The Ethics of Human Rights (69): Democratic Transition Caught Between the Rights of Past and Future Generations

Reconcilliation cartoon by Dario Castillejos

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Here are some general observations inspired by the recent talk of a possible amnesty for Assad as a means to convince him to give up power in Syria.

Imagine a country in which roughly 20% of the population ruled the other 80% during several decades or even centuries. The members of the ruling class owned the land and controlled much of the economy, are of a different social class (perhaps even race) and made sure that the rest of the population lived in constant poverty, oppression and discrimination.

The combination of an internal uprising and external intervention produced a successful transition to a fully democratic form of government. A strong and independent judiciary is now in place, able to effectively enforce a constitution that includes a wide array of human rights.

How should this new democracy deal with the horrors of the past and the rights violations of the now defunct regime? There are two seemingly incompatible needs: victims of rights violations in the past now demand justice, but the society as a whole may be better off without justice, at least in the short run immediately after the democratic transition (and later it may be too late to bring the perpetrators to justice because they’re all dead). Justice can make it more difficult to integrate the old ruling class into the new state. Given that most of the members of that class were heavily implicated in the horrors of the past, justice can’t be a simple matter of punishing a few key perpetrators. And punishing large groups of people will alienate those people, with potentially fatal consequences for the stability of the new state. It may even be the case that one can identify a few key perpetrators, but that those are still quite important for stability even though they’re not very numerous. For example, it’s likely that the military was implicated in past injustices, but the military – especially the top brass - is very important for stability and the new state can’t risk alienating this group, even if it’s not very large. An internally divided society is not at peace with itself and risks upheaval.

However, failure to pursue justice will also divide society. Failure to do something about past injustices will result in impunity and will undermine the moral authority of the new state. Also, what would that imply for future respect for human rights? Why respect rights when past disrespect was without consequences? And if only new rights violations are prosecuted, then there will be a feeling of injustice because of double standards.

A solution to this dilemma can perhaps be found in the fact that there are degrees and different kinds of justice. Justice doesn’t have to be penal or focused on retribution or revenge. Better perhaps to emphasize truth, also a traditional element of justice. Truth, as in the so-called truth commissions, can foster repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation. Judicial prosecutions can still play a part, but their potential divisiveness can be softened by measures such as amnesty, pardon or limited punishments, on the condition that the defendants cooperate in truth commissions. It’s often the case that truth is more important to victims than retribution.

Of course, some major perpetrators may still have to be punished and perhaps even severely punished. Some types of responsibility are simply to heavy to warrant amnesty. It may be impossible for a society to exist given the presence of monsters continuing their lives as if nothing happened. It’s not necessary to “buy” the allegiance of every single individual in society, not even individuals who still have a broad base of support. In addition, we have to avoid coerced amnesty: perpetrators can blackmail the new state by threatening large-scale unrest or upheaval.

So we need to balance the needs of the past and the future. Both needs should be acknowledged and neither should be sacrificed for the other. Of course, that’s easy to say and very hard to do.

More on the rights of past and future generations here, here, here and here. More on transitional justice here and here. More on the prerequisites for a transition to democracy is here.

Related Articles

• Analysis: Justice in doubt for Congo atrocity victims (reuters.com)
• Action needed to investigate a decade of crimes in DRC (yubanet.com)

The Causes of Human Rights Violations (46): Justificational Reasoning

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People act in all sorts of dubious ways, but they often justify their behavior after the event using imaginary motives or reasons, and then they come to believe those motives and reasons themselves. It’s a kind of cognitive failure and self-deception which, when it occurs in the field of human rights, makes it hard to do something about rights violations. If people can’t even admit to themselves what the real reasons are for their bad behavior – rights violations in this case – then it becomes very difficult – for others and for themselves – to do something about those reasons and to prevent future occurrences of the behavior.

As long as we – and, as a result, others as well - believe that we were motivated by ethical justifications which we in fact constructed and invented after the facts rather than by the often more suspicious justifications that really drove our actions, then we have less reasons to avoid those actions in the future. True, well-intentioned rights violations do exist and good intentions don’t make remedies more difficult – often it’s enough that we become aware of the possible dangers of good intentions. But when bad intentions masquerade as good ones, even to the person having the intentions, then things become more difficult. It’s always good to know the exact and true causes of something if you want to avoid it in the future. When people really know what motivates them but choose to present themselves in another way – perhaps because of shame -we can still try to pierce their cover. But when people fool even themselves, then there’s very little we can do. And it seems that people are indeed frequently unaware of the real causes of their own behavior.

An innocent example of justificational reasoning to begin with:

[M]ale students [were asked] to choose between two specially created sports magazines. One had more articles, but the other featured more sports. When a participant was asked to rate a magazine, one of two magazines happened to be a special swimsuit issue, featuring beautiful women in bikinis.

When the swimsuit issue was the magazine with more articles, the guys said they valued having more articles to read and chose that one. When the bikini babes appeared in the publication with more sports, they said wider coverage was more important and chose that issue. (source, source)

A more harmful case from another experiment:

Managers … have been found to favour male applicants at hypothetical job interviews by claiming that they were searching for a candidate with either greater education or greater experience, depending on the attribute with which the man could trump the woman. (source)

And it’s not easy to imagine the same thing going on in even more harmful actions.

There’s a kind of cognitive dissonance behind justificational reasoning: we want others to think that were are good people and we want to think of ourselves this way. When the facts contradict this belief, we change the facts.

Other posts in this series are here.

The Causes of Human Rights Violations (44): Corruption

Corruption, or “the misuse of public office for private gain”, is immoral and bad in numerous ways, but it’s not a human rights violation. At least not as such. To my knowledge, human rights law doesn’t contain an explicit right not to suffer the consequences of corruption. However, it is the case that corruption causes various rights violations. For example, it can often be viewed as a form of theft and hence a violation of the right to private property. And in the case of corruption in the justice system, the right to a fair trial is violated.

Moreover, corruption has a negative impact on GDP (see here) – mainly because it’s a tax on investment – and hence also on poverty reduction (given the correlation between GDP and poverty reduction, see here, here and here). And there is a right not to suffer poverty. Corruption also has an impact on poverty on the level of individuals rather than countries. It’s obvious that individuals – especially those who are poor or near the poverty line – can make better use of the funds that they have to spend on bribes.

Furthermore, corruption eats away at the rule of law. Even in the most corrupt countries, corruption is usually illegal. If illegal activity becomes normal practice, the rule of law is obviously undermined, with possible consequences for judicial protection in general, including protection of human rights. The rule of law is also harmed directly by corruption, namely by corruption inside the judiciary and the police force, and this has an immediate impact on human rights. Even more seriously, corruption is associated with political instability since it tends to reduce citizens’ trust and faith in institutions. It can therefore destroy democracy, and democracy is both a human right and a means to protect human rights in general.

So, if we can agree that corruption is a cause of various human rights violations, then the question is: who is responsible for corruption and hence for the rights violations occurring because of it? I would say that it’s the government officials taking bribes (and possibly the banks safeguarding the proceeds) rather than the private persons or companies paying the bribes, at least in general. The latter would presumably prefer not to pay bribes and often find themselves in situations in which they have no choice.

Now, you could say that some corrupt officials, especially those at the lower levels of government, don’t have a choice either: without the proceeds of corruption they may well end up in poverty. Demanding bribes is then the alternative for a failed economy and a failed state. However, I think it’s fair to claim that they still have, in general, a wider set of options than many of those having to pay bribes. If you’re stopped by the police and they ask you for a bribe, it seems that your options are more constrained than the options of the police asking for the bribe. It seems easier for the police to find additional non-corrupt sources of income than it is for you to escape the demands of the police. Of course, this isn’t the case in all types of corruption. For example, a large multinational company may find it relatively easy to pay a bribe, and may have more options than the official who’s asking the bribe (and it may very well solicit the payment of the bribe in the first place as a way to outsmart competitor companies).

cartoon by Michael Kountouris

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Next question: what to do about it? Everyone agrees that corruption is bad, and many believe that it’s bad for human rights, but almost no one seems to know how to stop it. And it is, indeed, a problem that is as old as history. One thing we could do is spell out the issue of corruption more clearly in terms of human rights. However, human rights claims by the victims of corruption are probably not very effective, since one consequence of corruption is the weakening or destruction of the judicial institutions necessary for the enforcement of human rights. In that sense, linking corruption and human rights may seem futile or at least of limited practical use.

However, human rights claims aren’t just legal claims that depend on functioning and non-corrupt institutions to be enforced. They are also moral claims and they can have some effect as such. They can be used to denounce widespread systems of corruption and thereby help to change a culture and a mentality, especially over the long run. But moral claims will not destroy endemic corruption by themselves. Countries that suffer high degrees of corruption probably need external help in institution building. Also, economic development will probably reduce corruption, given the correlation cited above between low levels of GDP and high levels of corruption. Helping countries to develop will then also help them to fight corruption.

This is an interesting talk about ways to fight corruption (the relevant part starts around the 5th minute):

More on governance and corruption. More posts in this series.

Related Articles

• Human Rights Watch: Police Corruption in Nigeria (huffingtonpost.com)
• Report: Bribes fuel corruption in Nigeria police (sfgate.com)

Human Rights Nonsense (37): Comparing Human Rights Violations to Natural Disasters

“The Tsunami killed 100 times more people than 9/11″

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I think I can guess most people’s reaction to this infamous WWF advert comparing the death tolls of 9/11 to the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami:

How can you compare these two events? They are completely different in nature: one is a wanton act of cruelty inflicted by humans on other humans, while the other is an unfortunate natural disaster. A terrorist attack is a type of event that one can and should try to prevent – through force, violence, education, information and whatever else it takes – while a natural disaster is a type of event that is an inevitable feature of life on earth. If you equate the two types – which is in essence what you do when you compare the death tolls – then you ignore personal responsibility and agency, and you degrade humanity.

This is more or less correct, I think, but I would add one nuance. The two types of events are different and they shouldn’t be equated, but there’s one similarity: both are, after all, human rights violations. This may sound strange to many of you: how can nature violate human rights? Doesn’t a human rights violation require a responsible violator? I’ve argued in this older post that the cut-off point between rights violations and unfortunate harm is actually a rather large gray zone. For instance, the Boxing Day Tsunami would probably have had a much smaller death toll with a better warning system, better infrastructure, better houses, better rescue systems etc. And people are responsible for the lack of those things. If people and governments fail to provide those things, knowing full well the risks, then their omission is a rights violation, just like failing to rescue a drowning person is a rights violation. (For instance, low-income countries account for only 9% of the world’s disasters but 48% of the fatalities, source).

Hence, it is indeed nonsensical and even insulting to equate a natural disaster and a terrorist attack, and people are rightfully angry about adverts like the one above, but at the same time we shouldn’t let our anger blind us to the similarities between two types of events that are apparently incomparable.

Here are a few similar adverts:

“2,863 dead. 630 million homeless people in the world. The world united against terrorism. It should do the same against poverty.”

“2,863 dead. 40 million infected worldwide. The world united against terrorism. It should do the same against AIDS.”

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terrorism-related deaths since 2001: 11 337 – tobacco-related deaths since 2001: 30 000 000

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More posts in this series are here.

Human Rights Ads (81): The Power of Books

Books apparently make you smarter and keep you from committing or endorsing human rights violations:

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I’m not so sure… Here’s a similar one:

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More human rights ads are here.

Types of Human Rights Violations (8): Active and Passive Violations

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You can violate someone’s rights, or you can let violations occur. You can kill, or you can let someone die. Someone’s rights are violated either because you did something, or because you didn’t do something; either because of what you did, or because you refrained from doing something; either because you acted, or because you omitted certain actions; either because you caused this violation, or because you allowed this violation to happen.

All these phrases say the same thing: you either actively or passively violate someone’s rights. I agree that these are two distinct types of rights violations. The distinction is similar to the distinction between negative and positive duties. Active rights violations imply a negative duty to forbear or refrain from doing what would otherwise cause a rights violation; passive rights violations imply a positive duty to do something so that a rights violation does not occur.

The distinction is often understood as entailing different levels of moral blameworthiness, but I think this can be misleading. In criminal law, for example, the punishment for killing is often more severe than the punishment for letting someone die. However, the difference in blameworthiness is hard to see in many cases. Take the following example: one man A poisons his wife B, and another man C fails to take his wife D, who has taken poison by accident, to the hospital. (I’m stealing this example from Jonathan Bennett). If this is all the information we have, I guess many of us would not say that C is less blameworthy than A. Letting die is equivalent to killing, at least in this case.

When people argue for a moral difference between committing and omitting, it’s not the difference between types of actions – positive/negative, causing/allowing etc. – that counts, but intention. A probably had the intention of killing, while C may simply have been confused or in panic. If we attribute the same intention to both A and C – A gives the poison to B because he hates her, and C fails to take D to the hospital because he hates her and profits from the occasion – then the difference between the cases disappears, as does the difference in blameworthiness – and the difference between active and passive violations.

Arguments for a difference between committing and omitting can be based on intention, but then it’s intention that makes the difference, not the types of actions. After all, A may have poisoned B unintentionally, while C may have intentionally refrained from assisting D. The distinction between types of actions – positive and negative – doesn’t therefore seem to carry much weight.

Perhaps it can be rescued by looking at the cost element. Active violations are often judged more immoral than passive violations because it’s generally easier and less costly to refrain from acting than it is to help. Hence, failure to refrain – i.e. actively doing something – is more blameworthy than failure to help – i.e. remaining passive. And yet, this is not always true. Let’s take the same example and modify it a bit. If A poisons B and wants to do this, and C involuntarily fails to help D who’s taken poison accidentally, then it’s true that A is more blameworthy than C: A could have easily refrained from giving B the poison, whereas C would have had to overcome his panic, carry D down the stairs, drag her into his car etc. C may even be forgiven altogether for his failure to help. However, what if A killed B because B had threatened to kill his mother, and C let D die because he hated her? The cost to A of refraining would have been very high, higher than the cost to C of not letting D die.

Again, like in the case of intention, cost can be used to differentiate blame, but it’s cost and not type of action that differentiates.

To conclude: the distinction between active and passive types of rights violations is real, but one should be careful when attaching different levels of blameworthiness to these types.

More posts in this series are here.

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (68): But Without the Violations

What if the events captured in some iconic images had not occurred? Pavel Maria Smejkal has altered some images, to great effect:

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This is so evocative: it shows an alternative history, the history of a better humanity.

More iconic images of human rights violations are here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (74): What Blasphemy?

Campaigners [in Pakistan] yesterday demanded the release of a schoolboy who was arrested and imprisoned for writing alleged blasphemous remarks about the Prophet Muhammad on an exam paper. Under the country’s draconian laws, he could face the death penalty. … It is unclear what Mr Samiullah may have written. When the police were asked about his alleged offence, they declined to elaborate, suggesting that it would blasphemous to repeat the words written. (source)

More about blasphemy here. More absurd human rights violations here.

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (61): Osama Bin Laden Gloats Over 9-11

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Osama bin Laden is seen at an undisclosed location in this television image broadcast October 7, 2001. Bin Laden praised God for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and swore America “will never dream of security” until “the infidel’s armies leave the land of Muhammad.”

More on bin Laden, 9-11 and the war on terror. More iconic images of terrorism here, here, here, here, here and here. More iconic images of human rights violations in general.

The Causes of Human Rights Violations (22): Utopia

Die wirkliche Genesis ist nicht am Anfang, sondern am Ende. Ernst Bloch

You could view the struggle for human rights as a “utopian” one. We’ll never live in a world that respects human rights completely and universally. The only thing we can hope for is an incremental improvement. And there are many reasons for this limitation: people always come up with new ways to violate human rights (“ah, the Internet! let’s make a Great Firewall!”), and people always come up with new human rights as a new to redress newly discovered wrongs. And even if we hope for incremental improvement, we can’t be sure that things are going as we hope, given the lousy measurement systems.

And yet, if you scratch the surface a bit and look at the deeper meaning of the word “utopian”, you’ll discover that utopian thought is fundamentally inimical to human rights. In fact, there’s perhaps no better way to violate human rights than to be utopian. Both the struggle for utopia and life within utopia are necessarily detrimental to human rights. That may seem paradoxical, but it’s easy to see how the struggle for an ideal can lead to disaster. The road to hell is, after all, paved with good intentions. We’ve seen many examples of this in recent history. But not only the struggle for utopia leads to rights violations; utopia itself does the same. Strange perhaps, since utopia is the ideal world. How can there be rights violations in an ideal world? And yet, no matter how it is envisaged, utopia violates human rights.

Utopia, where there is no war, strife, exploitation or scarcity, does not allow contestation, change or diversity. What’s there to contest if society has reached perfection? Why change when you can’t improve? Why have diversity, since diversity means different points of view about goals. If there are different points of view, some of them must be wrong. When people advocate wrong views, you have hardly reached perfection, and you’re likely to have conflict, violence etc. You can already see why people would believe that human rights are useless in such a world. Why would you need free speech if there is unanimity? Now, if there really is unanimity, human rights are indeed superfluous. No reason to express your views and to have rules to protect that expression if everyone has the same views. However, unanimity will probably always be something that has to be enforced because even in utopia some people will not freely understand their own wrongness or give up their own vision of perfection. Only a radically new but also radically improbable type of human being would populate a unanimous society. This enforcement of unanimity is necessarily a violation of human rights, which is why such violations would have to occur in utopian societies.

If you look at historical utopian thought, you’ll see that utopia is typically a highly centralized and planned world. It’s one big organization, a megamachine. Streets are geometrically designed. People’s movements are directed and controlled in order to avoid clashes and inefficiencies. Every detail is planned beforehand. Everything is rational. One hospital per square kilometer, one school, and one church. The organic growth of real cities is suboptimal because it hasn’t been planned beforehand. Real cities aren’t rational, orderly or efficient because no one has designed them. Hence, what is required is a tabula rasa. That means kicking people out of their houses and demolishing their houses. It means centrally allocating jobs so that the people don’t start a career that wouldn’t be the best one for them and for the whole of society. The structure of utopia is designed to enforce a certain behavior that promotes efficiency. Movement, habitation, work and all other aspects of life are planned and organized. The consequences of this aren’t limited to evils such as boredom, repetition, the absence of creativity and of the unexpected, or the feeling of being stuck in the present (the past is gone because that’s just the history of imperfection, and there is no future either because the future is here). The evils will be a lot worse than that: massive violations of rights, limitations of freedom and invasions of privacy are inevitable in utopia. Utopia is necessarily dystopia.

Of course, utopia can be a useful theoretical construct. I don’t want to trash every type of utopian thinking. A utopian vision is typically the current world put upside down. It is a tool that makes criticism of the current world possible, and it may provide a driving force for incremental change. It can motivate people to work for a slightly better world. It’s like you only know how troubling poverty is when you know what it would mean to be rich. But this realization shouldn’t make you desire a world of only rich people; a world without poverty suffices. Utopia, in this sense, is not a blueprint for the future, but merely a kick in the gut. That is also why many utopian fantasies were not located in the country the writer lived in, but in a far away place, an island or a mountain top. And that’s where they should remain. They are a means, not a goal. And true Genesis is neither at the beginning nor at the end; it’s ongoing. We daily remake our world and we’ll most likely never finish.

Related Articles

• Utopia or Dystopia? (readmorebooks.wordpress.com)
• First smitten by cynicism of dystopia, now fascinated by pursuit of utopias (boston.com)
• Book reviews: In search of Utopia (dailykos.com)
• Walden Two Isn’t Recession Proof (psychologytoday.com)
• The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (newstatesman.com)
• Utopia, With Tears (online.wsj.com)

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (56): Food Theft in Sudan

Food theft in Sudan

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1998 picture by British photojournalist Tom Stoddart traveling with Medicins Sans Frontieres. More on Sudan, famine and development aid. More iconic images of human rights violations are here.

Related Articles

• UK should not put trade with Sudan ahead of human rights | Tom Porteous (guardian.co.uk)
• South Sudan LRA rebel raids rise (bbc.co.uk)
• donate to Oxfam, Unicef and/or Medicins Sans Frontieres

Political Graffiti (122): 9-11, 24-7 Excuse for Everything

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More on 9-11 and the war on terror. More political graffiti.

Related Articles

• Jon Naar on Photographing The Early New York City Graffiti Scene (laughingsquid.com)

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (54): Oklahoma Bombing

The image of firefighter Chris Fields holding the dying infant Baylee Almon won the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography in 1996. Two people, Lester LaRue and Charles Porter, standing just three feet apart, took almost the same image yet it was Charles Porter’s image that won the Pulitzer.

Read the whole story here. More on terrorism here and here. Other iconic images of rights violations are here.

Satellite Evidence of Human Rights Violations (7): Darfur

Before and after satellite images provide evidence of the destruction of villages in Darfur. See more at http://www.eyesondarfur.org. Copyright 2009 DigitalGlobe

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More examples of satellite evidence of human rights violations are here. Something on the advantages of this kind of evidence is here. More on Darfur here.

Related Articles

• Susan Morgan: Obama’s Sudan Moment (huffingtonpost.com)
• The Situation in Darfur Deteriorates (humanrights.change.org)

Why Do We Need Human Rights? (18): The Economic Case Against Human Rights

Some more comments following two previous posts on the topic (see here and here).

Do human rights promote or depress economic growth and prosperity? (I’ll focus on non-political rights for the moment because political rights – i.e. democracy – have very specific effects on the economy). The economic case against human rights could go something like this. Economic growth would be enhanced by different policies and actions that imply violations of human rights. E.g.

• Killing criminals instead of incarcerating them would make substantial resources available for more productive investments.
• The same is true for the resource that go into running legal and criminal judiciary systems that correspond to human rights requirements (e.g. high burden of proof, appeals systems, legal representation etc.). More about those requirements here.
• Human rights, and specifically those regulating the judiciary, make it more likely that suspects who have indeed committed a crime are set free, which imposes an economic cost on society.
• Killing the poor, the sick and the elderly rather than helping them would likewise liberate resources for more productive use.
• Less extremely, assisting the poor, the sick and the elderly means creating a large government and a heavy tax and regulatory burden. These are detrimental to entrepreneurship and business because they are disincentives for wealth creators. When wealth creators are burdened, prosperity suffers. (More here).
• Social and economic human rights such as a right to strike, to a decent wage, limited working hours etc. undermine productivity and hence prosperity.
• Etc.

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that all these effects are real and not compensated by

• positive economic effects of respect for human rights
• other, negative economic effects of violations of human rights, or
• long term disadvantages following the possible short term advantages of rights violations (the fear, distrust and uncertainty resulting from some if not all of the claimed economic advantages of the rights violations that I just cited would likely harm long term prosperity).

Then you still don’t have a watertight case against human rights because people may still be willing to pay the economic price for respect for human rights. They may prefer to have their rights respected even if that has economic costs.

But, of course, that assumption doesn’t hold. The possible economic benefits of rights violations are easily offset by their costs and by the benefits of respect for human rights. Ultimately, the question of the effect of respect for human rights on the economy is an empirically verifiable hypothesis: we have data on economic performance, and – to some extent – on rights performance. It’s just a matter of linking the two. There’s an interesting paper here trying to do just that. The conclusion:

Our results show that high degrees of human rights are conducive to economic growth and welfare in a significant manner.

Through which channels is this effect supposed to operate? There are a few candidates:

• Physical security is a necessary precondition for the productive use of one’s resources and property.
• Property rights and the rule of law – both are human rights (see here and here) – are necessary for the effective operation of free markets, and free markets promote growth. Neither the rule of law nor property rights are safe in authoritarian regimes: why would a government that imposes physical harm respect property rights?
• Countries don’t attract Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) when they have a poor human rights record, rampant insecurity, ineffective rule of law and protection of property rights, poor labor conditions and the worker unrest that it implies etc. Stability, predictability, peace and calm lead to investment. Investment in rights abusing countries can also harm companies domestically when consumers revolt against the foreign conduct of their national companies.
• Education is a human right, and investments – especially FDI – usually follow the trail of education. Education is typically considered growth enhancing.

The discussion should separate between growth and levels of prosperity. There is an obvious correlation between respect for rights and levels of prosperity: the most prosperous countries in the world are also those where respect for rights has achieved a higher level. The case that growth rather than level of prosperity is also correlated with respect for human rights seems a lot harder to make, given the high growth levels of countries such as China. The argument could be that respect for rights promotes but is not a necessary condition for growth. Or it could be that authoritarian countries with high growth rates would have had still higher rates had they respected rights to a higher degree. Such a counterfactual is of course very hard to measure.

So, it’s not just that richer countries can start to afford human rights (to some extent that’s true, because rights cost money); it’s also the case that respect for human rights leads to higher wealth. There’s a two-way causation at work here.

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (52): Gerri Santoro’s Fatal Abortion

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In June 1964, a woman was found dead from an illegal abortion on a Norwich, Connecticut motel room floor. She was identified by her sister as Gerri Santoro, a mother of two facing her third pregnancy. Santoro and her two daughters had been victims of an abusive husband/father. Santoro was just 28 years old, and was 6.5 months pregnant with her secret lover’s baby. He took her to the motel, and fled when the self-induced abortion went wrong, abandoning dying Santoro behind. (He was arrested but served only a year for manslaughter). (source)

More on abortion. More iconic images of human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (55): Saudi Women Threaten to Breastfeed Drivers if They Aren’t Allowed to Drive

Many were stunned when Saudi cleric Sheik Abdel Mohsen Obeikan recently issued a fatwa, or Islamic ruling, calling on women to give breast milk to their male colleagues or men they come into regular contact with so as to avoid illicit mixing between the sexes.

But a group of Saudi women has taken the controversial decree a step further in a new campaign to gain the right to drive in the ultra-conservative kingdom, media reports say.

If they’re not granted the right to drive, the women are threatening to breastfeed their drivers to establish a symbolic maternal bond…

Some Islamic scholars frown on the mixing of unmarried men and women. Islamic tradition, or hadith, stipulates that breastfeeding establishes a maternal bond, even if a woman breastfeeds a child who is not her own.

The current driving ban applies to all women in Saudi Arabia, regardless of their nationality, and it’s been a topic of heated public debate in recent years.

The ban on driving was unofficial at first but was introduced as official legislation after 47 Saudi women drove cars through the streets of the Saudi capital, Riyadh, in 1990 in an attempt to challenge authorities.

The incident brought harsh consequences for the women, who were jailed for a day and had their passports confiscated. Many of them were said to have been forced to leave their jobs after the driving protest.

Still, every now and then, reports of Saudi women driving in defiance of the ban emerge in the media. (source)

More on Saudi Arabia, on women’s rights, and on gender discrimination. More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (54): Use Landmines to Keep Immigrants Out

Tom Mullins, the Republican nominee for a New Mexico Congressional seat, has suggested that it might be a good idea to mine the US-Mexico border.

During the May 18 interview with KNMX radio in Las Vegas, N.M., Mullins said the U.S. could mine the border, install barbed wire and post signs directing would-be border jumpers to cross legally at designated checkpoints.

“We could put land mines along the border. I know it sounds crazy. We could put up signs in 23 different languages if necessary,” Mullins says in the radio interview, where he also expressed concern that terrorists could carry a nuclear weapon across the Mexican border.

He explained Monday the suggestion about land mines was something he’d heard while campaigning, and that it came in response to a complaint that nothing could be done to secure the border.

“When I heard it, I said, ‘Well, that’s an interesting concept,”’ Mullins said. (source)

More on migration and on landmines. More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (53): No Seduction of Unmarried Women Please

The Michigan Penal Code § 750.532, provides that any man who shall seduce and debauch any unmarried woman shall be guilty of a felony, punishable by imprisonment in the state prison not more than 5 years or by fine of not more than 2,500 dollars ….

One story on the subject reports that, assistant Ingham County Prosecutor Sam Smith … explained that in the case that appeared in the newspaper, simple seduction wasn’t the original charge. The man was charged with a more serious offense. The seduction plea became, as Smith put it, the “resolution” to the case. That’s most often how it’s employed, Smith said — as a “reasonable resolution.”

Smith stopped short of saying that consensual sex between consenting unmarried adults would never be prosecuted as a crime, but admitted it would be rare. Of course if one of the parties is married, the crime becomes adultery, but that’s rarely prosecuted, either, Smith said. (source)

More on sex and human rights. More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (52): Arabic Homogamy

Egypt’s supreme administrative court has upheld a decision to revoke the citizenship of Egyptian men married to Israeli women. The children of those cross-national unions could be officially stripped of their Egyptian nationality, as well, in order to legally omit a generation of citizens that Nabil al-Wahsh, a lawyer in the case, describes as inherently “disloyal to Egypt and the Arab world.” The ruling, if uniformly enforced, would reduce the country’s citizenry by as many as 30,000 people. (source)

More on Israel and Egypt. More about marriage rights. More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (51): Those Faces Aren’t White Enough

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A group of artists has been asked to lighten the faces of children depicted in a giant public mural at a Prescott school. [The mural] features portraits of four children, with a Hispanic boy as the dominant figure.

R.E. Wall, director of Prescott’s Downtown Mural Project, said he and other artists were subjected to slurs from motorists as they worked on the painting at one of the town’s most prominent intersections.

“We consistently, for two months, had people shouting racial slander from their cars,” Wall said. “We had children painting with us, and here come these yells of (epithet for Blacks) and (epithet for Hispanics).”

Wall said school Principal Jeff Lane pressed him to make the children’s faces appear happier and brighter.

“It is being lightened because of the controversy,” Wall said, adding that “they want it to look like the children are coming into light.”

Lane said that he received only three complaints about the mural and that his request for a touch-up had nothing to do with political pressure. “We asked them to fix the shading on the children’s faces,” he said. “We were looking at it from an artistic view. Nothing at all to do with race.”

City Councilman Steve Blair spearheaded a public campaign on his talk show at Prescott radio station KYCA-AM (1490) to remove the mural.

In a broadcast last month, according to the Daily Courier in Prescott, Blair mistakenly complained that the most prominent child in the painting is African-American, saying: “To depict the biggest picture on the building as a Black person, I would have to ask the question: Why?”

Faces in the mural were drawn from photographs of children enrolled at Miller Valley, a K-5 school with 380 students and the highest ethnic mix of any school in Prescott. (source)

More on racism and prejudice. More absurd human rights violations.

Ironic Human Rights Violations (4): What Happens When You Want to Build a Mosque Near Ground Zero

There’s some controversy about the proposed building of a Mosque near Ground Zero in NY. Rather than an opportunity for reconciliation and the expression of tolerance, this proposal is greeted by some as a provocation and a reason to vent some islamophobia. So imagine what happens to some Muslim-looking Christians who decided to join a protest rally, and to their free assembly and speech rights. You’re right, they get covered in hate, when all they wanted to do was to express some hate of their own. Poor fellows, getting a taste of their own medicine.

Protesters gathered at Ground Zero Sunday to object to plans for a mosque a few blocks north of where the World Trade Center towers stood.

At one point, a portion of the crowd menacingly surrounded two Egyptian men who were speaking Arabic and were thought to be Muslims.

“Go home,” several shouted from the crowd.

“Get out,” others shouted.

In fact, the two men – Joseph Nassralla and Karam El Masry — were not Muslims at all. They turned out to be Egyptian Coptic Christians who work for a California-based Christian satellite TV station called “The Way.” Both said they had come to protest the mosque.

“I’m a Christian,” Nassralla shouted to the crowd, his eyes bulging and beads of sweat rolling down his face.

But it was no use. The protesters had become so angry at what they thought were Muslims that New York City police officers had to rush in and pull Nassralla and El Masry to safety.

“I flew nine hours in an airplane to come here,” a frustrated Nassralla said afterward. (source, source)

More ironic human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (49): Bring the SWAT, There’s Some Pot

SWAT team breaks into home, fires seven rounds at family’s pit bull and corgi (?!) as a seven-year-old looks on.

They found a “small amount” of marijuana, enough for a misdemeanor charge. The parents were then charged with child endangerment.

So smoking pot = “child endangerment.” Storming a home with guns, then firing bullets into the family pets as a child looks on = necessary police procedures to ensure everyone’s safety.

Just so we’re clear. (source)

There’s actually some footage of it (warning: it’s disturbing):

More on the incredibly stupid war on drugs and on the Fourth Amendment. More on the abuse of arrest powers here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (48): Making a Boy Touch Your Breasts is Worse Than Killing Him

A Twin Falls woman convicted of forcing a 13-year-old boy to touch her breasts was sentenced Monday to life in prison.

Michelle Lyn Taylor, 34, was convicted of lewdness with a minor under 14 in November after a week-long trial in Elko County, Nev., District Judge Mike Memeo’s courtroom.

With the conviction, Taylor faced a mandatory life sentence, and Memeo set parole eligibility after 10 years, the minimum sentence. If released on parole she must register as a sex offender and will be under lifetime supervision. …

She is getting a greater penalty for having a boy touch her breast than if she killed him. (source)

More absurd human rights violations. More on sex offenders registers here, here and here. More on sex and human rights.

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (51): Palestinian Girl Buried Under Rubble During the Gaza War

Palestinians evacuate the dead body of a child from in the rubble of a four story house that collapsed when struck by an Israeli air strike on January. 6, 2009 in Gaza City, Gaza Strip. By Thair Hasani/Getty

(source)

I’ve hidden the image so as not to shock people who visit this site for the first time and don’t know what to expect. Read more about the Gaza War of the Winter of 2008/2009 here. This image reminds me of the Bhopal girl, although the circumstances are quite different. Some say that posting such images, even in a hidden manner, is needlessly shocking, a form of disaster pornography, and that my entire blog series is misguided. Generally I disagree and I think evil should be shown and not hidden away for the moral tranquility of people who have a comfortable life far away from war and suffering. (Read also the content warning for this blog). However, in this case there may be some truth to the allegation. Hamas is known to use such images for propaganda purposes, and even to use corpses as photo opportunities.

Hamas (and the Aksa Brigades, and Islamic Jihad, the whole bunch) prevents the burial, or even preparation of the bodies for burial, until the bodies are used as props in the Palestinian Passion Play. Once, in Khan Younis, I actually saw gunmen unwrap a shrouded body, carry it a hundred yards and position it atop a pile of rubble — and then wait a half-hour until photographers showed. It was one of the more horrible things I’ve seen in my life. And it’s typical of Hamas. (source)

More iconic images of human rights violations. More on Israel, Palestine and the Middle East.

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (50): The Lynching of Will Brown During the Omaha Race Riot of 1919

The Lynching of Will Brown During the Omaha Race Riot of 1919

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During the Red Summer of 1919, mobs of whites attacked African Americans in more than two dozen American cities, though in some cases blacks responded and initiated violent attacks themselves, often because police refused to intervene. The riots started after vicious rumors about Bolshevism and about blacks arming themselves and planning attacks on whites. Because of labor shortages during WWI, an estimated 500,000 African Americans emigrated from the South to the industrial cities of the North and Midwest. They filled new positions as well as many jobs formerly held by whites. In some cities, they were hired as strikebreakers, especially during strikes of 1917. This increased resentment and suspicion among whites, especially the working class.

Dozens of blacks were lynched during these race riots. The material damage was enormous. In Omaha, Nebraska a white mob of more than 10,000 burned the county courthouse and destroyed property valued at more than a million dollars. One man, Will Brown, was lynched.

Omaha race riot victim Will Brown

(source)

The Omaha riot was triggered by reports in local media that sensationalized the alleged rape of 19-year-old Agnes Loebeck on September 25, 1919. The following day the police arrested 40-year-old Will Brown as a suspect. Loebeck identified Brown as her rapist, although later reports by the Omaha Police Department and the United States Army stated that she had not made a positive identification. There was an unsuccessful attempt to lynch Brown on the day of his arrest. The Omaha Bee publicized the incident as one of a series of alleged attacks on white women by black men.

At about 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, September 28, 1919, a large group of white youths gathered near the Bancroft School in South Omaha and began a march to the Douglas County Courthouse, where Brown was being held. By 5:00 p.m., a mob of about 4,000 whites had crowded into the street and ultimately stormed the courthouse. The police did what they could but were unable to stop the capture of Brown. His lifeless body was hung from a telephone post. Hundreds of revolvers and shotguns were fired at the corpse as it dangled in mid-air. Then, the rope was cut. Brown’s body was tied to the rear end of an automobile. It was dragged through the streets to Seventeenth and Dodge Streets, four blocks away. The oil from red lanterns used as danger signals for street repairs was poured on the corpse. It was burned. Members of the mob hauled the charred remains through the business district for several hours.

Tell me again that hate speech is just speech and should receive absolute protection…

More iconic images of human rights violations. More on lynching, racism, hate speech, and hate crime.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (43): The Sanctity of Life

In May 2007, the state of Ohio executed Christopher Newton, who “volunteered” to be put to death by giving up his appeals. He even refused to cooperate with those investigating the crime he committed unless they promised to seek the death penalty. The state of Ohio was surely assisting Newton in committing suicide on that day, though they nearly botched it by taking 90 minutes to find a vein to administer his lethal injection.

Nationally, there have been 135 of these “voluntary” executions, representing over 10 percent of all executions since reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. (source)

At the same time, assisted suicide for the terminally ill is, of course, illegal in Ohio because life, after all, is God’s gift which no man should take away, not even if it’s your own. More on assisted suicide, capital punishment, botched executions and voluntary executions. More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (42): Child Starves While Parents Play Computer Game

Kim Yoo-chul, 41, and his partner Choi Mi-sun, 25 (not in the photo), fed their three-month-old baby only on visits home between 12-hour sessions at a neighbourhood internet cafe, where they were raising an avatar daughter in a Second-Life-style game called Prius online, police said.

Leaving their real daughter at their home in a suburb of Seoul to fend for herself, the pair, who were unemployed, spent hours role-playing in the virtual reality game, which allows users to choose a career and friends, granting them offspring as a reward for passing a certain level.

The pair became obsessed with nurturing their virtual daughter, called Anima, but neglected their real daughter, who was not named.

Eventually, the couple returned home after one 12-hour session in September to find the child dead and called police. The pair were arrested on Friday after an autopsy showed that the baby died from prolonged malnutrition. (source)

More absurd human rights violations. More about Korea and gaming.

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (48): The Conflict in the Middle East

A settler tosses wine at a Palestinian woman on Shuhada Street in Hebron. The approach of some settlers towards neighboring Palestinians, especially around Nablus in the north and Hebron in the south, has often been one of contempt and violence. Photo: Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times.

(source)

(source)

Of course, wearing a t-shirt, and even throwing wine at someone isn’t a violation of human rights, but it is indicative of the treatment of some Palestinians by some Israelis. Obviously, I don’t want to imply that there isn’t disgusting behavior on the other side, or that Israel is exclusively responsible for all or even most violations of human rights in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Far from it. Just as a blog post about Guantanamo doesn’t imply neglect of the evils of terrorism. A balanced and objective overview of human rights violations in the conflict in the Middle East is here.

Other iconic images of human rights violations are here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (40): Editor of Journal Charged with Libel Because of a Book Review

Joseph Weiler, an NYU law professor who is editor of the European Journal of International Law, has been charged with criminal libel in France by Karin Calvo-Goller, who was displeased with a critical review of her book published in Professor Weiler’s journal. (source)

She deemed the review “libelous,” saying it could “cause harm to my professional reputation and academic promotion,” and provided an example of a positive review the book had received from another German professor. Mr. Weiler refused to remove the review but offered to publish a response from Ms. Calvo-Goller, “so that anyone reading the review would immediately be able to read her reply,” an approach that “would have amply and generously vindicated all possible interests of the author of the book … I continue to believe that in all the circumstances of the case … removing the review by Professor Weigend would have dealt a very serious blow to notions of freedom of speech, free academic exchange, and the very important institution of book reviewing.”

Faced with what he notes is “the heavy financial burden of defending such a case — expenses which are in large part not recoverable even if acquitted,” Mr. Weiler has appealed for “moral and material assistance” from the academic community and writes that he is optimistic that he will be acquitted at trial. “Any other result will deal a heavy blow to academic freedom and change the landscape of book reviewing in scholarly journals, especially when reviews have a cyber presence as is so common today.” (source)

More absurd human rights violations. More on free speech and libel.

Ironic Human Rights Violations (3): A Criminal Called “Law”

Charles Law has been found guilty of grabbing and racially abusing a ticket inspector during a train ride in the U.K. A jury at St Albans Crown Court found him guilty and he was remanded in custody by Judge Stephen Warner on the grounds that he could reoffend.

During the trial the court heard Law told Hilton Materke “you are a black man and should not ask a white man for a ticket”.

Giving evidence, Mr Materke said: “I asked him if he had a ticket. He said ‘ah yes, that’s a problem.’ “

“Foolishly I said: ‘Negro don’t touch me.’ I said it twice. I did not believe he had the right to touch me,” said Law.

Following the jury’s verdict Mr Porter told the court that Law had been jailed for four years in 2002 for stabbing his brother to death. (source)

Maybe he was anxious the Negro would mess up his facial art. More ironic human rights violations, and more on racism and hate speech.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (39): School Refuses Child of Same-Sex Couple

A preschooler is caught in the middle of a fight between religion and sexuality. Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic School, in Boulder, has refused to readmit a preschooler because the child has two moms. Her parents are lesbians.

“God and Jesus would not allow discrimination in that way,” said Joellen Raderstorf, one of about two dozen demonstrators who turned out at Sunday’s church service.

Most of the protesters stood silently, across the street, holding signs. One read “God loves all people.” Some of them went inside during mass. The priest addressed the situation in his sermon.

“He feels like it’s a calling to be strict with upholding the Catholic principles,” said Dave Ensign, president of the Board of Directors of Boulder Pride, a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender organization.

“People who understand the Catholic teaching will understand why the decision was made,” said Fabien Ardila, a member of the parish.

More absurd human rights violations. More on gay rights.

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (47): Genocide in Rwanda, the Machete Pile

Jim Nachtwey's photo of a pile of machetes used in the Rwandan genocide. Machetes were a weapon of choice, an agricultural tool found in most Rwandan households, it was easily accessible

(source)

More on James Nachtwey. More images from the genocide in Rwanda. More information on genocide. See the whole series on iconic images of human rights violations.

Ironic Human Rights Violations (2): Suicide Watch on Death Row

In this series, I understand irony as “a state of affairs that appears perversely contrary to what one expects”.

Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, a former prison psychologist, admits that he recognizes the irony. His state is keeping Lawrence Reynolds alive, on suicide watch, so they can execute him Tuesday morning. Reynolds attempted suicide by overdosing on pills on Sunday and was rushed to the hospital where his life was saved. The Governor postponed his execution, original scheduled for March 9, to give him sufficient time to recover so that the Buckeye state can kill him properly.

“It is ironic, obviously, that you would work to keep someone alive when they are scheduled to be executed,” the Governor said. (source, source)

More ironic human rights violations. More on capital punishment and suicide.

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (46): Ruth Snyder’s Execution at Sing Sing

Ruth Snyder's Execution at Sing Sing in 1928, photo secretly taken by Tom Howard, using a concealed camera

(source)

Ruth Snyder

(source)

Read the whole story here and here. More on capital punishment. See the whole series on iconic images of human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (35): Nicaragua, No Abortions, Ever

Although I’m ambivalent on the issue of abortion, this strikes me as absurd:

The cruelty of Nicaragua’s extreme abortion ban is undeniable in the case of Amelia (an alias), a 27-year-old woman with cancer. Passed in 2006, the law criminalizes abortion, even if the woman’s life or health is at risk. Amelia, who has a 10-year-old daughter, needs to have an abortion so she can undergo treatment for the cancer, which may have metastasized in her brain, lungs and breasts…

From a statement from … organizations [advocating on behalf of Amelia]: Even though the treating physicians concluded that the patient requires an abortion to initiate chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment, the young woman has been hospitalized since January 29th without being able to receive an abortion and therefore, without receiving any kind of treatment to stop the cancer.

Under these circumstances, Amelia is in imminent danger of losing her life, given the impossibility of accessing an abortion. Under current Nicaraguan law, women in need of therapeutic abortions to save their life or protect their health are in fact, sentenced to death. Additionally, in this case, her minor daughter would be orphaned. (source)

More on Nicaragua. More on abortion. More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (34): Schools Censors Sexually Graphic Dictionary

(source)

After a parent complained about an elementary school student stumbling across “oral sex” in a classroom dictionary, Menifee Union School District officials decided to pull Merriam Webster’s 10th edition from all school shelves earlier this week.

School officials will review the dictionary to decide if it should be permanently banned because of the “sexually graphic” entry, said district spokeswoman Betti Cadmus. …

“It’s just not age appropriate,” said Cadmus, adding that this is the first time a book has been removed from classrooms throughout the district. “It’s hard to sit and read the dictionary, but we’ll be looking to find other things of a graphic nature,” Cadmus said. She explained that other dictionary entries defining human anatomy would probably not be cause for alarm. (source)

This is the entry in question, by the way:

More on censorship, and – why not – book burning. More on obscenity. More absurd human rights violations. More on sex and human rights.

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (45): Child Labor in the U.S.

Young girl working in a cotton mill, by Lewis Hine

(source)

I don’t know whether this is the same girl or not:

According to Lewis Hine in 1908, the overseer said apologetically, “She just happened in.” She was working steadily. The mills seem full of youngsters who “just happened in” or “are helping sister.” Newberry, South Carolina.

Lewis Wickes Hine (September 26, 1874 – November 3, 1940) was an American sociologist and photographer. Hine used his camera as a tool for social reform. His photographs were instrumental in changing the child labor laws in the United States. Here’s another one:

Addie Card, 11 years old, North Pownal, Vermont, August 1910

More images of child labor. More information on child labor. See the whole series on iconic images of human rights violations.

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (44): Chinese Baby Victim of Japanese Bombing

Read the story here. See the whole series on iconic images of human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (33): China’s Cultural Revolution

A Golden Oldie in the charts of inhuman absurdity, from Jonathan Spence’s biography of Mao Zedong:

An announcement from the “Beijing Number 26 Middle School Red Guards,” dated August 1966, gave the kind of program that was to be followed by countless others. Every street was to have a quotation form Chairman Mao prominently displayed, and loudspeakers at every intersection and in all parks were to broadcast his thought. Every household as well as a trains and buses, bicycles and pedicabs, had to have a picture of Mao on its walls. Ticket takers on trains and buses should all declaim Mao’s thought. Every bookstore had to stock Mao’s quotations, and every hand in China had to hold one. No one could wear bluejeans, tight pants, “weird women’s outfits,” or have “slick hairdos or wear rocket shoes.” No perfumes or beauty creams could be used. No one could keep pet fish, cats, or dogs, or raise fighting crickets. No shop could sell classical books.

All those identified by the masses as landlords, hooligans, rightists, and capitalists had to wear a plaque identifying themselves as such every time they went out. The minimum amount of persons living in a room could be three — all other space had to be given to the state housing bureaus. Children should criticize their elders, and students their teachers. No one under thirty-five might smoke or drink. Hospital service would be simplified, and “complicated treatment must be abolished”; doctors had to write their prescriptions legibly, and not use English words. All schools and colleges were to combine study with productive labor and farm work. As a proof of its own transformation, the “Number 26 Middle School” would change its name, effective immediately, to “The Maoism School.”

More on the cruelty of the Cultural Revolution. More on Mao here and here. More on China and on communism. More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (32): Morality Police Accused of Gang Rape

Sharia police officers detain three girls for wearing tights at a beach in Banda Aceh, capital of Aceh province

(source, photo by Luis Sinco, Los Angeles Times/October 28, 2009)

Three officers with Aceh province’s civilian morality police allegedly detained a couple, raping the 20-year-old woman. Activists say the charges undermine the patrol’s legitimacy … [The] civilian patrol … enforces Islam’s strict Sharia law in Indonesia’s Aceh province …

“They don’t have the authority to detain people — their role is to give moral advice, that’s it,” said Norma Manalu, director of Aceh’s human rights coalition. “They misused their power.” Aceh’s ”vice and virtue patrol” enforces religious codes across the only province in the nation to employ Sharia, or Islamic law, for its criminal code. Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim country.

Sharia was introduced in 2002 after the region was granted autonomy as part of efforts to end a decades-long guerrilla war. Supervisors say the Sharia police, formed three years later, consider themselves the community’s public conscience.

In September, Aceh’s provincial parliament passed a law saying that people who commit adultery can be sentenced to death by stoning. The measure, which still must be approved by the governor, has outraged human rights groups here, which say it will be used to unfairly target women.

The Sharia policemen allegedly stopped a couple by the road near a plantation. In an interview, the victim’s father said his daughter’s friend was beaten by the group and the couple was then brought to a nearby Sharia police station. The men later returned while off duty and raped the woman, investigators say. “She was treated like an animal. They suffocated and raped her — it was inhumane,” the victim’s father said. “She’s in deep trauma.”

Marzuki Abdullah, head of the 1,500-member Sharia police force, said the case was not linked to the patrols because any crime the officers might have committed was done while they were off duty.

Activists say the case should bring a review of the patrols. “It’s time for the Sharia police to introspect their institution, role and officers,” Manalu said. “Are they really needed to judge our morality? We don’t have any guarantees that they have a higher moral standard than us.” (source)

More on Sharia, rape, stoning and gender discrimination. More absurd human rights violations.

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (43): Black Power Salute at the Olympics

Tommie Smith (center) and John Carlos (right) showing the raised fist on the podium after the 200m in the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico, while Silver medallist Peter Norman from Australia (left) wears an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge to show his support for the two U.S. athletes

(source)

Another version:

(source)

The two U.S. athletes received their medals shoeless, but wearing black socks, to represent black poverty. Carlos wore a necklace of beads which he described “were for those individuals that were lynched, or killed and that no-one said a prayer for, that were hung and tarred. It was for those thrown off the side of the boats in the middle passage.” As they left the podium they were booed by the crowd. Time magazine wrote

“Faster, Higher, Stronger” is the motto of the Olympic Games. “Angrier, nastier, uglier” better describes the scene in Mexico City last week. (source)

Carlos and Smith were stripped of their medals, ejected from the Olympic Village, and returned to an unfriendly welcome in the U.S.

More on racial discrimination, racism, lynching. Some statistics here. See the whole series on iconic images of human rights violations.

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (42): The Last Jew of Vinnitsa

Picture, inscribed on the back as of the Last Jew in Vinnitsa, was taken by a German Einsatzgruppen soldier

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In the summer of 1941, during their invasion of the Soviet Union, German troops captured the town of Vinnitsa in Ukraine and massacred 28.000 Jews, meaning the entire Jewish population.

More iconic images of the holocaust. More information on the holocaust. More on antisemitism. See the whole series on iconic images of human rights violations.

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (41): The Beating of Guillermo Ford

The beating of Guillermo Ford, photo taken by Ron Haviv

(source)

Guillermo “Billy” Ford, who later was to serve as Vice-President of Panama, is seen here in 1989, being attacked by thugs employed by Manuel Noriega, dictator of Panama at the time. The attack took place a few days after Ford and his presidential running-mate, Guillermo Endara, had defeated Noriega’s party in the elections.

See the whole series on iconic images of human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (30): Giving Birth in Shackles

One of the many outrageous interventions by Maricopa county sheriff Joe Arpaio, the anti-illegal immigration zealot who thinks he’s just America’s “toughest sheriff”. It’s the story of a woman who, while 9-months pregnant, was detained after a traffic stop on suspicion of being in the country illegally:

The very same night of her arrest, Chacon went into labor and found herself afraid and alone, being rushed to a local hospital with her hands and legs chained in shackles.

Once she reached the hospital, nurses repeatedly begged the Sheriff’s staff to allow them to unchain the mother, but they refused and Chacon was forced to give birth while still shackled to the bed. At one point, the nurse asked for them to release her so that she could be escorted to the bathroom for a urinalysis, but even that request was denied. But the worst came once Chacon gave birth to her baby girl.

Still chained to the bed, Arpaio’s police staff refused to allow Chacon to hold her newborn baby and then warned her that if no one came to pick up the child within 72 hours, she would be turned over into state custody. (source, source)

More on immigration control. More absurd human rights violations.

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (40): A Suffragette’s Suicide

Emily Davison after throwing herself under a racing horse owned by King George V of England

(source)

At the Epsom Derby, on 4th June 1913, Emily Wilding Davison (1872–1913), a suffragette, gave her life for her cause by throwing herself under King George V’s horse.

Here’s a video of the event (not very clear I’m afraid):

And this is Emily:

Emily Davison

(source)

More on the suffragette movement. More on gender discrimination and women’s rights. More iconic images of human rights violations.

The Causes of Human Rights Violations (16)

We usually distinguish between three different origins of human rights violations:

• The state. States commit rights violations for different reasons. Rulers may believe that such violations are necessary in order to maintain power, undermine or destroy the opposition, and impose some world view or economic organization of society. Or they may think that some types of violations are necessary evils when faced with certain risks. For example, torture or indefinite detention can appear to be a reasonable price to pay in order to reduce the risk of terrorism. States can also violate human rights unintentionally: lawmakers can draft a legal system that unnecessarily encroaches on private freedom (e.g. the “nanny state“). And, finally, a state can violate rights, not – as in the previous cases – by doing something it shouldn’t do, but by failing to do what it should do: a state that doesn’t provide an efficient judiciary or police force will be unable to protect the rights of its citizens and will be an accessory to rights violations.
• Selfishness. In the case of economic human rights – such as the right not to suffer poverty – it’s often greed, lack of compassion or generosity, or the absence of sufficient and adequate aid and intervention that causes rights violations. Selfishness can cause both individuals and states to violate rights. States, for example, can uphold international trade structure or protectionist legal systems that favor the local economy at the expense of relatively poor exporters elsewhere.
• Culture. Some say that certain elements of cultures and religions lead to practices that violate human rights. And then usually we get a mention of Islam, Shari’a, muslim misogyny etc. Here as well, we see that both states and individuals can use culture as a reason to violate rights.

Regarding the last point, there’s an interesting paper here (or here) claiming that it’s not Islam but oil that causes gender discrimination in Muslim countries.

Oil production reduces the number of women in the labor force, which in turn reduces their political influence. As a result, oil-producing states are left with atypically strong patriarchal norms, laws, and political institutions. I support this argument with global data on oil production, female work patterns, and female political representation, and by comparing oil-rich Algeria to oil-poor Morocco and Tunisia. Michael Ross

Oil production and export crowd out other exports, and hence artificially restrict the manufacturing sector. Compared to oil production, manufacturing uses relatively large numbers of low wage workers, which is why manufacturing has always and everywhere been a booster for female labor participation. Female labor participation in turn has always and everywhere promoted female political representation and women’s rights. The paper shows that, in the Middle East, countries without much oil (like Morocco and Tunisia) do relatively well on gender equality, compared to oil-rich countries. The same is true when comparing oil-poor and oil-rich countries outside the Middle East.

If that’s correct, then it’s still cultural and religious practices and beliefs that cause gender discrimination, but these beliefs are themselves caused by or at least promoted by economic fundamentals. Sounds quite Marxian to me (which doesn’t mean it’s wrong!).

Papers looking into the cultural and religion causes of gender discrimination can be found here and here (thanks to the Monkey Cage for the pointer).

More on oil. More on human rights and risk. More on gender discrimination.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (26): Executing “Witches” in Saudi Arabia

witch hunt, witches burning at the stake

Scores of alleged witch doctors, fortunetellers, and black magicians each year are dragged through the Saudi courts, including Fawza Falih, who’s been on death row since 2006 for witchcraft. Her accusers include a man who claims the 51-year-old, illiterate Falih is the reason for his impotence. (source)

“The fact that Saudi judges still conduct trials for unprovable crimes like witchcraft underscores their inability to carry out objective criminal investigations,” said Joe Stork, the Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. … Falih had “retracted her confession in court, claiming it was extracted under duress, and that as an illiterate woman she did not understand the document she was forced to fingerprint”. “At one point, she had to be hospitalised as a result of beatings at the hands of the religious police, called the ‘mutaween’ in the ultra-conservative Sunni Muslim kingdom. … In November, Egyptian pharmacist Mustapha Ibrahim, who worked in the northern city of Arar, was beheaded by the sword for “sorcery” under Saudi Arabia’s strict Islamic laws for allegedly trying to separate a married couple. (source)

More on capital punishment in Saudi Arabia here.

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (39): Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Photo from Jürgen Stroop's report to Heinrich Himmler from May 1943, titled “The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw is no more!”. One of the best-known pictures of World War II.

(source)

During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the Jews imprisoned there by the Germans occupying Poland during World War II, attempted unsuccessfully to oppose the Nazis’ effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to Treblinka extermination camp. The poorly armed resistance was crushed by the German troops. It was the largest single revolt by the Jews during the Holocaust. Approximately 13,000 Jews were killed in the ghetto during the uprising. Of the remaining 50,000 residents, most were captured and shipped to Treblinka. The film The Pianist by Roman Polanski offers a classic depiction of the events. The identity of the boy in the image is unknown.

More iconic images of the holocaust. More information on the holocaust. See the whole series on iconic images of human rights violations.

Annals of Heartlessness (1): Luxury Cruise Ship Docks On Private Haitian Beach, Just 60 Miles From Devastation

Not all suffering in the world is a human rights violation. A broken heart or an earthquake both cause suffering but neither is a human rights violation (needless to say there’s no equivalence here). We don’t have a human right that protects us against the consequences of shifting tectonic plates or against unresponsive objects of adoration. Nor should we. However, rights violations do occur in the aftermath of earthquakes. Desperate people kill each other, steal from each and abuse each other in countless ways. And then there are the outsiders failing in their duty to help. People have a right to food, shelter and survival, and others violate these rights if they don’t help when they can. Take a look at this story:

A Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines ship … made its scheduled docking at a private beach. Though the cruise ship delivered 40 pallets of relief supplies while it docked, vacationers frolicked and held a barbecue on the private area, just miles from the devastation caused by the 7.0 earthquake last week. … The decision to go ahead with the visit has divided passengers. The ships carry some food aid, and the cruise line has pledged to donate all proceeds from the visit to help stricken Haitians. But many passengers will stay aboard when they dock; one said he was “sickened”. “I just can’t see myself sunning on the beach, playing in the water, eating a barbecue, and enjoying a cocktail while [in Port-au-Prince] there are tens of thousands of dead people being piled up on the streets, with the survivors stunned and looking for food and water,” one passenger wrote on the Cruise Critic internet forum. … but others seemed determined to enjoy their holiday. “I’ll be there on Tuesday and I plan on enjoying my zip line excursion as well as the time on the beach,” said one. (source)

Luxury Cruise Ship Docks On Private Haitian Beach, Just 60 Miles From Devastation

(source, Photograph: Daniel Morel/AP)

None of this is made right by the fact that there are thousands of foreigners coming in to help. If you want to help from a distance, here‘s an overview of what you can do.

More on the role of caring, sympathy, empathy and assistance in the protection of human rights is here, here, and here.