International Human Rights Day

The Biggest Violators of Human Rights Shout Loudest About Human Rights Violations

– Pauline Easton –

On December 10, 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. December 10 is observed as International Human Rights Day to mark this occasion.

After the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted, and even during its drafting and the adoption process, the Anglo-American imperialist forces launched the Cold War, based on the lie that the "West" is the "defender" of human rights, and that socialism and communism are not. It was a patent falsity, but it has obviously served as the backdrop for many of the crimes committed against the peoples fighting for national and social liberation since World War II. Not only did the Anglo-American imperialists refuse to de-nazify the zones under their control but they actually protected the Nazis, gave them safe haven and positions of influence and authority. At the same time they persecuted the communists, slaughtering them en masse as they did in Indonesia or keeping them in concentration camps for 40 years as they did in Greece and south Korea, while carrying out witch hunts, coups d'état and wars of aggression in the name of the containment of communism. They established NATO as an aggressive U.S. imperialist-led war alliance and its North Atlantic Council to make sure that only systems to their liking were permitted in Europe, based on definitions of rights and types of government which they themselves approved and imposed.

Anti-communism and the defeat of the Soviet Union and countries of the former people's democracies, not defence of democracy and human rights, was their motivation and the most heinous crimes were justified on this basis.

The peoples of the world do not accept that conclusions can be reached about whether human rights are being violated in this or that country based on the self-serving propaganda of warmongering forces. A serious study of the economic, political and social system of a country will clearly expose what is going on there. Serious study and investigation of social systems is not the desire of the U.S. imperialists and their allies, including Canada, who float "human rights" pretexts and organizations for their own purposes. For them, truth is a matter of creating an outlook which permits them to carry out their neo-liberal anti-social nation-wrecking agenda with impunity. They use the pretext of championing human rights in whatever manner suits their particular pursuit of the moment. If truth has to be bent and twisted to its opposite, so be it, if this is what serves their interests. The question of human rights is used by the Anglo-American imperialists as a political tool, a weapon to justify aggression and intervention against peoples and countries hostile to their interests.

Their accusations against others of violating human rights have proven to be well-orchestrated campaigns to divert attention from what the U.S. imperialists and the "West" have been doing at any particular time. At the time the Universal Declaration was adopted, this expressed itself in the clash between the countries that comprised the socialist camp and those that comprised the capitalist camp. The socialist countries fought against permitting rights to be treated as an abstraction while there was no obligation to put in place the economic and social conditions required for their realization. 

According to the U.S. imperialist mantra, communism is based on the violation of human rights and for this reason is to be overthrown. According to this logic, the overthrow of communism would thus prove the superiority of the U.S. democracy and its defence of human rights. 

To this day they continue to erect monuments to condemn the alleged crimes of the communists while the crimes the U.S. imperialists and their allies, including Canada, have carried out in the name of freedom, democracy and human rights are to be forgotten. But history has its own cunning. Reality exists. Human beings not only exist but they strive to humanize the social and natural environment as a matter of their being human and this is what settles scores with the old conscience of society.

Since the collapse of the former Soviet Union and people's democracies, when the period of flow of revolution ended and revolution went into retreat and U.S. imperialism began subverting the entire world in order to create a unipolar world under its dictate, crimes against humanity committed in the name of human rights are unprecedented, even in comparison to the crimes committed during World War II. It is this drive of the imperialists against the peoples of the world that is behind the most flagrant violations of human rights everywhere, including in the U.S. and the "West" as we see on the news every day.

The developments in the United States, said to be the greatest champion of human rights, expose in stark detail the overall clash between authority and condition. Increasingly, narrow private interests usurp authority to carry out a desperate anti-people agenda. The expansion of the rule of the executive branch of government at all levels means broad wrecking in the name of "rules-based" actions where they make the rules as they go along and force others to submit or face the consequences of the use of force against them. All of this is done in the name of defending democracy, freedom and human rights against authoritarian regimes. No matter what crimes they commit, all of it is done in the name of human rights, opposing corruption and fraud, defending the national interest and other pretexts.

Now, even domestically, the peoples can see the extent to which the U.S., Canada, Britain and countries which form part of their blocs are using totalitarian methods and police powers to privatize all public services and use the state treasury to pay the rich to retool and build the infrastructure they require in this digital age in which artificial intelligence has transformed technology, making much of what has hitherto existed obsolete. In the course of these developments human beings have become things which are disposable, but still the governments of the U.S., Canada, Britain and France and countries with which they form cartels and coalitions claim to champion human rights.

The fundamental human right they violate most is the right to conscience. Representatives of the imperialist powers at the UN Human Rights Commission make hollow statements to divert attention from this reality and seek to render all opposition hopeless. Their preferred method is to create straw men and red herrings in order to push their interests, but if this fails, they justify wars of destruction, colour revolutions and coups d'état while accusing others of human rights violations and atrocities which they themselves pay para-military and reorganized Nazi squads to commit.

All of it shows that the spearhead of the struggle for human rights today is the affirmation of the right of all human beings to be, while the imperialist powers and all those who have usurped power by force are threatening them with extinction. This, in turn, means that the affirmation of human rights today requires the affirmation of the right to conscience, which is what participating in making the decisions that affect the lives of human beings and their social and natural environment, implementing these decisions and rendering accounts for the result is all about.


This article was published in
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Volume 52 Number 57 - December 10, 2022

Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmld2022/Articles/D520571.HTM


    

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