Let’s not look for any definition of human rights. Why? Well, we ensure rights only when we recognise ourselves as human. When I look around or switch on the TV, and listen to the statements of our rights champions, I only see the animalistic desire of humans to reign.
When we look at each other, we don’t seem to be looking at human beings. I sometimes feel pity for the United Nations, which seems to have toiled since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 with little success. 76 years later, gross, systemic abuses continue to be perpetrated at an alarming rate across the world.
It’s been three years since the Syrians started leaving their country. A total of 3.1 million humans have become homeless, and they are regarded as unwelcome aliens in another country.
Let’s not mention the number of dead souls in their own land. The UN itself said there were roughly 10 million people worldwide who lacked a nationality and the human rights protections that go with it. If you think of Rohingyas in Myanmar, you can tell the extent to which humanity is disregarded.
We all condemned a section of light-skinned humans for their slave trade once; keeping other humans caged in slavery is perhaps the worst kind of rights violation that ever existed in the world. We may think that we, as a civilisation, have overcome that cursed practice. Have we really? Then why are an estimated 30 million humans still confined to modern-day slavery?
Slavery still exists through laws and their practices. If you’ve seen the state of Bangladeshi migrant workers in various Middle Eastern countries, you’d think twice before you can call their employers “humans.” Have you seen how Qatar forced all its migrant workers to surrender their passports to their employers, the migrants involved in laying the groundwork for the 2022 World Cup?
It’s frustrating to see how some governments, claiming to be champions of human rights, are preparing annual rights indexes. The same governments, reportedly, are engaged in torture and arbitrary detention in Guantanamo Bay, police brutality, and creating groups such as the Islamic State. They are even sermonising about upholding rights in their regions.
This year, between May and October, militants of IS have massacred soldiers and residents in Iraq and Syria; they were seen beheading humans who belonged to minority tribes, non-Sunni Muslim sects, and other religions. In April, 276 Nigerian girls were kidnapped from a school by Boko Haram militants.
The number of attacks led by terrorist groups and the communal or political actors in that country has risen rapidly since 2010. This group killed at least 5,100 Nigerians in 2014, and the advocates of rights don’t seem to take notice. They seem busy manufacturing weapons of war.
A recent US Senate report said the CIA carried out “brutal” interrogations of al-Qaeda suspects in the years following the 9/11 attacks on the US. It used sexual threats, waterboarding, and other brutal methods to interrogate suspects of terrorism, and none of those methods were very effective in yielding critical information. There’s not a single day that goes by without reports of loathsome human rights abuses everywhere. We’ve also seen beheadings in Mexico, and we’ve seen racism and xenophobia in Europe.
Even if, as we understand, rights belong to us by virtue of being humans, we have to accept all these atrocities as realities of life. We believe that God causes wars and creates drug lords in order to punish humans who have sinned, and we have nothing else but to pray for our salvation.
What would happen if we weren’t born as humans? We’d get hold of our prey and eat, mate and produce children, abide by the laws of nature and then, when it’s time, die with no thought of the future. Only humans can anticipate the future and plan accordingly for making it better.
Perhaps it’s time for us to find out a new definition for the word “human,” and perhaps only then we might be able to understand our rights. If we have a look at the half-fed deprived people around the world, as a fellow human, there’s not much we can do, except feel like helpless humans.
Every day, almost 25,000 people starve to death, that too after prolonged suffering. Dying of starvation is the worst kind of death in the modern age of science and food production.
Well, the UN does some good on December 10 every year; it reminds us our true existence in the face of inhumane actions. But I don’t understand why we observe human rights day. It only serves to pain me, without giving me even a shred of solace.
