Part II
Rape is often explained or excused as a manifestation of racial, ethnic and class hatred or as stemming from a patriarchal system in which women are viewed as the property of men. Whatever its origins, rape is a serious crime and is treated as a felony in most countries.
In the 2nd half of the 20th century, cases of rape were documented in more than 20 military and paramilitary conflicts, according to the pages of history. In the 1990s rape was used as an instrument of ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia and as a means of genocide in Rwanda. In the former case, women belonging to subjugated ethnic groups were intentionally impregnated through rape by enemy soldiers; in the latter case, women belonging to the Tutsi ethnic group were systematically raped by HIV-infected men recruited and organized by the Hutu-led government.
Child abuse, which is also called “cruelty to children”, is also another area where the fundamental human rights are alienated. Its formal definition in the dictionary is; the willful infliction of pain and suffering on children through physical, sexual, or emotional mistreatment.
In extension, the inordinate physical violence, unjustifiable verbal abuse; the failure to furnish proper shelter, nourishment, medical treatment, or emotional support; incest and other cases of sexual molestation or rape; and the use of children in prostitution or pornography, are areas where rights of children are violated.
The other one, that stands as an additional reason triggering violation of the inalienable rights is human trafficking, which also is known as “trafficking in persons”. It is a form of modern day slavery involving the illegal transport of individuals by force or deception for the purpose of labor, sexual exploitation or activities in which others benefit financially. Human trafficking is a global problem affecting people of all ages. According to an anonymous source in the internet, approximately 1 million people are trafficked each year globally and that 20 to 50 thousand are trafficked into the United States, which is one of the largest destinations for victims of the sextrafficking trade.
Human trafficking is a highly structured, organized and lucrative criminal activity with estimated $32 billion worth per year, according to various researches. The criminal enterprises need to transport a large number of migrants over a substantial distance, have a well-organized plan to execute the various stages of the crime, and possess a substantial amount of money for such undertakings. For this reason, migrant trafficking is increasingly recognized as a form of organized crime.
Just as numerous other international laws, Ethiopia endorsed and incorporated all laws, including trafficking in persons, that stand for the welfare of humanity despite the unfolding situation in the area. Subarticle 02 of Article 18 of the constitution of the country states: “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude. Trafficking in human beings for whatever purpose is prohibited.”
Hate-crime, an aspect that drives motives for violators to commit human rights crime has been regarded for so long, in history, as another cause for the perpetration. It is defined by the scholars as a harassment, intimidation or physical violence that is motivated by a bias against characteristics of the victim considered integral to his social identity, such as his race, ethnicity, or religion. Some relatively broad hatecrime laws also include sexual orientation and mental or physical disability among the characteristics that define a hate-crime.
Hate-crime can sometimes result in genocide. Genocide, as to the agreed on ground definition, is the deliberate and systematic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race. The term, derived from the Greek genos (“race,” “tribe,” or “nation”) and the Latin cide (“killing”), was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish born jurist who served as an advisor to the U.S. Department of war during World War II.
In his work Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (1944), Lemkin noted: “Genocide is a criminal intent to destroy or to cripple permanently a human group. The acts are directed against groups as such, and individuals are selected for destruction only because they belong to these groups.”
Not so long after his definition, the first UN human rights treaty, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which was approved under Resolution 260-III (December 1948), defines genocide in article 02 as follows: “Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
So, dear reader; what do you think of the above definitions? Don’t you bear several explicit situations of genocide in your mind, which abused human rights? Certainly you do! The best common example of genocide is the one that occurred in the neighboring country of Rwanda. The genocide was conceived by extremist elements of Rwanda’s majority Hutu population who planned to kill the minority Tutsi population and anyone who opposed to those genocidal intentions. It was estimated that some 200 thousand Hutu, spurred on by propaganda from various media outlets, participated in the genocide. More than 800 thousand civilians—primarily Tutsi, but also moderate Hutu—were killed during the campaign. As many as two million Rwandans fled the country during or immediately after the genocide.
The other global instance is the Srebrenica massacre. It was the slaying of more than 07 thousand Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) boys and men, perpetrated by Bosnian Serb forces in Srebrenica, a town in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, in July 1995. In addition to the killings, more than 20 thousand civilians were expelled from the area—a process known as ethnic cleansing. The massacre, which was the worst episode of mass murder within Europe since World War II, helped galvanize the West to press for a cease-fire that ended three years of warfare on Bosnia’s territory, as to the recent historical recordings.
Apart from the above points, terrorism stands as another area where the inalienable human rights have been continuously endangered. Definitions of terrorism are usually complex and controversial, and, because of the inherent ferocity and violence of terrorism, the term in its popular usage has developed an intense stigma. As to the agreeable definition, the systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective is called terrorism.
Terrorism has been practiced by political organizations with both rightist and leftist objectives, by nationalistic and religious groups, by revolutionaries, and even by state institutions such as armies, intelligence services, and police. The ancient Greek historian, Xenophon, (c. 431-c.350 BC) wrote of the effectiveness of psychological warfare against enemy populations. Roman emperors such as Tiberius (reigned AD 1437) and Caligula (reigned AD 37-41) used banishment, expropriation of property, and execution as means to discourage opposition to their rule, history says.
The most commonly cited example of early terror, however, is the activity of the Jewish Zealots, often known as the Sicarii (Hebrew: “Daggers”), who engaged in frequent violent attacks on fellow Hebrews suspected of collusion with the Roman authorities. Likewise, the use of terror was openly advocated by Maximilien Robespierre during the French Revolution, and the Spanish Inquisition used arbitrary arrest, torture, and execution to punish what it viewed as religious heresy. After the American Civil War (1861-65), defiant Southerners formed the Ku Klux Klan to intimidate supporters of Reconstruction (1865-77), and the newly freed former slaves.
Terrorism was virtually an official policy in Totalitarian states such as those of Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler and the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, some of the most extreme and destructive organizations that engaged in terrorism possessed a fundamentalist religious ideology (e.g., Hamās and al-Qaeda). Suicide bombing, in which the perpetrator would attempt to destroy an important economic, military, political, or symbolic target by detonating a bomb on his person, has become the fashion of the day by these radicals and by others who follow their footprints.
Another one, racial segregation, is a societal drawback that enabled millions, until this day, to be deprived of their rights. It is the practice of restricting people to certain circumscribed areas of residence or to separate institutions (e.g., schools, churches) and facilities (parks, playgrounds, restaurants, restrooms) on the basis of race or alleged race.
It appeared on all parts of the world where there are multiracial communities, except where racial amalgamation has occurred on a large scale, as in Hawaii and Brazil. Elsewhere, racial segregation was practiced with the greatest rigor in South Africa, where, under the apartheid system, it was an official government policy from 1950 until the early 1990s.
The last, for this article, but not the least one for the violation of the fundamental human rights is the whole lot of mess in the political spectrum. politics broadly is a total complex of relations among people living in society. It’s narrower but tending to be more acceptable one is the definition that says; politics is the art or science concerned with winning and holding control over a government power. And the one that has been the main source for spilling the bloods of the fellow human beings along with the deprivation of other rights including arbitrary arrests is the latter one, as to the belief of the author of this article.
I understand that the degree of practicing democracy in the political process varies as to the experiences and exposures that countries went through. For instance; it becomes a quite joke to contrast Africa’s political process with the one in USA. Even inside Africa, things in the sphere don’t appear similar. Some are on the promising lane where others are lagging far behind. Yet, every actor has the intention to win the road to power and that aspiration sometimes, inevitably ends-up in crisis as we can witness multitudes in Africa.
Let’s come to the point! Are we rid of all the aforementioned points that stood for millennia, not only out there but here with us also as reasons to violate the inalienable rights? No, we aren’t. If so, what should be done? Simple; apply the golden rule: “In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you….”
In the long term, governments do not (hopefully) set trends; they (will) adopt those already established within the body of the people. To persuade governments to fully implement the Universal Declaration of Human Rights requires effective and sustained action at a grass root level, according to the HumanRights.com. In reply, then, to the question, “Who will ensure that human rights are respected?” the primary architect of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Eleanor Roosevelt; wife of USA’s 32nd President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, has given an answer that rings with eloquence and truth:
“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home— so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.”
Yes, of course. Human rights shall be respected at all layers of any nation. People at the grass root and at the highest decision making stratum must respect the inalienable rights, regardless of their status quo, in a synchronized manner. The 2nd President of the United States (17971801), John Adams, after moving into the unfinished Presidential Mansion on November 1st of 1800, which later was named “The White House” officially by President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) in 1902; wrote in a letter to his wife Abigail Adams: “I Pray Heaven Bestow the Best of Blessings on This House and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but Honest and Wise Men ever rule under this Roof.”
I, being a resident of the pathetic city of Addis Ababa and an employee working for the Secretariat of the House of Peoples’ Representatives of the FDRE, do frequently look at the Office of the Prime Minister and the premises where he dwells with his family, because of the physical and operational proximity of the two institutions. While doing so, the wish of President John Adams resonates inside me, always. I unceasingly wish anyone in the supreme executive position shall be audacious, wise and honest enough to his/her allegiance to rule of law, not feeble and may the Most High consecrate him/her with all the power, knowledge and wisdom so that he/she can perform properly, as what the law of the land and the vested interest of the general public seeks from him/ her.
I also believe it is of no question that whenever and wherever the inalienable rights are violated; we shall not remain silent. Whoever abuses human rights, we shall protest as per the law of the land. Many legislative bodies, including our own country, have issued directives forbidding racial and religious discrimination and hatred. As a result, human rights abusers should be held accountable for their actions and must be subject to the law of the land. Silence, said Eliezer Wiesel, a Nazi concentration camp survivor and Nobel Peace Laureate, encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Therefore; let rule of law reign over all, every member of the human society! No more silence to any violation of human rights!
The Ethiopian herald July 18,2020
BY ASRAT ADDISU
