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The Paris-based Movement
for Peace and Against Terrorism (Le
Mouvement pour la Paix et Contre le Terrorisme) convened an
international conference on a very chilly Sunday in November 2008.
The conference theme, "Terrorism versus the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights" was timed to coincide with the 60th Anniversary of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (The official brochure in
English for the conference is
here.)
For a report (in French)
on the conference,
click to
go to the MPCT
website.
Arnold Roth, Keren
Malki's honorary chair-person, was an invited speaker. We reproduce
below the text of his speech which was delivered in English. (A
French translation is
here.)
On Terrorism and
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Arnold Roth –
The Malki Foundation
 Thank
you for the invitation to come here. Allow me again to apologize for
my inexcusable ignorance of the French language. My sincere
apologies also to the unforgettable M Beautand, my teacher in 9th
and 10th grades, who wasted two years of her teaching career in the
1960's trying to turn uncultured students like me into speakers of
your language.
As our presence
here in this place attests, today's subject, Terrorism Versus
Human Rights, is surely important enough for us to leave our
warm homes and come to this public place and engage in discussion.
The subject has
the greatest significance for every person who cares about
democracy, humanity and freedom.
For some of us,
it is more than simply important. The tension between terrorism on
one hand and human rights on the other speaks directly to our
personal experience.
For me, the
public discussion of this important theme has personal ramifications
which compel me to raise my voice. I feel the need to do this even
in places where there is little desire for a voice like mine to be
heard.
In preparing
myself for this conference, I reviewed legal documents, political
essays, speeches, declarations, blogs and academic journal articles.
From these, it can be seen that, sixty years after its creation, the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is under sustained
attack and from several quarters.
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The secular
and universal nature of the Declaration is being undermined and
delegitimized. For this we must lay the credit at the feet of
the largest club of nations in the world, the Organization of
the Islamic Conference.
-
The UN Human
Rights Council, the very organization charged with carrying the
Declaration's message into practical application is in fact
smothering it. It does this by failing to adhere to the first,
and arguably the paramount, principle embodied in the
declaration. I shall return to this a little later.
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The dark
hand of global terrorism, along with the powerful political,
ideological and religious forces that sustain it, are
endeavoring to strangle it to death. And they are winning.
In my personal
life, each of these two trends – (one) the principles of the UDHR
and (two) the forces that may bring its life to an end, has played
important roles.
I was born in
Australia to Jewish parents who arrived as refugees from Germany
after they and their families were swallowed up in the extermination
which wiped out one-thousand years of Jewish life in Poland, the
country of their birth. Surviving the Nazi death camps, my parents
began rebuilding their lives in friendly, welcoming Australia at
almost exactly the same time as the UDHR was adopted.
 Australia
was a place which, for all its blessings, had scarcely begun to
comprehend the meaning of human rights. In the decade or two after
UDHR, the land of my birth abandoned an immigration policy
that, while unofficial, was universally known as the "White
Australia Policy" – everything you need to know about it is in the
name.
I was a high
school student when Australian law changed for the first time to
include its native population, the Australian Aborigines, in the
national census. Their right to vote in elections was granted only
in 1948, the same year as the UDHR was born.
The evolution of
sensitivity to human rights in Australia took place even while
religion and politics remained, for the most part, subjects rarely
discussed in public. Australian society then and now treats these as
matters of personal choice and conscience. The notion that the state
or a non-state entity might impose them on a reluctant population
was foreign and unacceptable.
The adoption by
the General Assembly of the United Nations of the UDHR on December
10, 1948 occurred, as I have mentioned, in the shadow of events that
dramatically marked world history and also the chronicle of my own
family.
Though
traditions and religious background are different, and cultural
backgrounds and expressions are varied, human nature is universal
and the same. The UDHR came to affirm this universal human identity.
I was raised in
a system characterized by gentle tolerance, and a respect for the
humanity and individuality of the other... though as I have said -
not for every other. Fundamental human rights needed to be
won. And they were. The laws and sensitivities engendered by UDHR
undoubtedly played and play a role in that process.
Beginning in
1981, soon after the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran
which emerged from the rubble of the empire of the Shah, that
country's representatives began a systematic and fundamental attack
on UDHR. They did this, and continue to do it, in the United Nations
and in many other gatherings.
 The
Iranian ambassador to the UN put his country's agenda on the
official record in addressing the General Assembly in 1984.
The
concept of human rights is not limited to the UDHR. Man's divine
origin and human dignity cannot be reduced to a series of
secular norms. Certain concepts (therefore) contained in the
UDHR need to be revised… Iran respects no power or authority but
that of A-mighty G-d and no legal tradition other than Islamic
law. UDHR represents a secular understanding of the
Judeo-Christian tradition. This does not accord with the values
recognized by the Islamic Republic of Iran… Iran therefore would
not hesitate to violate its provisions since it has to choose
between violating divine law (on one hand) and violating secular
conventions (on the other).
This
straight-forward analysis leaves little room for doubting where UDHR
fits in the hierarchy of values of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and
of those who hold to its views.
A little later,
the OIC's Conference of Foreign Ministers then gave legal and
practical effect to the Iranian rejection of UDHR adopting the Cairo
Declaration of Human Rights in Islam
in August
1990. Two of its articles are of astonishing power and significance:
Article
24: All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration
are subject to Islamic Shariah.
Article
25: Islamic Shariah is the only source of reference for the
explanation or clarification of any of the articles in this
Declaration.
The Cairo
Declaration therefore claims supremacy over UDHR based on divine
revelation.
Its sponsors,
the OIC, succeeded in persuading the leadership of the Human Rights
Council that "only religious scholars are allowed to discuss matters
of faith." In effect the issue is, by consent, off limits to
discussion. This is utterly extraordinary.
---
Shortly before
he was murdered in Baghdad in 2003, Sergio Vieira de Mello, the
Special Representative of the UN Secretary General to Iraq, put it
this way,
"Human rights
law has sought to strike a fair balance between legitimate national
security concerns and the protection of fundamental freedom. It
acknowledges that states must address serious and genuine security
concerns such as terrorism."
The notion of
human rights norms has been tested and tempered by the surge of
terrorist violence in the past decade, and by the ongoing debate in
civil societies throughout the world on how to deal with terrorism
and with terrorists - with their human rights, and with the human
rights of people suspected of taking part.
---
My wife and I
brought our family to the historical Jewish homeland, Israel, in
1988. This was the fulfillment on not only our own dreams but those
of our parents and grand-parents.
In Jerusalem, in
2001, our oldest daughter Malki, who was then 15 years old, was
murdered along with many other Israelis in a massacre in the centre
of Jerusalem.
A few years
later, also in Israel, I met John Dugard – a man whose job title at
the time is a sad reflection of the fundamentally flawed way human
rights are viewed in certain international circles. He was called
the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian
Territories. Prof. Dugard confessed to me, at the end of an
hour-long private meeting in my office in Jerusalem, that until that
day he had never met a victim of Palestinian Arab terrorism.
I have not
managed to understand how such an individual can be so influential
at the highest levels of international discourse, and at the same
time be so poorly informed - and so highly partisan.
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Sometimes,
rarely, the unfairness and distortions that characterize the global
community's work in human rights produce a change. Such a change
happened when the UN's Commission on Human Rights was replaced in
2006 by the Human Rights Council. This came after years of
complaints about some of the absurd aspects of the Council's work –
too many to recount here. But since its replacement by the HRC, the
same infuriating scenarios repeat themselves:
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By
January 2008, barely two years into its life, HRC had already
managed to condemn one country - Israel - eight separate times.
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Some sixty percent of its decisions have been directed at
criticizing one country - Israel.
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On
the other hand, the monumental and highly publicized abuses of
human rights in such places as Zimbabwe, China, Saudi Arabia
have produced zero response.
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Cuba
and Belarus were on a special HRC list of countries under close
investigation for human rights infringements. But after a recent
vote, their names were removed from that list.
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Both Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-Moon felt it necessary to point out
to the members and leadership of HRC that there exist certain
human rights problems in the world in which Israel is not the
major player. But they have not succeeded, and their message has
been ignored.
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The tension
between human rights and security in a time of rampant terror seems
to be best appreciated in states where terrorism has already made an
impact.
In 2005, the
British Home Secretary announced tough new measures after London's
underground trains were blown up by British-born terrorists, acting
in the name of their pathological definition of Islam. He said this:
"The human
rights of the people who were blown up on the tube on 7th July
(2005) are, to be quite frank, more important than the human rights
of the people who committed those acts."
The Home
Secretary's statement brings me to certain insights about this issue
which stem from my being the father of a child who was murdered by
religious terrorists.
I mentioned
earlier the first of the rights honoured and protected by the UDHR.
The first of these, and perhaps the most important of them, is: "Everyone
has the right to life, liberty and security of person"
(Article 3).
No right is more
consequential than the right to live, the right to be allowed to
stay alive. It is this right that was stolen from my fifteen
year-old daughter, and from the many people who loved her.
The abuse of
this paramount right is a deep wrong, the deepest of all wrongs.
Here is why:
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When a person is imprisoned unjustly, there is a remedy: Release
the person. Restore the right that has been taken away. When a
person is deprived of the right to live, then neither this right
nor any other can ever be restored.
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A
victim deprived of the right to live can not be compensated. No
compensation exists. None can be imagined. But compensation for
forms of abuse can be created, and are meaningful.
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Losing the right to live means the loss of every other right.
Prof. Harry
Reicher, professor of international law at University of
Pennsylvania, and Scholar-in-Residence at Touro Law Center in New
York is a man who is personally engaged in human rights-based
litigation and other legal actions that respect and defend human
rights. He has written this:
If, in the
context of measures aimed at preventing repetitions, strains are
placed on individual rights, the unique character of the right to
live suggests an a priori rationale for erring on the side of
caution. To do so is not, in any sense, to trivialize other human
rights. It is rather to underscore the ultimate nature of the right
to live… Although it does not formally enunciate a hierarchy of
rights, or spell out any mechanism for resolving potential tensions
between different rights, the fact that the right to live is the
first of the specific rights listed in the document suggests a
certain primacy… It is a right that is qualitatively different from
all other rights…
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Though it is not
so fashionable to say so, I believe there is such a thing as the war
against terrorism – and it is not going well. In fact, it is going
very badly for everyone except the terrorists.
Its victims are
not only the children blown up in restaurants, and their parents,
but also civil society in every country. For this reason and others,
we owe a deep debt of gratitude to Huguette Chomski Magnis and her
MPCT
colleagues for pushing this discussion and these matters onto the
agenda of thoughtful people in a constructive and effective way.
[Note: The text of Arnold
Roth's speech translated into French is
here.]
Speech delivered to an
international conference arranged by MPCT (Mouvement Pour la
Paix et Contre le Terrorisme) in Paris, 23-Nov-08
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