The essence of human rights law is establishing minimum protection of human rights. It leaves States the discretion to determine the maximum protection of human rights law. Example: International convention such as ICCPR usually sets a standard for arrest procedure or conviction. ICCPR says you may prosecute someone if he is arrested legally, he is granted the right to lawyer, and he may appeal the decision. These are minimum threshold. If State members of ICCPR wish to regulate that, in addition to the prerequisite above, the person prosecuted must also be given the right to meet his family and the right to recreation, this is entirely up to the State.
The grand debate here is what line should we draw here? Li-ann thio and many ASEAN legal scholars say that human rights law tend to create Universalist pretention. Some people say international human rights laws are the concept of irreducible core, where certain rights are just so fundamental that all human must view it the same way.
I AM OUTRAGED!!! By the conviction of Delara Derabi who is 17 years old. The death sentence was carried out by hunging at 22 of her age. The problems here are: (1) Iran prosecuted her without informing her lawyer, while probation period is still effective. (2) there was a phone conversation between Delara and her parents where she cried for help since the jail officers are ready to prosecute her. This phone conversation was cut off and the officer told Delara parents through the phone “We are going to prosecute her and nothing you can do about it.” This insinuates a great power of the officer, probably granted by some higher officials in the country. (3) No NEW Evidence may be presented with regards to claiming that the death penalty conviction is unjustifiable. The lawyer of Delara has submitted before the Court that new evidences (crucial one) are being prepared for Delara judicial review to the death penalty. (4) What the FUCK WITH IRAN. Subsequent to the execution of Delara, they act like they have sovereignty to do that. There is no shame or guilt. They dont give a damn to Amnesty International note.
I am not surprised and encourage Security Council to release Resolution is to authorize economic embargo to Iran, Sequestration of nuclear program, discrimination on trade before WTO, and bring all the relevant parties before International Criminal Court. This crime is not merely 2-4 jail officers’ doing, it involves systematic chain of command from the high rank officials. Iran is acting like children, the more you ask them not to, and the more they will do it. After doing it, they will look at you and ask so what?
ASEAN Scholars certainly would do that! Wouldn't look good to their tyrannical leaders for them say that "Asian" values is inferior to "Western" values, especially pesky ones like human rights. Why, that would have taken away the inalienable rights of Soeharto to order his army goons to terrorise whole provinces when they dare ask for justice, or the inalienable rights of the Myanmar military junta to continue to attempt genocide on Burmese ethnic minorities. "Asians" like us of course believe more in filial duty, harmony in society, and ostentatious religion in the public sphere! Human rights is for those hedonists fighting for minimum wage, civil rights, and the right to be a decent living human being. My, how unspeakably selfish of those activists.
ReplyDeleteOn a more serious vein, I think that morality has a basis that is lost when the discussion is held entirely on an abstract plane. The relativist position often work through from particularistic evolution of a society to the moral notions of those society, and then argue from this that morality is entirely social construction. This is not entirely false, and certainly it is very instructive to study the history of ideas. However, there are two problems of putting a society in a vacuum even in historical analysis. The first is that societies which do not regard human rights as vital are generally undemocratic and stratified to the extreme. The lack of democracy means that the very cultural developments that forms our moral notions necessarily are elite voices and elite power, created and developed for the maintenance of dominance in a particular society. Therefore, it is intellectually dishonest to claim the relativist position that this is a society's idea of morality. The elite, dominant morality is quite certainly only representative of their own interests, not of the myriad actors in the society. It should never be taken as such.
The second problem is that history is showing that societies with abhorrent moralities either reform or die. Societies who sacrifice their best warriors on the altar to please a bloodthirsty Sun God loses, quite simply because a good warrior from the enemy tribe is compelled to fight as hard as possible and that the society would not be able to employ dead people. Societies who condone slavery have to maintain their subhumanity or else be internally inconsistent. But servile subhumans are not optimally contributive to the economy, hence why societies eventually abandon slavery when the benefits of education for all becomes clear. Authoritarian societies might fantasise that theirs are supremely ordered society, but eventually they grow up and understand that the idiocy of stifled creativity holds the society back. The point is that there is a way to empirically measure moral systems, and that a society which combines both a strong respect for human rights and a strong sense of civic pride usually is the empirically most well-off (not just in a material sense of course).
That is, I believe, a reason to accept that there are universal values, that societies that do not accept these values are wrongheaded, and that all alternatives to a respecful regime towards human rights are either suboptimal or griveously wrong.
I guess a more interesting question is whether we should spend more resources (time, fund, attention,etc) for developing a better system or better human resources. You see i believe, in utopia sense, that whatever the system is, be it authoritarian, democracy or monarchy, if you have individuals with integrity running a nation, it must result in good governance and satisfactory statehood life. On the end of other spectrum, a utopian view also sees that developing a good system can curb the ramifications of immoral individuals. A system is also capable of acting as social engineering tool. Now, how do we draw the line?40-60 to system and individuals?
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