Human Rights Story (5): 1984

(source)
Excerpt from Orwell’s 1984:
There was an outburst of squeals from the cage. It seemed to reach Winston from far away. The rats were fighting; they were trying to get at each other through the partition. He heard also a deep groan of despair. That, too, seemed to come from outside himself.
O’Brien picked up the cage, [...]

Human Rights Quote (80): Impunity

(source)
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 [...]

Human Rights Cartoon (95): Waterboarding

(copyright http://www.rall.com/)
Waterboarding is an old torture technique from the Spanish Inquisition. It consists of immobilizing the “target” on an inclined board, head down, with cloth covering his or her face. Pouring water over the face simulates drowning. The victim inhales water, and is convinced that he or she is drowning and about to die. As [...]

Human Rights Cartoon (93): Crimes Against Humanity

This is from the infamous Nazi newspaper of Julius Streicher, Der Sturmer, from 1934. The cartoon praises the Nazi Ministry of Culture for removing Jewish teachers from German classrooms. Streicher was convicted at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity and hanged in 1946.
A crime against humanity is a large scale atrocity against a body of people, [...]

Human Rights Poem (38): Tortures

Tortures, Wislawa Szymborska
Nothing has changed.
The body is susceptible to pain,
it must eat and breathe air and sleep,
it has thin skin and blood right underneath,
an adequate stock of teeth and nails,
its bones are breakable, its joints are stretchable.
In tortures all this is taken into account.
Nothing has changed.
The body shudders as it shuddered
before the founding of Rome [...]

Human Rights Facts (23): State of Emergency

Article 4 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the main human rights treaty, creates the possibility for states to declare a so-called “state of emergency“, a temporary suspension of mechanisms for the protection of some human rights when this is required by a national crisis:
1. In time of public emergency which threatens the [...]

A Political Monty Python: Torture (and the Spanish Inquisition)

More on torture.

Human Rights Cartoon (77): Justice and Torture

(copyright http://www.felipegalindo.com/cartoons.html)
More on torture.

Human Rights Cartoon (55): Property

“The poor are getting poorer, but with the rich getting richer it all averages out in the long run.”
(Copyright: Joseph Mirachi)
Private property does not have a good press. It’s unequal distribution has often been criticized, also on this blog. However, there is a recognized human right to private property (or, more specifically, the right to [...]

Human Rights Cartoon (45): Torture

(by www.gocomics.com/tomtoles/)
A few words on the infamous “ticking bomb argument” in favour of torture: suppose we capture a terrorist, and we know that he knows where the ticking bomb is hidden that will soon kill thousands or millions. Are we not allowed to torture him in order to get the information which can save these [...]