or warning. A dreadful thing had happened–a dog, come goodness knows whence, had appeared in the yard. It came bounding among us with a loud volley of barks, and leapt round us wagging its whole body, wild with glee at finding so many human beings together. It was a large woolly dog, half Airedale, half pariah. For a moment it pranced round us, and then, before anyone could stop it, it had made a dash for the prisoner, and jumping up tried to lick his face. Everyone stood aghast, too taken aback even to grab at the dog.

“Who let that bloody brute in here?” said the superintendent angrily. “Catch it, someone!”

A warder, detached from the escort, charged clumsily after the dog, but it danced and gambolled just out of his reach, taking everything as part of the game. A young Eurasian jailer picked up a handful of gravel and tried to stone the dog away, but it dodged the stones and came after us again. Its yaps echoed from the jail wails. The prisoner, in the grasp of the two warders, looked on incuriously, as though this was another formality of the hanging. It was several minutes before someone managed to catch the dog. Then we put my handkerchief through its collar and moved off once more, with the dog still straining and whimpering. …

It was about forty yards to the gallows. I watched the bare brown back of the prisoner marching in front of me. … And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path.

It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working –bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming–all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned – reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone – one mind less, one world less. …

And then, when the noose was fixed, the prisoner began crying out on his god. It was a high, reiterated cry of “Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!”, not urgent and fearful like a prayer or a cry for help, but steady, rhythmical, almost like the tolling of a bell. The dog answered the sound with a whine. The hangman, still standing on the gallows, produced a small cotton bag like a flour bag and drew it down over the prisoner’s face. But the sound, muffled by the cloth, still persisted, over and over again: “Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!”

The hangman climbed down and stood ready, holding the lever. Minutes seemed to pass. The steady, muffled crying from the prisoner went on and on, “Ram! Ram! Ram!” never faltering for an instant. … We looked at the lashed, hooded man on the drop, and listened to his cries – each cry another second of life; the same thought was in all our minds: oh, kill him quickly, get it over, stop that abominable noise!

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More human rights stories here. More about capital punishment here. An interesting related story: India is now looking for a new hangman.

Human Rights Stories (16): The Pit and the Pendulum

Excerpt from The Pit and the Pendulum, by Edgar Allen Poe:

I was sick — sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence — the dread sentence of death — was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum. It conveyed to my soul the idea of revolution — perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr of a mill wheel. This only for a brief period; for presently I heard no more. Yet, for a while, I saw; but with how terrible an exaggeration! I saw the lips of the black-robed judges. They appeared to me white — whiter than the sheet upon which I trace these words — and thin even to grotesqueness; thin with the intensity of their expression of firmness — of immoveable resolution — of stern contempt of human torture. I saw that the decrees of what to me was Fate, were still issuing from those lips. I saw them writhe with a deadly locution. I saw them fashion the syllables of my name; and I shuddered because no sound succeeded.

Edgar Allan Poe

I saw, too, for a few moments of delirious horror, the soft and nearly imperceptible waving of the sable draperies which enwrapped the walls of the apartment. And then my vision fell upon the seven tall candles upon the table. At first they wore the aspect of charity, and seemed white and slender angels who would save me; but then, all at once, there came a most deadly nausea over my spirit, and I felt every fibre in my frame thrill as if I had touched the wire of a galvanic battery, while the angel forms became meaningless spectres, with heads of flame, and I saw that from them there would be no help. And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave. The thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long before it attained full appreciation; but just as my spirit came at length properly to feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges vanished, as if magically, from before me; the tall candles sank into nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the blackness of darkness supervened; all sensations appeared swallowed up in a mad rushing descent as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, night were the universe. (continue reading)

More on torture and capital punishment. More human rights stories.

Human Rights Stories (15): A Doll’s House

1922: Actor Alan Hale (1892 - 1950) menaces Alla Nazimova (1879 - 1945) as she kneels on the floor in a still from the film, 'A Doll's House', directed by Charles Bryant and adapted from the play by Henrik Ibsen.

Excerpt from A Doll’s House, by Henrik Ibsen:

Nora: I must stand quite alone, if I am to understand myself and everything about me. It is for that reason that I cannot remain with you any longer.

Helmer: Nora, Nora!

Nora: I am going away from here now, at once. I am sure Christine will take me in for the night–

Helmer: You are out of your mind! I won’t allow it! I forbid you!

Nora: It is no use forbidding me anything any longer. I will take with me what belongs to myself. I will take nothing from you, either now or later.

Helmer: What sort of madness is this!

Nora: Tomorrow I shall go home–I mean, to my old home. It will be easiest for me to find something to do there.

Helmer: You blind, foolish woman!

Nora: I must try and get some sense, Torvald.

Helmer: To desert your home, your husband and your children! And you don’t consider what people will say!

Nora: I cannot consider that at all. I only know that it is necessary for me.

Helmer: It’s shocking. This is how you would neglect your most sacred duties.

Nora: What do you consider my most sacred duties?

Helmer: Do I need to tell you that? Are they not your duties to your husband and your children?

Nora: I have other duties just as sacred.

Helmer: That you have not. What duties could those be?

Nora: Duties to myself.

Helmer: Before all else, you are a wife and a mother.

Nora: I don’t believe that any longer. I believe that before all else I am a reasonable human being, just as you are–or, at all events, that I must try and become one.

More on women’s rights here. More human rights stories here.

Human Rights Stories (14): Torture and The Brothers Karamazov

A short reminder of the purpose of this blog series: excerpts of novels or plays with an original perspective on human rights problems. This one is about torture:

Tell me yourself. I challenge your answer. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature—that little child beating its breast with its fist, for instance—and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth. (From Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov”)

More human rights stories. More about torture. More Dostoevsky. More about Russia (and Putin in particular).

Human Rights Stories (13): Is Us Slaves Gonna Be Free In Heaven?

slaves attending church

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From Weevils in the Wheat: Interviews with Virginia Ex-Slaves:

Uncle Silas was near bout a hundred, I reckon–too feeble to do no work, but always got strength to hobble to church when the slave-service gonna be. Ole Preacher was Reverend Johnson–forget the rest of his name. He was preaching and the slaves was sitting there sleeping and fanning theyselves with oak branches, and Uncle Silas got up in the front row of the slaves pew and halted Reverend Johnson.

“Is us slaves gonna be free in heaven?” Uncle Silas asked.

The preacher stopped and looked at Uncle Silas like he wanted to kill him, cause no one ain’t supposed to say nothing except “Amen” whilst he was preaching. Waited a minute he did, looking hard at Uncle Silas standing there but didn’t give no answer.

“Is God gonna free us slaves when we get to Heaven?” Uncle Silas yelled.

Old white preacher pulled out his handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his face–”Jesus says come unto Me ye who are free from sin and I will give you salvation.”

“Gonna give us freedom along with salvation,” ask Uncle Silas.

“The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, he that is without sin is gonna have life everlasting,” preached the preacher. Then he went ahead preaching, fast-like without no attention to Uncle Silas.

But Uncle Silas wouldn’t sit down; stood there the rest of the service, he did, and that was the last time he come to church. Uncle Silas died for another preaching come around. Guess he found out whether he gonna be free sooner than he calculated to.

More human rights stories. More about slavery.

Human Rights Stories (12): Alexander the Great in India

Alexander the Great, mosaic

Alexander the Great, when conquering parts of India in 325 BC, frequently held conversations with local sages and philosophers. In one of those, he asked them why they didn’t show enthusiasm for what he accomplished. The answer:

King Alexander, every man can possess only so much of the earth’s surface as this we are standing on. You are but human like the rest of us, save that you are always busy and up to no good, traveling so many miles from your home, a nuisance to yourself and to others. Ah well! You will soon be dead, and then you will own just as much of this earth as will suffice to bury you. (source)

More human rights stories. More on imperialism. More on India.

Human Rights Stories (10): Judgment of Solomon

The Judgment of Solomon by Gustave Doré

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Then came there two women, that were harlots, unto the king, and stood before him. And the one woman said, “O my lord, I and this woman dwell in one house; and I was delivered of a child with her in the house. And it came to pass the third day after that I was delivered, that this woman was delivered also: and we were together; there was no stranger with us in the house, save we two in the house. And this woman’s child died in the night; because she overlaid it. And she arose at midnight, and took my son from beside me, while thine handmaid slept, and laid it in her bosom, and laid her dead child in my bosom. And when I rose in the morning to give my child suck, behold, it was dead: but when I had considered it in the morning, behold, it was not my son, which I did bear.”

And the other woman said, “Nay; but the living is my son, and the dead is thy son.” And this said, “No; but the dead is thy son, and the living is my son.” Thus they spake before the king.

Then said the king, “The one saith, ‘This is my son that liveth, and thy son is the dead’: and the other saith, ‘Nay; but thy son is the dead, and my son is the living’.” And the king said, Bring me a sword. “And they brought a sword before the king.” And the king said, “Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other.”

Then spake the woman whose the living child was unto the king, for her bowels yearned upon her son, and she said, “O my lord, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it.” But the other said, “Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it.”

Then the king answered and said, “Give her the living child, and in no wise slay it: she is the mother thereof.”

And all Israel heard of the judgment which the king had judged; and they feared the king: for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him, to do judgment…

More on the concept of a fair trial.

Human Rights Stories (9): Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Ctd.

Frederick Douglass

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Excerpt from Frederick Douglass’ autobiography (abbreviated):

[Mr. Hugh Auld, Douglass' slave master] said that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read. To use his own words, further, he said, “if you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master – to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. Now,” said he, “if you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy”…

I know understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty – to wit, the white man’s power to enslave the black man. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom [i.e. education, FS] …

Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost or trouble, to learn how to read…

The more I read [about slavery], the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. … As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I withered under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. … In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. … It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. … Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever.

More on slavery. Another excerpt from the same work is here.

Human Rights Stories (8): Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

Frederick Douglass

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Excerpt from Frederick Douglass’ autobiography:

I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four of five times in my life; and each of these times was very short in duration, and at night. She was hired by a Mr. Stewart, who lived about twelve miles from my home. She made her journeys to see me in the night, travelling the whole distance on foot, after the performance of her day’s work. She was a field hand, and a whipping is the penalty of not being in the field at sunrise, unless a slave has special permission from his or her master to the contrary – a permission which they seldom get, and one that gives to him that gives it the proud name of being a kind master. I do not recollect of ever seeing my mother by the light of the day. She was with me in the night. She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone. Very little communication ever took place between us.

Death soon ended what little we could have while she lived, and with it her hardships and suffering. She died when I was about seven years old, on one of my master’s farms, near Lee’s Mill. I was not allowed to be present during her illness, at her death, or burial. She was gone long before I knew any thing about it. Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of her death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger.

More on slavery.

Human Rights Stories (7): Bleak House

Excerpt from Charles Dickens’ Bleak House:

Jo lives–that is to say, Jo has not yet died–in a ruinous place, known to the like of him by the name of Tom-all-Alone’s. It is a black, dilapidated street, avoided by all the decent people; where the crazy houses were seized upon, when their decay was far advanced, by some bold vagrants, who, after establishing their own possession, took to letting them out in lodgings. Now, these tumbling tenements contain, by night, a swarm of misery. As, on the ruined human wretch, vermin parasites appear, so these ruined shelters have bred a crowd of foul existence that crawls in and out of gaps in walls and boards; and coils itself to sleep, in maggot numbers, where the rain drips in; and comes and goes, fetching and carrying fever, and sowing more evil in every footprint than Lord Coodle, and Sir Thomas Doodle, and the Duke of Foodle, and all the fine gentlemen in office, down to Zoodle, shall set right in five hundred years–though born expressly to do it.

“For I don’t,” says Jo, “I don’t know nothink.”

It must be a strange state to be like Jo! To shuffle through the streets, unfamiliar with the shapes, and in utter darkness as to the meaning, of those mysterious symbols, so abundant over the shops, and at the corners of streets, and on the doors, and in the windows! To see people read, and to see people write, and to see the postmen deliver letters, and not to have the least idea of all that language–to be, to very scrap of it, stone blind and dumb! It must be very puzzling to see the good company going to the churches on Sundays, with their books in their hands, and to think (for perhaps Jo does think, at odd times) what does it all mean, and if it means anything to anybody, how comes it that it means nothing to me? To be hustled, and jostled, and moved on; and really to feel that it would appear to be perfectly true that I have no business, here, or there, or anywhere; and yet to be perplexed by the consideration that I am here somehow, too, and everybody overlooked me until I became the creature that I am! It must be a strange state, not merely to be told that I am scarcely human (as in the case of my offering myself for a witness), but to feel it of my own knowledge all my life! To see the horses, dogs, and cattle, go by me, and to know that in ignorance I belong to them, and not to the superior beings in my shape, whose delicacy I offend! Jo’s ideas of a Criminal Trial, or a judge, or a Bishop, or a Government, or that inestimable jewel to him (if he only knew it) the Constitution, should be strange! His whole material and immaterial life is wonderfully strange! His whole material and immaterial life is wonderfully strange; his death, the strangest thing of all.

Charles Dickens

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Human Rights Stories (6): Shylock

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From Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Shylock’s Speech to Antonio (I’ve added a “translation” into present-day English):

Signior Antonio, many a time and oft
In the Rialto you have rated me
About my moneys and my usances.
Still have I borne it with a patient shrug,
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.
You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,
And spit upon my Jewish gabardine,
And all for use of that which is mine own.
Well then, it now appears you need my help.
Go to, then, you come to me, and you say,
“Shylock, we would have moneys”; you say so;
You that did void your rheum upon my beard,
And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur
Over your threshold; moneys is your suit.
What should I say to you? Should I not say:
“Hath a dog money? Is it possible
A cur can lend three thousand ducats?”; or
Shall I bend low, and in a bondman’s key,
With bated breath and whispering humbleness
Say this:
“Fair sir, you spat at me on Wednesday last;
You called me dog; and for these courtesies
I’ll lend you thus much moneys”?

(Sir Antonio, many times
In the Rialto you have criticized me
About my money and my money-lending.
I have put up with it with a patient shrug of the shoulders,
Because Jewish people have to put up with things and that is what distinguishes us.
You call me someone who believes in a false religion, a nasty dog
And spit on my Jewish cloak,
And all because I lend out my own money.
Well then, now it appears that you need my help.
You come to me and you say,
“Shylock we would like to borrow money”
Even though you spat phlegm on my beard
And kick me as if you were throwing a stray dog
Out of your house; you are asking for money.
What should I say to you? Shouldn’t I say
“Has a dog money? Is it possible
That a dog can lend three thousand ducats?” or
Shall I grovel and in a slave’s tone of voice
With a soft respectful whisper
Say this:
“Good sir, you spat at me last Wednesday
You called me a dog; and for these kindnesses
I’ll lend you so much money”?)

Shylock

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Immediately after this, Shylock famously goes on to demand a pound of Antonio’s flesh if the debt is not serviced. Money lending was one of the few careers open to Jews, since Jews were forbidden to own property and Christians were not allowed to lend.

Near the end of the play, when asked whether he seriously intends to take a pound of Antonio’s flesh if the merchant defaults on his loan, Shylock affirms that he is indeed serious, especially given his recent indignities at the hands of Christians:

Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge! If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge! The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

Human Rights Stories (5): 1984

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Excerpt from Orwell’s 1984:

There was an outburst of squeals from the cage. It seemed to reach Winston from far away. The rats were fighting; they were trying to get at each other through the partition. He heard also a deep groan of despair. That, too, seemed to come from outside himself.

O’Brien picked up the cage, and, as he did so, pressed something in it. There was a sharp click. Winston made a frantic effort to tear himself loose from the chair. It was hopeless; every part of him, even his head, was held immovably. O’Brien moved the cage nearer. It was less than a metre from Winston’s face.

’I have pressed the first lever,’ said O’Brien. ’You understand the construction of this cage. The mask will fit over your head, leaving no exit. When I press this other lever, the door of the cage will slide up. These starving brutes will shoot out of it like bullets. Have you ever seen a rat leap through the air? They will leap on to your face and bore straight into it. Sometimes they attack the eyes first. Sometimes they burrow through the cheeks and devour the tongue.’

The cage was nearer; it was closing in. Winston heard a succession of shrill cries which appeared to be occurring in the air above his head. But he fought furiously against his panic. To think, to think, even with a split second left — to think was the only hope. Suddenly the foul musty odour of the brutes struck his nostrils. There was a violent convulsion of nausea inside him, and he almost lost consciousness. Everything had gone black. For an instant he was insane, a screaming animal. Yet he came out of the blackness clutching an idea. There was one and only one way to save himself. He must interpose another human being, the body of another human being, between himself and the rats.

The circle of the mask was large enough now to shut out the vision of anything else. The wire door was a couple of hand-spans from his face. The rats knew what was coming now. One of them was leaping up and down, the other, an old scaly grandfather of the sewers, stood up, with his pink hands against the bars, and fiercely sniffed the air. Winston could see the whiskers and the yellow teeth. Again the black panic took hold of him. He was blind, helpless, mindless.

’It was a common punishment in Imperial China,’ said O’Brien as didactically as ever.

The mask was closing on his face. The wire brushed his cheek. And then — no, it was not relief, only hope, a tiny fragment of hope. Too late, perhaps too late. But he had suddenly understood that in the whole world there was just one person to whom he could transfer his punishment — one body that he could thrust between himself and the rats. And he was shouting frantically, over and over.

’Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don’t care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!’

He was falling backwards, into enormous depths, away from the rats. He was still strapped in the chair, but he had fallen through the floor, through the walls of the building, through the earth, through the oceans, through the atmosphere, into outer space, into the gulfs between the stars — always away, away, away from the rats. He was light years distant, but O’Brien was still standing at his side. There was still the cold touch of wire against his cheek. But through the darkness that enveloped him he heard another metallic click, and knew that the cage door had clicked shut and not open.

More on torture. More on Big Brother.

Human Rights Stories (4): Animal Farm

George Orwell

(source)

Excerpt from George Orwell’s Animal Farm:

Benjamin felt a nose nuzzling at his shoulder. He looked round. It was Clover. Her old eyes looked dimmer than ever. Without saying anything, she tugged gently at his mane and led him round to the end of the big barn, where the Seven Commandments were written. For a minute or two they stood gazing at the tatted wall with its white lettering.

‘My sight is failing,’ she said finally. ‘Even when I was young I could not have read what was written there. But it appears to me that that wall looks different. Are the Seven Commandments the same as they used to be, Benjamin?’

For once Benjamin consented to break his rule, and he read out to her what was written on the wall. There was nothing there now except a single Commandment. It ran:

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

After that it did not seem strange when next day the pigs who were supervising the work of the farm all carried whips in their trotters.

More on equality.

Human Rights Stories (3): Sex Strike

Abbreviated excerpt from Lysistrata by the Greek playwright Aristophanes (a comic play on the sex strike led by the women of Greece in a successful attempt to force their husbands to stop making war. The men, suffering from the absence of sex, agree to make peace):

Lysistrata (one of the women): “If all women join together then we can save Greece!”

Other woman: “I won’t do it. Better to let the war go on. Suppose we did give up sex, how would that help to end the war?”

Lysistrata: “How? Well, just imagine: we’re at home, beautifully made up, wearing our sheerest lawn negligées and nothing underneath, and with our triangles carefully plucked; and the men are all like ramrods and can’t wait to leap into bed, and then we absolutely refuse – that’ll make them make peace soon enough, you’ll see”.

“But look, what if they divorce us?”

“Well, that wouldn’t help them much, would it?”

“What if they take hold of us and drag us into the bedroom by force?”

“Cling to the door”.

“And if they hit us and force us to let go?”

“Why, in that case you’ve got to be as damned unresponsive as possible. There’s no pleasure in it if they have to use force and give pain. They’ll give up trying soon enough. And no man is ever happy if he can’t please his woman.”

“Well, if you think it’s a good idea we agree.”

Human Rights Stories (2): Slavery

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe (two excerpts, abbreviated)

1. Two brothers debate the possible slave revolt in the South after witnessing the young Henrique beat the slave Dodo:

” ‘All men are born free and equal!’ Poh! one of Tom Jefferson’s pieces of French sentiment and humbug. It’s perfectly ridiculous to have that going the rounds among us, to this day.”

“I think it is.”

“Because we can see plainly enough that all men are not born free, nor born equal; they are born anything else. For my part, I think half this republican talk sheer humbug. It is the educated, the intelligent, the wealthy, the refined, who ought to have equal rights and not the canaille.”

“If you can keep the canaille of that opinion. They took their turn once, in France.”

“Of course, they must be kept down, consistently, steadily.”

“It makes a terrible slip when they get up.”

“Poh! we’ll take care of that, in this country. We must set our face against all this educating, elevating talk, that is getting about now; the lower class must not be educated.”

“That is past praying for, educated they will be, and we have only to say how. Our system is educating them in barbarism and brutality. We are breaking all humanizing ties, and making them brute beasts; and, if they get the upper hand, such we shall find them.”

“They shall never get the upper hand!”

“They will govern you, when their time comes, and they will be just such rulers as you make them.”

2. The writer urges white Northerners to welcome escaped slaves and treat them with respect:

“On the shores of our free states are emerging the poor, shattered, broken remnants of families,–men and women, escaped, by miraculous providences, from the surges of slavery,–feeble in knowledge, and, in many cases, infirm in moral constitution, from a system which confounds and confuses every principle of Christianity and morality. They come to seek a refuge among you; they come to seek education, knowledge, Christianity.

What do you owe to these poor, unfortunates, O Christians? Does not every American Christian owe to the African race some effort at reparation for the wrongs that the American nation has brought upon them? Shall the doors of churches and school-houses be shut down upon them? Shall states arise and shake them out? Shall the Church of Christ hear in silence the taunt that is thrown at them, and shrink away from the helpless hand that they stretch out, and shrink away from the courage the cruelty that would chase them from our borders? If it must be so, it will be a mournful spectacle. If it must be so, the country will have reason to tremble, when it remembers that fate of nations is in the hand of the One who is very pitiful, and of tender compassion.”

Human Rights Stories (1): The Judicial System

Franz Kafka

Excerpt from “In the Penal Colony” by Franz Kafka (abbreviated). The story is about a settlement where they have a very peculiar judicial system, and a horrible execution method. The dialogue is between a visitor and the local self-styled “judge” annex executioner. They are talking about a soldier about to be executed.

Visitor: “Does he know his sentence?”

Judge: “No. There would be no point in announcing it to him. You see, he gets to know it in the flesh”.

“But at least he knows that sentence has been passed on him?”

“Nor that either”.

“But surely, do you mean that the man still doesn’t know how his defence was received?”

“He has had no opportunity to defend himself”.

“But he must have had the opportunity to defend himself.”

“The situation is as follows. Here in the penal colony I have been appointed as judge. … The principle on which I base my decisions is this: guilt is always beyond question. … I at once [decide] the sentence. … If I had first … interrogated [the man] … if would only have led to confusion. He would have lied; if I had succeeded in refuting these lies he would have replaced them with fresh lies, and so forth”.

Etc.

Makes you think of some present day situations, doesn’t it? “Guantanamo” rings a bell?