There’s an interactive map here showing where some of the recently deposed dictators have ended up after they had to flee the countries they once ruled. This is a screenshot:
where deposed dictators have settled
Tag Archives: dictator
The Compatibility of Freedom and Equality (9): The Freedom of the Tyrant
Chaplin’s The Great Dictator
A popular definition of freedom is “the ability to do what you want“. If you accept the claim that tyrants or dictators are among those most able to do what they want (since the rest of humanity is always to a larger extent bound by laws and the actions of others), then it follows that a tyrant is the archetype of a free person.
Except if you believe – as I do – that freedom is not only – or even primarily – the ability to do what you choose, but also the availability of significant choices. And a choice is significant when you have the ability to expand the options you can choose from and the ability to make an educated choice between expanded and examined options.
Now, how do you widen the available choices, and check if what you at first think you want is really what you want after reflection and consideration of all the available options? Only if all possible options and choices are flooded with the light of publicity. When you see which options are available, when you hear people freely discussing in public the merits of different options and objects of volition, only then can you make an educated choice.
This publicity requires a legal system and legally protected human rights. These rights open up the options, allow other options to appear and show the merits of all options. These rights improve your volition and hence give something more than the mere ability to do what you want. They allow you to take a step back and reflect on what it is that you want.
Only in a public space protected by legal rights, where everybody is equal and where everybody can speak and listen in an equal way, can we examine our options. So we see that freedom needs equality in the sense of the equal participation in public life. If there’s no equal participation, then some possible options and some arguments for or against some options will not appear, and, as a consequence, a free choice isn’t possible.
Hannah Arendt
Now if we return to the case of the tyrant, we can say that he’s not more free than his subjects. A tyrant does not have access to a public space because a public space needs the protection of human rights, something which a tyrant gets out of the way as soon as he can.
The point of Herodotus’s equation of freedom with no-rule was that the ruler himself was not free; by assuming the rule over others, he had deprived himself of those peers in whose company he could have been free. In other words, he had destroyed the political space itself, with the result that there was no freedom extant any longer, either for himself or for those over whom he ruled. Hannah Arendt
Other posts in this series are here. More on Hannah Arendt.
The Ethics of Human Rights (19): The Universality of Human Rights vs. the Importance of Culture
Multicultural Harmony by Children in Afghan Refugee Camp
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Is it appropriate, desirable and coherent to impose human rights law and norms on cultures when these cultures have adopted norms and practices that violate human rights? Such an imposition would clearly upset and perhaps even destroy cultural arrangements and traditions, something which would in turn have numerous adverse consequences for people’s well-being and sense of identity (not to mention the consequences for human diversity, humanity’s heritage etc.). Add to that the likelihood that “imposition” usually means “violence”, and you can rest your case.
Or can you? Is it really a no-brainer that culture should by definition have priority and preferential treatment compared to the universality of human rights? I’m very receptive to the requirements of culture and I accept that cultural imperialism and neo-colonialism are real problems. But I also believe that the culture-universality problem is contaminated by a long list of mistakes and misunderstandings, making the choice between culture and universality a lot less obvious. Here’s a short list:
- Cultures need human rights. Especially in today’s multicultural world, cultures need freedom of religion, tolerance, freedom of association and assembly etc. in order to survive. Sacrificing human rights on the altar of culture ultimately means sacrificing culture as well. So cultures at least have a strategic reason to adopt human rights, even if this means giving up certain of their more cruel and barbaric practices and norms.
- Cultures change. With or without the prodding of human rights activists, governments or international institutions. So why not promote change in the good direction, meaning in the direction of human rights? Cultures are not, and should not be, untouchable. Changing parts of them – i.e. certain norms and practices – doesn’t necessarily mean destroying them.
- “Culture” is often a tool in the hands of oppressors. They are all too willing to dress up their tyranny in the clothes of culture, giving themselves an aura of respectability and inevitability. Many of the rights violations that are supposedly “cultural” are nothing of the sort.
- Cultures aren’t monolithic. They are complicated and self-contradictory. While some elements of a culture generate rights violations, other elements of the same culture prohibit those violations. In fact, most if not all cultures have elements that can back up human rights protection, although often this is implicit rather than explicit. Giving priority to elements of a culture that violate human rights is just one specific interpretation of a culture, and possibly a self-interested one if it’s done by those in power. When human rights and culture contradict each other, often the problem can be solved, not by ditching human rights but by favoring another interpretation of the culture. In the words of Charles Taylor, different cultures will travel different routes to the same goal of universality of rights, each culture finding within itself the resources to justify and ground human rights.
Charles Taylor
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- Linked to this: who can decide what is a truly cultural practice or norm? Ideally it’s the people making up the culture, not some self-interested spokesperson. The people, however, rarely if ever get to decide this. One can assume that, if they would be able to decide, they wouldn’t favor an interpretation that harms their rights. Also, and importantly, if they would be allowed to decide, they would need human rights to do so.
- An assumption of those granting automatic priority to culture is that imposing something on a culture, or coercing a culture to evolve in a certain direction, is by definition wrong. They assume that this is a dogma of post-colonialism. However, nobody worries about coercion of domestic practices that violate the law, not even if these practices can justifiably be labeled as “cultural”. We don’t allow “mafia culture” to flourish, or certain violent forms of macho culture or whatever. States pride themselves on the uniform application of domestic law, no matter how diverse their citizenry. And international human rights law is law as well, and also merits uniform application. Why is coercion in one case allowed but not in the other? By the way: many authoritarian countries that claim the right to violate human rights as a means to protect “their” culture (or what they claim is their culture) impose a dominant culture domestically at the expense of minority cultures.
- The charge of cultural imperialism and the analogy with colonialism imply that human rights advocacy equals the attempt to impose western culture on the rest of the world. That human rights promotion is cultural export, a crusade or a holy war. However, human rights aren’t western rights, not by a long shot. The West violates human rights just as much as anyone else. And other cultures can find human rights within their traditions. Unlike the crusades, human rights promotion doesn’t attempt to impose a worldview, a morality or a religion. If it imposes something, it imposes diversity and plurality.
- Finally, their is the relativity of relativism. If all values are based on culture and there are no universal values that can take precedence, than that’s true as well of cultural relativism. Why would the rule that all culture can decide for themselves be the only universal and non-cultural rule?
More on cultural relativism. More on universality. More posts in this series are here.
Silly Dictators, A Collection of Images
Qaddafi
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Kim Jong-Il
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Mugabe
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Omar al-Bashir
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Idi Amin
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Pinochet
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Etc. Etc. More collections of images.
Human Rights Cartoon (46): China’s Support for Rogue States
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In addition to its widespread disregard for human rights at home, China has now become the main supporter of some of the world’s most loathed dictators. The governments of Zimbabwe, Sudan, Iran, North-Korea, Burma and many others regularly receive Chinese support in many different ways:
- China uses its veto power in the U.N. Security Council to block the liberal West’s efforts to impose sanctions.
- It offers other means of diplomatic support.
- It gives unconditional economic aid.
- It sells arms.
- It invests.
- It trades.
To some extent, it does all this with its narrow economic and political self-interest in mind:
- It needs the resources that these dictatorships can provide.
- It profits from trade with these countries.
- It profits from banding together with these countries and forming strategic alliances against the U.S.
But there is more to it: resisting the tide of freedom abroad helps to stem it at home.
China of course isn’t the only nation with bad friends. The U.S. has long supported dictatorships in South-America for instance, and continues to sell arms to Saudi-Arabia and others in the Middle East.
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More on the dealings of China in Africa. More on the link between Chinese authoritarianism and Confucianism.
Human Rights and International Law (9): Impunity
Luis Moreno-Ocampo
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I deeply hope that the horrors humanity has suffered during the 20th century will serve us as a painful lesson, and that the creation of the International Criminal Court will help us to prevent those atrocities from being repeated in the future. Statement made by Luis Moreno-Ocampo on the occasion of his election as first Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court by the Assembly of States Parties in New York on 22 April 2003.
Many gross violations of rights such as genocides, state oppression, torture etc. are committed by the political class of a country, and in particular by the political leaders. And if they don’t personally dirty their hands, they organize, order, facilitate and protect the executors. They view rights violations as a necessary element in the exercise of power.
For many reasons, legal and practical, these leaders often enjoy impunity, meaning literally “without punishment”. The “Set of Principles for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights Through Action to Combat Impunity” describes impunity in this way:
The impossibility, de jure or de facto, of bringing the perpetrators of violations to account – whether in criminal, civil, administrative or disciplinary proceedings – since they are not subject to any inquiry that might lead to their being accused, arrested, tried and, if found guilty, sentenced to appropriate penalties, and to making reparations to their victims. (source)
Reasons for impunity
Here are some of these reasons for impunity:
1. Self-Preservation
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A first reason for impunity is the fact that the perpetrators are in power and have subjected the justice system and the judiciary to their command. They have, in other words, destroyed the division of powers or failed to institutionalize it. Because they are so powerful, most of them die in the saddle and only have to fear a Higher Judge.
But some do not and end their reign (or see it ended) during their lifetime. But even then they manage to protect themselves. If they still have enough influence to stay in the country, they can either negotiate immunity or amnesty (take the case of Pinochet), or they have enough friends in high places to dispense with such formalities (take Deng Xiaoping, the butcher of Tienanmen).
2. The solidarity of tyrants
Milosevic and Karadzic
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If their exit from power is somewhat acrimonious, they may have to flee to another country where a friendly dictator will do everything to avoid a precedent of justice and will harbor the criminal until the end of his days (take Karadzic). How beautiful solidarity can be.
3. The law
Donald Rumsfeld
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Sometimes the national justice system can’t help, and at other times the international solidarity of tyrants hinders an otherwise able and willing justice system. Also the law can come to the rescue. State functionaries (sometimes even former functionaries) claim to enjoy legal immunity in national or even international law for acts carried out while in office. Individual perpetrators hide behind their states. Heads of state or leading functionaries are said to represent their states and all their actions are “acts of state”, and therefore the state is responsible for these acts.
Lower ranking officials are not responsible either, because they can hide behind the “Befehl ist Befehl” principle. They cannot be punished because they follow orders from people who themselves are not responsible either.
Only by transcending these principles of immunity and command can individuals be punished for violations of human rights and can human rights be protected (punishing states is very difficult and is not fair because it is a kind of collective punishment.) This has been the main achievement of the Nuremberg Tribunal. The Nuremberg tribunal was the first tribunal to judge the crimes of political leaders and to refuse to grant them immunity for war crimes and gross violations of human rights such as the holocaust. The charter of the fledgling International Criminal Court (ICC) also rules out defenses based on immunity:
Immunities or special procedural rules which may attach to the official capacity of a person, whether under national or international law, shall not bar the Court from exercising its jurisdiction over such a person. (source)
Charles Taylor of Liberia was indicted in 2003 while still in power, and is now in the dock in The Hague. Milosevic went before him and others will follow. But they have to be extradited. Political leaders will not extradite themselves, and after they leave office they will continue to enjoy some protection at home. Taylor was arrested because he first agreed to accept exile in Nigeria.
Moreover, countries have to sign up to the ICC treaty. Zimbabwe for example has not signed up, so Mugabe will not have his day in court, unless there is a referral to the court by the Security Council. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is now indicted on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes over the slaughter in Darfur, but will probably remain comfortably in his seat.
Some claim that the possibility of being handed over to the ICC after the end of their reign, forces tyrants to cling to power and use ever more violent means to do so. But then you could as well grant amnesty to all hostage takers out of fear that they would otherwise do more harm to their hostages.
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4. Institutional problems
The impunity of ordinary civil servants or members of the police is often the consequence of under-developed state institutions. Judiciaries that are malfunctioning or corrupt, policemen who are underpaid or have a lack of training etc.
Impunity arises from a failure by States to meet their obligations to investigate violations; to take appropriate measures in respect of the perpetrators, particularly in the area of justice, by ensuring that those suspected of criminal responsibility are prosecuted, tried and duly punished; to provide victims with effective remedies and to ensure that they receive reparation for the injuries suffered; to ensure the inalienable right to know the truth about violations; and to take other necessary steps to prevent a recurrence of violations. (source)
Data
The Committee to Protect Journalists has an impunity index in which countries are ranked according to the number of murder of journalists that are unresolved. More statistics are here.
Here’s a post on the related subject of universal jurisdiction.
Plato, Democracy, and “Human Rights” (2): Theoretical and Political Life
Plato
(please read part 1 first)
Theoretical life, the most elevated way of life and the only life which leads to the knowledge of truth, is incompatible with political life according to Plato. Contemplating the truth with the eye of the mind – this is theoretical life – is impossible as long as one is dominated by appearances, or in other words as long as one follows desires, participates in political deliberation or uses one’s human rights. Democratic politics and human rights are all about appearances, exposure, communication, and persuasion. Plato’s world is a solitary one, where the mind is engaged only with itself.
However, after contemplating the truth the philosopher has to return to earth, or to the darkness of the cave in Plato’s words. He is morally obliged to use his superior knowledge of the good life, acquired in the course of his solitary theoretical life, in order to improve the lives of his fellow-citizens. And the best instrument to do this is politics, but a kind of politics quite different from democratic politics. As a result of his philosophical activity, or his theoretical life, he has knowledge, not only about the good life but also about politics and the organization of society. He has the moral obligation to organize or make his society according to a plan that he knows is best and that he has obtained from his reflections. This plan is a matter of knowledge. Hence, it is the best and only plan. He will have to eliminate opposition and reaction because opposition and reaction to his plan is by definition stupid. It does not result from knowledge or from theoretical life.
This plan, according to Plato, is the roadmap to a generalized theoretical life. The theoretical life of the individual philosopher is the model for society. Everybody, or at least as many people as possible, must be given access to theoretical life through the political organization of society. Only then will there be general wellbeing because theoretical life is the only good and happy life, especially when compared to the life of the senses and of consumption. Theoretical life becomes the goal of politics, the only goal. Instead of the institutionalization of the game of action and reaction around different goals (as in democracy), politics becomes the organization of coordinated action with a single goal.
The philosopher has to become king and has to shape his society in his image, even though in principle theoretical life is far better than political life and should be chosen above political life. However, he has knowledge and the responsibilities that knowledge entails. He knows what theoretical life is, and so he knows how to lead or even force others in the direction of such a life and how to organize society in such a way that theoretical life becomes a general fact.
The philosopher-king, a dictatorial concept later translated into concepts such as the enlightened sovereign, the technocrat etc., results from the logic of fabrication. The expert maker, the one with the best knowledge of the goal or the plan, should be the leader of the construction process, construction in this case not of a product but of society and of the people in society.
Only those with sufficient knowledge of the good life, the goal of politics according to Plato, should be political leaders, otherwise politics will not be aimed at the good life. This knowledge is not primarily political expertise, knowledge of the art of rhetoric or negotiation etc., but knowledge of the way in which to lead a theoretical life. Only those who already lead it know how to guide others along the way.
We should rely on those persons who have acquired knowledge of the good life. This is true in every field of knowledge. If we want to build a ship, we rely on those who know how to build a ship. Everybody else must be polite enough to shut up. The ordinary people, people without knowledge of the good life, should remain silent when it comes to politics, just as they rightly remain silent when a ship has to be build.
Democracy is therefore undesirable. The experts of the good life, and hence the rulers, are by definition a minority. The ordinary people are ruled by their desires and have to be assisted and forced in their development towards a higher way of life. If they rule, politics will necessarily be focused on desires, on quantity rather than quality. Only those who can rule themselves must be allowed to rule others, and to rule others for their own good. That is why Socrates can say to his judges that they should cherish someone like him instead of condemning him. He does not defend himself but the entire city. The city would suffer most from his death, much more than he himself.
The philosopher-king acts in the interest of the good life of his society and not in his selfinterest. The latter would be better served by a theoretical life and by avoiding politics. The fact that philosophers take over power reluctantly insulates them from abuses of power (for example, the use of power in their self-interest). They are forced to take over power for two reasons:
- their moral obligation to improve their society, and
- the fact that they otherwise would have to follow orders from people who are less wise than they.
Because they are forced they will rule not in their own interest but in the general interest.
A democracy can never rule in the general interest, because democratic politicians always listen to the people, always take over the claims of the people, and these claims are always materialistic and incompatible with the good life. Hence the goal of their rule is always the fulfillment of desires. Automatically, they will start to see power as well as an object of desire and use it in order to serve their own personal desires rather than those of the people.
The material appetites of the “common people” are not the only reason why democracy, according to Plato, is based on the senses, on appearances rather than underlying, eternal truths. The democratic style of politics is basically sense-oriented. It is about discussion, communication, deliberation. It’s policies change, are refined, repealed etc. Plato’s style of politics is different. It starts with solitary thinking, contemplation of eternal truths, which are then implemented top-down by politics.
What is Democracy? (23): Democracy is Peace, Ctd.
In a previous post, I discussed the democratic peace theory. This is a follow up.
Tyrannies, compared to democracies, are more likely to cause wars. Tyrannies violate human rights and these violations make it very difficult to maintain the rule of law (different human rights institute the rule of law, and the indivisibility of human rights means that the whole body of human rights is in danger when some human rights suffer). Without the rule of law, it is very hard to maintain a justice system which that can channel conflicts away from violence. As a consequence, these conflicts can escalate and can become violent. People start to take the law in their own hands. They start to steal, to compensate for goods stolen, and to murder, to compensate for murder. Revenge is seen as the only alternative for justice, and revenge tends to escalate. Large-scale conflict and civil war become a very real threat. And civil wars have a tendency to become international wars.
Moreover, violations of human rights create anger, frustration and revolt (this is true for all types of rights, economic rights included), and can therefore be a direct cause of civil war. And civil war can lead to international war.
However, there is an even more direct link between rights violations and international conflict. Rights violations can create tensions with neighboring countries because of refugee flows, which result from rights violations or civil war. Neighboring countries can decide to intervene in these rights violations or in a civil war, to protect their own safety and prosperity. This intervention can, of course, lead to an international conflict. It is, however, the internal situation in a country and not the intervention from the outside, which causes the conflict. It is the country in which human rights are violated, which creates international instability.
What is Democracy? (19): Democracy is Peace
The democratic peace theory, stating that democracies do not wage war among themselves, is one of the main arguments in favor of the international promotion of democratic governance. It has been around since Immanuel Kant who, in his essay Perpetual Peace, postulated that constitutional republics, or what we now would call democracies, was one of the necessary conditions for a perpetual peace. Recently, this theory has been abused by the US government in order to justify a war against a non-democracy – Iraq – in order to bring lasting peace to the world, but this abuse has not diminished the strength of the argument.
Democracies do not wage war among themselves mainly for the following reasons:
- Democracies are able to make and keep international agreements and to create mechanisms which make it possible to solve international conflicts in a peaceful way. Publicity, as we find it in a democracy, tends to enhance respect for agreements because it makes it harder to cover up violations of agreements. A mentality of respect for the law, which is typical of a democracy because the rule of law is typical of a democracy (see this page), promotes respect for international agreements.
- Democracies are able to avoid civil strife because they have judicial systems for solving conflicts between persons or between groups (see this post). Civil strife often spills over to other countries and can cause international conflicts (international violence is often the consequence of internal violence). Therefore, avoiding civil strife means avoiding international conflicts. Tolerance, respect, religious freedom and non-discrimination, as guaranteed by human rights and democracy, also protect civil peace and therefore international peace.
- Democracy promotes peace because it provides mechanisms for the peaceful transition from one ruler to another (see this post). There is no need for a violent succession struggle which can have international consequences. Opposition movements do not have to resort to extreme tactics in order to prove their point or to take over power. Leaders do not need to engage in dangerous international adventures in order to increase their legitimacy etc.
- Governments which treat their own people with tolerance and respect tend to treat their neighbors in the same way.
- Governments which cannot force people to do something against their will, will find it much harder to go to war. The people most often do not want to go to war, because it is they who suffer in the first place. To some extent, a tyranny does not need the agreement of the people to start or continue a war.
In another post I discuss the other side of the mirror: how tyrannies create war.
Human Rights Poem (21): Epitaph on a tyrant
Epitaph on a tyrant, W.H. Auden
Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.
Human Rights Cartoon (13): Violence
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The use of force by governments is always a sign of weakness. It’s a sign that their legitimacy is withering or gone, and that their normal procedures of maintaining order (house arrest, censureship, propaganda, divide and rule, bribery etc.) are no longer functioning. Few dictators like to use force. They don’t like the anarchy and unpredictability which always accompany the use force. They much prefer to keep things orderly. The fact that they use violence is a sign that they are losing control.
It can also be said that the protesters, even if they are violently crushed, have power. According to Hannah Arendt, power is the collective action of people in the political sphere, whereas force (or violence) is a simple destructive capability which can be exercised even by a single person. For more on Arendt and violence see here and here.
Hannah Arendt
