Murder and Mayhem

                            

                   Violation of Human Rights

 

                                (Murder and Mayhem)

 

      Definition of human rights and values and their deliberate and willful violation by some human beings either individually or as members of a group is a complex issue. One must differentiate between rights and values. Values have larger connotations that ultimately decide the type and extent of rights that are allowed to the residents of any particular area of human habitation.

The complexity varies with the pattern of governance of the concerned countries or states. A democracy where the people are ruled by their elected representatives or a feudal monarchy with kings or queens ruling over their subjects or an autocracy or a dictatorship or a totalitarian regime or a colonial power or an army of occupation ruling over the people, all these differ in the degrees of freedom and rights enjoyed by the individual in the system prevailing in that particular place. In places having democracy the rights are safeguarded by law and remain sacred and inalienable. In other situations and places the rights are largely dependent on the whims of the rulers. Benevolent rulers may even give degrees of freedom and rights well beyond those available under law in a democracy. The ‘Rama Rajya” concept is an example of such a possibility. However by and large the values get eroded and people suffer suppression of freedom and their basic rights in non-democratic environments.

Human values could also vary according to traditional, historical or religious factors that may come into play during their codification and conceptualization in different societies.

Violation of human rights in the larger context meaning the violation of those rights universally accepted as fundamental may happen on a large scale only when groups of fanatical people indulge in such activity. The group could be a small one comprising of a few persons or it could be a large one. A large group could be of any size with no definite limit. An entire nation or race may sometimes become a group on ideological grounds and violate accepted human values by perpetrating heinous crimes against those that are actually different or considered to be different from their own ilk. Religion, ethnicity or political ideology could form the basis for such a division into ‘we and they’ that could ultimately give an excuse to the perpetrators to commit some of the worst crimes including genocide.

 Historically there are many instances of people suffering injustice or oppression coming together as a group to fight against such oppression and injustice. Revolutions such as the ones that occurred in France, Russia and China are examples. However over a period of time we see that regimes that captured power came to be controlled by the organization that spearheaded the rebellion in each case. These organizations or parties became ruthless and dictatorial and systematically eliminated all opposition by killing them off after branding them as reactionaries. The great purges in certain communist countries and the mass murders in pre-World war two in Germany are the unfortunate examples. The Polpot episode of brutal killings of a colossal number of humans in Cambodia is a further pointer. There are various other instances of genocide such as in Darfur systematically perpetrated in countries in Asia, Africa and Europe.

It is therefore foolish to expect uniformity in the fight for human rights when in some societies, honor killing of their own children who marry against their wish goes unpunished and in some others ethnic cleansing seems to escape censure.