Why we should beware silver-tongued right-wing politicians who want to take away our human rights
Our ancestors fought for the rights and freedoms outlined in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights – and we must never forget why
“Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.”
It’s nearly 80 years since the signing of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Proclaimed in Paris on December 10, 1948, it was the first time in history that the world had a charter that called for legal protection for human rights across the globe.
The Declaration has since spawned more than 70 similar treaties worldwide. They give legal force to protecting human and civil rights. Sometimes, they temper the instinct to violent conflict, stay the hand of tyrants and give the world a system that promotes civilised behaviours. They are far from perfect, just as the world is far from perfect. Without them, we humans are often defenceless against the powerful.
100 million deaths
The Declaration was the product of thousands of years of history that witnessed genocide, rape, plunder, murder, torture, imprisonment, enslavement, forced labour, land theft and loss of indigenous territories and cultures across the globe.
Most of the people who gathered in Paris to sign the document had witnessed two world wars in the space of four decades. Up to 100 million people are estimated to have died in the First and Second World Wars. Most were civilians.
Shocking atrocities were committed by Hitler’s Germany, by the Japanese in China and Korea and, in Russia, some 20 million people died, many of them by the hand of their own leaders.
Along with the estimated six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, the Nazis also slaughtered thousands of Roma, Slavs, Jehovah’s Witnesses, disabled people, homosexuals, writers, priests and crushed all forms of resistance.
The National Socialist ideology of racial supremacy and the absolute authority of the Nazi party were codified into law. Any form of protest, indeed any form of expression not approved by the party could see the citizen arrested, charged and convicted. At best, the guilty faced life in a concentration camp. At worst, the guillotine ended their lives. There was no appeal.
The right to free expression and assembly
There are those on the right of British politics who want the UK quit the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Forty-six Europeans nations are signatories to the Convention, meaning it is law in all those countries.
Like all laws, it has its flaws, but the rights it gives us all are the most precious jewels any society can bestow on its citizens. They include the right to life itself. The Convention makes torture illegal, outlaws slavery and forced labour, enshrines the right to justice and the right to free expression and assembly.
If the UK withdraws from the ECHR, there are no guarantees that any British substitute will be as comprehensive or even be enforced with the same legal rigour and moral force as the European Convention.
Our fathers, grandfathers and great grandfathers fought for our freedoms. Don’t let smooth-talking politicians persuade us to give up the mechanisms that have, for eight decades, been essential defenders of our most fundamental rights.
Martin Roche sits on the executive of the European Movement in Scotland
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