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HUMAN RIGHTS

SEMINAR GROUP

We are made in the image of God and for the purpose of fulfilling His glory. The greatest commandment to us is to love our God and our fellow human beings. This forms the basis of our belief in the dignity of human beings and the respect that ought to be accorded to our bodies and lives. Any form of oppression physical or psychological, political or economic, social or cultural, should be destroyed and a new and just society be created which allows man to become wholly human. Our convictions also find expression in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states that "no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment".

The meaning of human rights is necessarily broad by definition. At its most fundamental level it means the right of every person to be guaranteed a sufficient amount of the basic necessities of life — food, shelter and clothing. Any social system that denies this fundamental right to its people stands to be condemned and changed. Human rights also include the right of the people to have the power to make decisions over things that affect their daily lives and activities such as their work environment, their family lives, the things they buy, the services they get, etc. We believe in a social system which aims not at the maximization of profit but at the maximization of the welfare and dignity of the people. In such a society criticisms and dissent with the purpose of improving the society should not only be tolerated but also encouraged. We, however, reject the bourgeois idea of the absolutization of freedom of belief, speech and expression even when such ideas and actions run counter to the principles of justice and human dignity.

In stark contrast to the acceptance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by many countries, most of them practice brutal forms of repression in their societies. The basic reason can be attributed to the desire of the ruling class to perpetuate a social system that benefits them at the expense of the inhuman suffering of the masses. All forms of dissent or attempts to change the unjust system are met with brutal repression. And these are legitimized through state power. The domestic ruling class are supported and encouraged in their repression by international capitalists and in order to create a safe haven for economic exploitation and by social imperialists to create a political order in their own interests.

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The United States works hand in glove with the local rulers in/the Philippines, South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, etc, in the repression of their people. The British are partners of repression in Malaysia/ and Singapore. '

We summarise the various forms of tactics used by the ruling class to suppress human rights. (Examples of countries given are meant to be illustrative and not exhaustive). ;

1) "Legislation" — All kinds of laws that flout the basic principles of human rights are enacted to legitimize the reign of terror by many countries. Examples are martial law in South Korea and the Philippines, Internal Security Act (detention without trial) in India, Malaysia and Singapore, and repressive labour laws in Philippines, Korea, Malaysia, and Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, etc. These measures result in press censorship, banning of labour unions, closing down of students unions, and the arrest of political opponents without trial, etc.

2) "Divide and Rule" — The local ruling classes continue to use the tactic of divide and rule which they inherited from their colonial masters. In Malaysia the rulers pit the Malay against the non-Malays so that the problems

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and contradictions between the rich and the poor are obfuscated, hi Thailand rightist student groups are established to split the ranks of the progressive student groups. In Malaysia labour unions are separated from one another and inter-rivalry between them encouraged.

3) Use of "Communism" as a bogey to whip up nationalist sentiments to justify repression of any government opposition. This is done in almost every Asian country.

4) Threatening, torture, and assassination of opposition leaders and their families, etc, in Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, India, Sri Lanka, etc;

5) Discrimination against and repression of minority groups, e.g. aboriginal people in Australia and New Zealand, Koreans in Japan, women in most countries;

6) Manipulating the educational system — e.g. denying the right of education to people with opposing political views in Malaysia and Singapore, propagating uncritical type of education which dichotomises study from politics and society.

7) Setting up Nazi-types of internal security forces such as special branch police and intelligence police to harass political opponents.

ENNELS

(On Amnesty International)

The purpose of Amnesty International is indeed to work for the liberation of people who are in prison because of their religious or political beliefs — to work against torture and to work against capital punishment — and to work for fair trial, to avoid detention without trial as happened in many parts of the world, particularly in Asia. And of course this is a very big job and it is also a very limited area of activity.

We have been in existence almost exactly 15 years and during this period we have developed a research unit in the International Headquarters in London, so that we based all the work which we do on information. We collect information about individual cases of people who are in prison or who are being tortured and have been tortured and we have built up the organization on the basis of a membership working for individual people. It is in a sense a very personalized and personal organization.

As the movement has grown (it started in Europe), we have continued with this case-to-case operation. And this is a very important factor because, in a sense, it makes us a unique organization — we get individual people to hsip individual people. And we are based on a very simple premise, that governments like people have their own fears, their own pride, and they like to be liked and dislike being disliked. In other words, public opinion does count. And in countries where public opinion cannot be expressed at the

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national, regional or local level, then at that moment, international public opinion can be effective.

As we are only a membership organisation which is growing, we depend very much on co-operation with other organizations. We do not ask for Amnesty to be credited. We only ask that people should use our information for the purpose for which it is given. We have had magnificent cooperation with many parts of the Christian establishment - through the World Council of Churches, through Justice and Peace, through IDOC, with Pax Romana, with Pax Christi. We have excellent working relationships and we are delighted that the channels exist and that the information we provide can be used.

At the next sort of level of growth of the organization, we moved into a period when we have some recognition of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the Organization of American States, the Organization for African Unity. And we are able through recognition by governmental organizations, to use the channels of consultation, to feed in information which we collect through our research units to, for which we collect through our research units to, for example, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights with procedures to investigate what is happening in Guatemala, in Uruguay, in Brazil, in Chile and in some cases this machinery has worked very well and pressure have been brought by governments upon other governments in this way.

It is not satisfactory. It is inadequate because governments on the whole are very reluctant to criticize other governments, other potentially friendly governments because of their own vested interests, because no one is pure.

The question arises, of course, "How effective are we?" I have no idea and it is a very dangerous and difficult thing to spend one's time evaluating. You can take 2 standards of application. First and not necessarily the most important, — do we seem to be meeting a requirement of people who are involved in human rights? The answer to that must be "yes" because the organization has grown so rapidly that we must be fulfilling at least the need of those of us who want to work for human rights.

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We also go on the fundamental basis that human rights are uni 1 and that one should not be selective about human rights. You should t say that what is good for one person is bad for somebody else or you cant excuse what is happening in one place while you attack it happening somewhere else.

We now have about 2,000 amnesty groups in about 35 countries who work for prisoners on a geographical and political balance. Each group has to work for 3 prisoners.

On top of this membership basis of individual and groups is a sort of international recognition which is sometimes embarassing and sometimes very useful. Embarassing because Amnesty is now looked upon as being the only objective source of information about political imprisonment anywhere in the world. That means that as soon as you get a new crisis or a new press report, people turn to Amnesty and say, "First, what are the facts and, secondly, why aren’t you doing something about it?"

This, of course is understandable, because we are a small office in London. We have no power. We have no authority. We have very little money but we have become regarded as experts in a world which is so big that, of course, no one can be an expert on political imprisonment everywhere. What are we doing about Cambodia? The answer is absolutely nothing. Not because we don't want to but because we have no additional access to facts in Cambodia than any newspaperman, in fact, probably less.

The second evaluation is, "What do the prisoners think?" And there the answer is overwhelming and the response that we have from countries where we have had some -effect or being known to be operative is astonishingly encouraging. Never a day goes by without prisoners writing letters, ex-prisoners, prisoners' families saying not only, in many cases that they have been released because of the work of Amnesty and I don't think they are always right but also the importance to someone who is in prison, of knowing that outside, in the outer community, they are not forgotten. There are people working for them and there are people physically trying to help not only in terms of liberation but the very mundane needs of food, clothing and education for the families or for even the prisoners themselves.

Finally, one important point which is sometimes very difficult to explain and justify. We are not a World Civil Liberties Movement. We are a very limited organization working for cases of people who are in prison because of their political or religious beliefs or because they are being tortured. One of the purposes of Amnesty is its Internationalism. The word International in the title is important. No one within our organization works as part of our organization for prisoners in their own countries. We are not trying to set up a Civil Liberties movement in Thailand or Sri Lanka or the United Kingdom. If they exist, Great! They are the sort of people who probably belong to Amnesty and Amnesty people probably belong to Civil Liberties. But that is not our job. Our job is in fact to work across borders. It is not our job to put people into prison. It is our job to get them out.