Human Rights Facts (42): Discrimination

I’ve written before on discrimination, especially gender discrimination (also here) and discrimination based on sexual orientation. This post tackles the subject more generally.
Discrimination, in its non-political and non-legal sense, simply means the recognition of differences. In the political and legal sense, it means unjustifiable differences in treatment between groups of people, most often the unjustifiable [...]

Human Rights Cartoon (86): Illegal Immigration

(copyright http://www.coxandforkum.com/)
The concept of “illegal alien” is meaningless. A person can never be illegal, only certain acts can be. I suspect that the use of this concept betrays certain prejudices and perhaps even racism.
Of course, people settling in a country without this country’s permission act illegally and commit a crime. I wouldn’t go as far [...]

Human Rights Cartoon (79): Fair Trial

(unknown artist)
A characteristic element of modern democratic states is their ability to offer fair trials to those accused of crimes. We try to treat everyone, even suspected criminals, with fairness, and we have two principal reasons for this:

We only want to punish real criminals. A fair trial is one in which everything is done to [...]

Human Rights Cartoon (19): Ethnic Cleansing

(by http://www.globecartoon.com/, Chappatte)
No comment, except that Milosevic, although he died in prison, did not escape justice. His accomplices will follow, I’m sure. There’s an optimistic note for today. Something similar would not have been possible 100 years ago. Sometimes I believe in progress.
More on justice for dictators.

Human Rights Cartoon (12): Justice

(by Chappatte, www.globecartoon.com)
What’s the use of pursuing criminal justice charges against a dictator who’s died? He can’t pay for his crimes anymore, he can’t make good, justice has evaded us forever.
In some ways this is true. But the justice of the future requires the consciousness of the injustices of the past. Pursuing charges against a [...]

Human Rights Cartoon (1): Equal Rights

This cartoon is by Mike Lane (http://www.comics.com/editoons/lane/index.html). It reminded me of the equality inherent in human rights. Human rights are the equal rights of everyone, criminals and terrorists included. No one has less or more rights than the next person. It’s not because someone committed a crime that we are allowed to take away his [...]