Culture and protection of human rights

Culture and protection of human rights

By Frans H. Winarta

JAKARTA (JP): As we approach the 48th Anniversary of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights on Dec. 10, it is perfectly
natural that we spend some time contemplating the significance
and implications of this event.

The birth of the declaration marked a time during which all of
the nations of the world were still haunted by the trauma of
World War II. Together, they declared the rights of human beings
which had been trampled by the cruel and devastating war. The
declaration took place in San Francisco on Dec. 1, 1948.

Human civilization was on the brink of collapse as one of the
results of that raging world war. The cities of Berlin and Tokyo
were battered almost beyond repair, while many other cities in
western Europe and Japan suffered considerably. By far the most
unfortunate of those cities were Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which
were razed to the ground by atomic bombs. One of the more lasting
consequences of that war is that the victims of the atomic bombs
are still falling today.

Each year, the horrifying experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
is still commemorated by the Japanese and other nations
worldwide. Had the Allies chosen to target the city of Kyoto, the
outcome would have been very different. Kyoto has long been the
center of Japanese culture.

In that light, it was fortunate that the Allies' generals were
still able to think rationally enough that they did not go so far
as to destroy the city of Rome, one of the centers of European
culture, as they charged Mussolini's troops.

The result of the horror witnessed in World War II and the
prospect of future wars obviously prompted the people who
gathered in San Francisco in 1948 to declare the Universal Human
Rights, following a series of meetings among members of the
United Nations. The main objective of the declaration was to
alleviate the possibility of exploitation and destruction of
humans by fellow humans. It was also designed to protect world
civilization from the impact of ruinous wars.

With the help of the UN General Assembly, the nations of the
world unanimously agreed to respect, honor and observe human
rights, while preventing any form of discrimination based on
race, color, sex, language, religion, political views, national
origins, or social class. They also vowed that no discrimination
based on property, birth, or other types of positions, should
ever be allowed as general standards for measuring success. This
should be true for all people and all nations.

The human rights were declared in order to prevent another
world war with the capability of completely crushing human
civilization. Prior to that moment, individual rights used to be
sacrificed for the sake of collective interests, while collective
and individual interests are supposed to be well-balanced in
order to create a harmonious society. The moment one party gains
some leverage against the other is the moment when imbalance will
reign in a society.

Think about how Hitler's Nazi ideologies brought the German
people into a situation in which the state enjoyed such a strong
position that their freedom was constricted and they became so
deeply influenced by the ideology of collectivism that they were
willing to embrace even the craziest ideas of der Fuehrer
himself. These ideas ranged from the ethnic cleansing of Jews to
the idea of Deutschland uber alles as the manifestation of the
superiority of the Aryan race (white skin and blue eyes) over the
people of color.

As a nation, we also went through a most difficult and painful
time during the Japanese occupation, from 1942 to 1945. Stories
of the sufferings of the romusha forced laborers and the comfort
women will always be part of Indonesia's history.

After the Universal Declaration, human rights were reconfirmed
through a series of international conventions, the first of which
was the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights and its Protocol. This covenant was declared by the UN
General Assembly on Dec. 15, 1955, and went into effect on Jan.
3, 1976. The second international agreement on human rights was
the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights and its
Protocol, which went into effect on March 13, 1976. Both of these
covenants, along with the Universal Declaration on Human Rights,
are known as the "International Bill of Human Rights".

The most important right guaranteed by both of these
covenants, that is not included in the Universal Declaration, is
the right to determine one's own destiny. These three important
UN documents are all recognized by experts of international law
as International Customary Law up to now.

Human rights are not human culture, therefore we cannot claim
them to be culture specific. Human rights inherently belong to
every individual, irrespective of his or her origin, cultural
background, race, religion, political belief, or ideology.
Furthermore, once human rights are completely honored, human
civilization will be protected and respected as a matter of
course.

In addition to proclaiming the universal characteristics of
human rights to every nation of the world, the Universal Declara
tion on Human Rights of Dec. 10, 1948, was also a reaction to the
devastating impacts of World War II on human individual rights
and human civilization. The declaration was meant as a prevention
of the outbreak of World War III, the aftermath of which would be
beyond anybody's imagination.

The writer is a Jakarta human rights lawyer, secretary of the
Legal Aid Institute Foundation and director of the International
Relations Division of the Indonesian Advocates Association.