Human rights or rights for some humans

By Neville de Silva

About 10 days ago I attended the 20th anniversary of what is called the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI). The day's programme had a catchy title: "Human Rights for Human Wrongs: the Continuing Commonwealth Challenge." It was addressed by the Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon and later by panellists and other participants that included a battery of lawyers including QCs and prestigious barristers, NGO representatives, human rights activists and others seemingly concerned with the deteriorating standards of human rights in some member countries.

Somewhere down the line Sri Lanka was mentioned-not once but twice- but thankfully Tom Porteous, London director of Human Rights Watch, did not delve into the latest situation there, probably because he knew little about it except what he had read in a report by one of his researchers called Charu Lata Hogg.

As it happened there was plenty of praise for CHRI, now based in New Delhi for over a decade (contrary to the original memorandum of understanding with Commonwealth organisations) and the great work it is doing though not all are agreed on that. Sometimes the mutual back-patting was getting to be somewhat embarrassing for those like us who are not completely unaccustomed to hearing the exchange of accolades on such and similar occasions we have had to attend as journalists.

I spent almost the entire day at the conference hoping to get some clear insights into the human rights situation in the Commonwealth and how this organisation was expecting to make rights of citizens of member countries more effective. I could understand why these non-governmental organisations wish the Commonwealth to be more effective for NGO advocacy. After all that is their bread and butter and it does not matter which side their bread is buttered because they eat both sides.

But what of the citizens themselves, by which I mean all the citizens not just some of them. This is particularly important since terrorism was one of the issues discussed in the last session of the conference along with policing and rights. I did hear plenty about the abuse of human rights of their citizens by governments and agents of the state, the difficulties faced by NGOs in carrying out their work because of the obstacles placed by states and the threats and violence against NGO workers.

The eminent people gathered there castigated governments for introducing tough new laws and justifying them on the basis that they were necessary to fight terrorism. Some of the laws were carefully dissected, bisected and trisected and then triumphantly claimed that they violated human rights as set out in this treaty and that convention.

Nobody really doubts that there are human rights abuses by states and their agencies, given all the empirical evidence there is on the subject. There is no need to labour that point because we have seen it happening even in the western countries that preach to the rest of the world about respect for human rights. Where such abuses exist certainly it is necessary for people and civil society organisations to stand up against such abuse and be counted.

But in all the time I spent there - and that was almost the entire day of this conference - I hardly heard a word being said about the human rights abuses of organisations and groups that employ terror as a political weapon. If terrorism is the use of armed violence and the threat to do so, against civilian targets, both people and property and the resultant killing and maiming of civilian non -combatants what of the human rights of those victims and of their families?

I thought and I am certain that others do too, that the right to life was the most fundamental of rights because without life other rights are meaningless. All the time I sat there I did not hear a single word spoken on behalf of the victims of terrorism. I wonder how many of those who spoke eloquently about human rights abuses and write erudite reports seated in offices in London, New York or New Delhi have been at a scene of a terrorist attack within three or four minutes of it happening and seen men and women staggering out of buildings without limbs or mangled ones and blood splattered bodies being carried out, some with barely a head attached.

How many of these activists have visited scenes of massacres where men, women and children have been hacked to death or wounded and left to die in their village huts miles from closest medical help? How many of them have seen the bodies of men, women and children lined up in rice fields and shot to death and left lying where they had fallen in a row?

I have. Not once, not twice not three times. The victims in every single instance were civilians, either city workers or poor farming families and, on a couple of occasions, Buddhist monks and Buddhist worshippers. They were all the victims of terrorist attacks. Why is that while these human rights activists and learned lawyers scrutinise the laws and shed voluminous tears over rights violations, they have no tears to shed for the innocent victims of terrorism?

Are human rights available only to some and not all the citizens of a country and do not the victims of terrorism and their families deserve sympathy? Should there not be a call to arms by the international community of human rights agitators against those violators of these sacred rights?

There were some strange things said at that conference. Tom Porteous of Human Rights Watch said how awkward it was to be interviewed by the BBC's tough interviewer Jeremy Paxman who would challenge their criticisms of tough British laws as violating of human rights because Paxman was aware that the British people would be behind him on this issue. But at the same time the Porteous's of the human rights world castigated the British government for not listening to the voice of the people which opposed the war against Iraq.

So, when the British people oppose the war they must be listened to, but when they support tough new laws in this so-called fight against terror they must be denounced for collaborating in the diminution of civil liberties. This is what I suppose was meant by heads you win, tails I lose.

Another interesting remark came from Jarvis Matiya of the Commonwealth Secretariat's Human Rights Unit which apparently takes cognizance of reports produced by organisations such as Human Rights Watch. The Unit does not appear to have the power to do any independent study but draws on other's reports to reach conclusions.

The problem is that often those reports base their conclusions on evidence that is hearsay, unverified or cannot be verified. Nor would such organisations tell the media the source of their information which makes it virtually impossible for the media to independently verify the veracity or otherwise of such information which is intrinsic to the conclusions reached in the reports.

How any serious organisations such as the Commonwealth Secretariat could base its judgement on reports which themselves rely on hearsay, uncorroborated or on anonymous sources makes one wonder at the methodology. Moreover, would any of those eminent QCs and barristers present have allowed such evidence to be presented in court unchallenged if they were defending clients against whom such evidence was to be used?

Reports based on such evidence would be troublesome to governments defending themselves. But to me it is even more troubling to the media that is expected to take not only a balanced view of these issues but scrutinise and double check the material on which conclusions are based.

We also heard Tom Porteous say that since foreign NGOs run into difficulties with governments when they investigate or report on human rights issues because they are foreign, they tend to use local NGOs to do so as they are more acceptable. This is decidedly ingenuous because the local NGOs are still foreign funded and some of them have common donors. The remark seems to imply that local NGOs will do the work-some would call it dirty work- which their foreign partners are fighting shy of.

Before the day was done there was an announcement that three Commonwealth NGOs would launch the "Human Rights Capacity Project" in the British Overseas Territories of the Caribbean, Pacific and South Atlantic. This effort was to be funded by the British Government's Department for International Development (DiFD).

Note the three regions. There is no mention of the British Indian Ocean Territories BIOT). It seems human rights are not required there. The answer is quite simple. Because the British Government is responsible for violating the human rights of the people of the Chagos Islands of which Diego Garcia is a part.

Shortly after the announcement when I asked them why the BIOT were excluded there was an embarrassing silence immediately and some sheepish grins. This shameful episode when a whole population was denied their basic rights deserves a separate column.