HUMAN RIGHTS – The Concept and Reality

SAMUEL HO

I am happy to be invited by the WSCF Asia-Pacific to this Colombo session of ASFOR. I consider this occasion as WSCF revisited, to which I had a first-hand experience some 11 years ago and I am here to share with you some of my limited understanding of human rights and the struggles of our Asian people. I seek also to learn from you, your perceptions and understanding, your experience and struggles in your own national situations. I admit that I am no expert nor theoretician but only an ordinary worker to advance the cause of human rights of our oppressed people in Asia.

It is important for us here to grasp a clear understanding of the concept and the historical origins of human rights so that we can better understand the Asian realities, the struggles of our people, ourselves, our purpose and ongoing tasks in our commitment to justice and social transformation.

I will lay the framework of the concepts and leave to you the specifics of experience of how human rights is respected, practiced and violated in each of the Asian countries from where you come. This is for you to share as a contribution to the understanding of others here. You will have a better experience of your situation and a much deeper understanding of your national history and realities. I must impress upon you to interpret the cause of your own people and to put that cause on the international agenda of discussion to bring attention and justice to your own people. The struggle of your own people is mighty and heroic because of the very limited resources they can mobilize against the great machinery of oppression and repression.

May I also warn ourselves that it is very comfortable and perhaps indulgent for us here to talk about our concern, participation and witness unless we see that struggles as our very own. As is often, we have been called to the struggle as a matter of conscience and to play that little role within our means. Many of us are indeed so very privileged and by that privilege are so alienated from the struggles of our own people. Unless we see ourselves as a part of our own people just as oppressed as they are and integrate with them, we will never truly get involved and find our commitment sustained.

THE CONCEPT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN CONTRAST TO THE POPULAR UNDERSTANDING

Many of us, though Asians, come from a Judeo-Christian tradition, through Western-oriented education, religious belief and observance, and also hold highly self-centered individualistic value system. We tend to view human rights as evidenced at the point of deprivations and violations of fundamental civil liberties. The bodily harms, disappearances and deaths without accountability disturbs and hurts our conscience, insults our sense of intelligence and justice.

In our abhorrence of cruelty beyond reason from whom we entrust the enforcement of justice, we invariably involve ourselves in the cause of the individual to free him from suffering and threat to his life. We urge respect of constitutional rights, the rule of law and the accordance of justice. We work towards the cause of human rights aiming at nation-building, conflict resolution and state-people reconciliation. We appeal to the regime to grant amnesty to those condemned or incarcerated especially with whom we identify and whom we believe to be innocent of alleged political crimes. Such work, is very much appreciated and need to be continued.

In Asia today, such views and actions are considered to be narrow and isolated to explain Asian realities and the material conditions experienced by the majority of our Asian people that lead to conflicts between the ruling regime and the people and to the continued violations of human rights. Such views of human rights at the point of violations and suffering cannot be accepted especially by those people who are articulate in the injustices seen and the plight of the oppressed masses and deeply committed to social transformation.

It is not just politics alone but the socio-economic conditions of Asian realities and the experience of the oppressed people that provide for the emergence of leaders and change motivators who find political articulation, forms and actions that lead to situations of conflicts. The majority of our people who suffer deprivation, dispossesion or disinheritance, subordination and marginalization, and the articulate among them who suffer political repression or incarceration for their commitment are not naive nor innocent. They have a cause. Precisely because of that cause and their deep-rooted commitment to the aspirations and social transformation for a just, dignified and democratic society, they have staked their lives and suffered the price. To this effect, we are called not to simply join them as leaders or followers but to share their aspirations and struggles.

When the West speaks of human rights, as is seen in Carter's human rights campaign, it is basically aimed at asserting the continued US domination of the world having to its exclusion geographical areas of political, economic and cultural influence. The campaign was never intended by Carter or the US to stop the violations and restore respect for human rights by the most violent of repressive regimes in Asia whom the US propped and considered them as the staunchest allies. The campaign was directed against the USSR – continuation of the ideological cold war between capitalism and communism. It was also aimed at recovering from the downward decline of US economy and its standing in international politics following its shameful defeat and retreat from Indochina. It is the struggle of the Asian people and other Third World people against US imperialist oppression and domination that brought attention to violations of human rights in South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia, and the US involvement.

The struggles of our people in Asia today are not limited to upholding individual rights as enshrined in our national constitutions and international covenants, but toward establishing a socio-economic order that accords justice and equality. We need therefore to situate the struggles of our Asian people within the context of politics of the region and the historical forces, both internal and external, that have shaped and continued to shape the region. Human rights in Asia, possesses not only several dimensions but also certain characteristics. This can be fully appreciated when viewed from the historical origins and development in a particular setting and circumstance.

In the Third World, the concept of human rights necessarily acquire a broader meaning. Human rights is an out-growth of the peoples' collective struggle for independence and self-determination to be free from colonial domination, oppression and exploitation. It is from this experience that we speak of the collective rights of the people. All the more so today, the Asian peoples struggle for their collective rights in the face of realities: poverty and hunger, gross mal-distribution of productive assets and income, backwardness and under-development, unequal terms of trade or exchange, and the rise of the military technocratic state that has neo-fascist tendencies.

THE HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF HUMAN RIGHTS

The understanding of human rights must take into consideration the struggles of the people in a particular historical period. The content and its expression differs from time to time and society to society.

While slavery may have ended in the U.S. in the mid-19th century, the people in Africa today, continue to struggle for an end to this dehumanization. While feudalism may have declined in Europe in the 15th century, the people in Latin America, Africa and Asia today are still struggling for an end to semi-feudalism that explains their backwardness, oppression and poverty. While formal colonialism may have crumbled following the end of World War II, the people in Africa and in the Pacific are still continuing and stepping up their struggle for political independence and self-determination – an end to the colonial relations to which they have long been subjugated.

Today, arising from slavery, from feudalism and from colonialism, the people in Asia, Africa and Latin America now suffer under the yoke of semi-feudalism, bureaucrat capitalism and neo-colonialism. As such, all oppressed people in the Third World today unite in solidarity in their struggle for not only political self-determination and democracy, but also socio-economic advancement and equality between all peoples and between all nations.

What do all these struggles actually mean? How do we understand these struggles? Let us trace the historical origins of human rights.

Historically, the slogan of human rights was first raised in the feudal societies of Europe by the rise of the bourgeosie. They had then achieved certain economic but not political power. Deriving their demands from the "natural rights of man", they rejected the feudal autocratic rule of the monarchies.

Human rights then became a powerful tool in bringing down feudalism. As a political program, claiming the rights for all people, it was only universal in form. Although certain fundamental changes were achieved in the structure of society, where the bourgeosie wedged themselves in between the monarchy and the people, the majority of the common people remained as they were. They continued to be oppressed and exploited. They toiled and labored absolutely unconscious of their rights.

Human rights then meaning fundamental civil liberties or individual rights got written into the constitution of various European nations. Only the bourgeosie enjoyed the rights and privileges in the succeeding capitalist society based on individual efforts and initiatives in free competition to amass private property and maximum profits.

The emergence of capitalism together with the industrial revolution in Europe propelled the bourgeosie to cross the high seas into carving vast territories around the world in search of gold first, then raw materials and markets. Added on to this was also the Christian missionary zeal to "civilize" and to "save" the whole of Mankind, making the world in their own image. In the fierce competition that ensued, the creed that finally emerged was individualism – the rights of the individual. Though the rights thus won may be individualistic, they are a step forward and an achievement in the progress of Mankind.

Human rights is then taken to mean freedom of choice, freedom of enterprise, freedom of trade, freedom of contract – or basically, the right to privilege, to property, to private ownership, to amass wealth, the right to buy and sell, and the right to hire and fire. In this new market system, there developed new laws and new mechanisms that determine the political and socio-economic relations between people. The laws and mechanisms, through which the market is regulated are actively promoted by those who benefited from it most. In the fierce competition, new structures and institutions – social, political, economic; culture, religion, education, law, military – are also developed and erected to protect those vested interests. In the search for advantage, profit and property, status and privilege, people could now be distinguished between minority and majority, masters and slaves, employers and employees, buyers and sellers, exploiter and exploited, colonizer and colonized, oppressor and oppressed. From this, also arises, discriminations and intolerances sexism, racism, religious fanaticism, and chauvinism.

Exploitative relations do not merely consist of physical objects existing independently of their ownership but in the actual social relations and also production-distribution relations between people and between nations. Property and therefore production confers on its owners’ freedom from labor and the disposal over the labor of others. This is the essence of social domination, oppression and violations of human rights.

In the ensuing colonial rivalries that resulted in the First and Second World Wars, many people were outraged by the atrocities committed by the Europeans against themselves and by the colonial powers against the people colonized. Human rights again became a powerful weapon in international political struggles and a criterion in international law and covenants. They were thus written into the Universal Declaration on Human Rights of the United Nations in 1948.

Thus when speaking of human rights, people who grew up or are educated in the western tradition often stress on the rights of the individuals or fundamental civil liberties as enshrined in the Magna Carta (British, 1215), the Bill of Rights (U.S., 1776-89), the Rights of Man (French, 1789), and even in the Universal Declaration, (United Nations, 1948). Even the modern constitutions of Asian countries, which are virtually carbon copies of the constitutions of their former colonial masters, have these rights included in them.

The concept and perspective, struggles and actions on human rights are a reflection of the material conditions existing in the particular society. In the advanced industrialized society, the majority of the people live with reasonable securities of life – life itself, employment, food, shelter, health, etc. But in the poor and backward countries of Asia and the Third World, the majority of the people are very deprived and threatened by these basic necessities.

INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS VS COLLECTIVE RIGHTS

In Asian and Third World countries, the concept of human rights arises from a different historical context. Human rights acquire a broader and deeper meaning from the concerted and continuing struggles of oppressed people to free themselves from domination and exploitation as a consequence of feudalism, semi-feudalism, colonialism and neo-colonialism.

When speaking of human rights, the oppressed people mean therefore their collective rights – their rights as a people, their rights as a nation. It does not mean to say that individual rights are no longer important, nor an issue. But when the large majority of people in Asia are politically subordinated and victimized, and deprived of the basic necessities of life by the few who amass power, wealth and privileges to themselves, it becomes clear that the interests of the majority are diametrically opposed to the few, and their rights violated by the few. Furthermore, foreign power interests (financial capital, investments, arms merchants, military grants and development aids) that seek the collaboration of indigenous power elites act equally to violate the interests of the majority. As such, foreign investments in Asian countries, economic and military assistance to the present governments, only serve to enhance and consolidate the power of repressive regimes. The national power elites in their self-aggrandizement act on behalf of foreign interests to oppress and exploit the majority of the people.

Even the repressive regimes in Asia, has a reaction to the widespread international criticisms of violations of human rights according to western standards. They argue that human rights cannot be seen in the light of western definitions. They also recognize the problems of the majority of the people (poverty and hunger as a consequence of underdevelopment which pose a serious threat to internal peace and stability) are particularly acute and thereby argue that civil liberties and political rights have to be sacrificed for rapid economic development and immediate political stability. Martial law has been declared from one country to another. In this way, they justify their fascist dictatorial rule and economic domination through repression and violations against the majority of the people.

Those persons-dissidents and radicals, who are critical of the corruptive powers of the ruling elite and the distorted socio-economic order, who demand accountability and justice, and who lead the majority of the people in asserting their rights are thus considered as "subversives", if not "communists", and are dealt with in accordance to the law instantaneously erected by the reactionary regimes. From the perspective of the majority of the people, their basic interests have been subordinated and their rights deprived and violated.

THE STRUGGLES OF THE ASIAN PEOPLE

The struggle for human rights among people in the Asian and other Third World countries today is for liberation and social transformation. The oppressed people stress and assert their rights to be free from the many injustices. The people in Asia want not only a family, a home, food, productive work, education, skills, but also a purposeful and dignified society where there is self-determination, participatory democracy, distributive justice and socio-economic advancement – away from the widening disparities and distortions of unequal distribution, away from the backwardness they now live in. They struggle to liberate themselves from national oppression: for equality between people in the nation and for equality between nations in the world.

The people in Asia assert their collective rights as a people and their collective rights as a nation. They want to be dignified and be respected in internal and external relations. The demand is for national independence and national democracy – an end to semi-feudalism, bureaucratism, neo-colonialism, free from socio-political and economic domination, free from military occupation, free from intimidation and manipulation, free from threats of aggression. They struggle for a national economy that is self-reliant and progressive – free from mal-distribution, exploitation and perpetual indebtedness. The struggle is for equal accessibility to productive assets and resources.

Individual rights cannot be considered as ends in themselves in grappling with Asian realities and the problems of the Asian people. They can only be a means toward justice and social transformation of Asian societies. Human rights concern and efforts though start with the focus on the individuals cannot be expanded nor raised to the majority collective. There can be no neutrality in human rights. Human rights are political in nature because of its provision for the collective interests of the people in Asia who are poor and oppressed.

Samuel Ho is Executive Secretary for Asia Forum on Human Rights. This paper was prepared for the Asia Secretaries Formation (ASFOR) program held in Colombo, Sri Lanka in March 1981.

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