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December 10 -- International Human Rights Day Respect for Human Rights -- The Starting Point of Any Society Fit to Call Itself DemocraticCanada
claims to be a model of equality and respect for
human rights despite
its increasingly blatant abuse of human
beings within the country
and internationally. Its practices are not only
harmful to those
directly impacted but reflect on the conscience
of society as a whole.
Take for example, the treatment of workers
during the pandemic, as
well as seniors in long-term care homes who are
treated as dispensable,
of homeless people where the police can raid
their tents and makeshift
shelters and burn their possessions with
impunity as took place in
Montreal this week, after the same thing was
condemned in Vancouver
this summer. They show the real blackheartedness
of the rulers who make
excuses for the current state of affairs and
disassociate themselves by
claiming it is another department which does not
concern them.
Statements about providing all First Nations
reserves with potable
water and safe housing are empty and
non-judiciable. These rights are
not recognized. Internationally, the enforcement
of U.S. imperialist
sanctions regimes are acts of war which lead to
devastating
humanitarian consequences for which the
government takes no
responsibility whatsoever.
On the contrary, its approach to everything it does is to pay the rich. It considers all those who fall victim to such a policy as less than human. Once this is the case, to speak of equality rights, minority rights, Indigenous rights, women's rights, the rights of the child or of the elderly or citizenship rights, privacy rights and all other rights, is just noise. No section of the population can be treated equally when discrimination by virtue of everyone's concrete reality is the rule. Most importantly, the right to conscience, recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is trampled in the mud as a matter of course when human beings are not put at the centre of a government's consideration. Ruling elites in the service of narrow private interests do all kinds of criminal things in the name of rights: "national unity," freedom of political opinion, the right of nations to exercise their sovereignty, peace, democracy, human rights. All kinds of balderdash is spoken about in order to turn truth on its head. This is an integral part of the crisis of credibility and legitimacy the so-called democratic governments are mired in. The neo-liberal anti-social offensive has taken the society in a direction opposite to that required, one which recognizes the human rights of all people. Its premise is that, as a norm, only the claims of the tiny financial elite have any legitimacy. Without addressing this problem, the celebration of International Human Rights Day will not contribute to the cause of human beings, let alone their rights.
This article was published in   Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca |
As the
anti-social offensive continues unabated, a
great deal of legislation is passed which
violates basic human rights. One does not hear
the government raising a hue and cry about this
-- it does not even recognize it.
