-“Some dare not speak about human rights (HR) any longer, because the term has been prostituted by the son’a bitches that hijacked it for their own use and ‘wore it off’ ”.
-Liberty and HR are not granted to you if you hide in a corner; you have to earn them!
The options/tribulations of a generation more hidden than lost; more silenced than deaf-mute
The liberties that we miss are the shames that remain and that we do not have to live with. (G. Moyano)
1. We are here talking about potential claim holders
• that choose to live hidden behind illusions rather than open to the overwhelming truths of a harsh reality;
• that belie themselves so as to go through life without confronting their doubts;
• that, being unhappy with the situation they live-in and alienated by the oppressive hierarchy they live-under, are really more self-excluded than marginalized –letting precious time be lost.
• that live stuck due to a bad past, a difficult present and a future that eludes them;
• that have sacrificed for endless years and, today, are suffering hunger with a pension not even sufficient to buy them a pair of shoes;
• that, in short, are the result of a generalized loss of social combativity or eagerness to fight,the result of the exhaustion of credible paradigms and of expectations for the future –the latter running through all of society, or almost all of it…
2. Why?
• Because they find little in what to believe-in and to work-for for a better global future, one that has never come; the prospects for a better future fed to them are not just unreachable; they are an outright lie…become wealthy?,live in a consumers’ paradise…?
• Because they have lost all illusion, all faith and too many of the hopes and dreams emptily promised to them for centuries on end.
• Because, indoctrinated by the powerful (secular and religious), they have collectively lost critical judgment.
What the worse in all of this is is that something despicable is considered to be ‘normal’ for them.
3. Regrettably, the subliminal messages of that-which-is-considered-to-be-normal imply not considering any alteration of the established order, any rupture of the status-quo or, God forbid, engaging in a decisive struggle for HR.
4. But, at some point, these potential claim holders must become combative and rebel –basically when they can no longer continue being paralyzed by fear and cannot continue being under the spell of submission.
5. Ultimately, it is about them becoming conscious, and convincing themselves, that there is a better option and that they can overcome their fear. For that, they do not need to become anarchists or abuse the pitifully limited liberty they enjoy: Even with the physical and moral hardships they endure, they can risk a better future, even if one of unpredictable characteristics –what is there to loose!
6. In short, in the realm of HR, one must always question that that is taken ‘as a given’ when the same blatantly violates what is established in widely ratified HR covenants.
The conventional recording of history on the one side, and the reality on the other; or A critique of history’s intentionally manipulated fact-distorting ambiguities
When so many self-proclaimed messiahs have ended up being shrewd manipulators, the only thing that we have left is our liberty to choose.
7. Like a veritable grinding machine, and with all its false historical idols, conventional history has relentlessly smashed the fate and silenced the voice of the have-nots –which is OK with the promoters of the status-quo. These groups consider that a re-interpretation of history from the perspective of the have-nots (the real history), does not fit with the way they see the world, i.e., with the historic reality the-way-they-conveniently-understand-it, and much lessdoes it fit with the patriotic spirit that they purport to be defenders-of.*
*: The gap between the politico-historic discourse and reality has been forever too wide despite the fact that such a discourse should be based-on and constantly redefined by reality.
8. Franz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth are the grandchildren of an overpowering historic farce and the children of centuries, if not millennia, of poverty-spread-around-intentionally creating human beings stripped of the possibility of believing, because they have been forever told how they have to interpret and practice their liberty and their rights.
9. The latter is at the very base of why claim holders must be willing to direct their thoughts and their actions beyond the limited liberty provided by existing laws as applied by their drafters who also happen to be the ones that sentence the transgressors.** This has always been the challenge in human history: somebody decides what liberty is and how much of it befits those-that-power-represses and how much befits those-that-power-protects –including in lands that proclaim to be libertarian…***
**: Beware: It is not the same to make a decision than to carry out an action… (Henri Bergson, the French philosopher, used to say that there is an abyss between studying a map of Paris, learn the name of its streets, look at the pictures of its monuments and taking a 20 minutes walk through the city).
***: The extremes to which men in power can arrive at, when they proclaim themselves to be the shepherds of the collective destiny of society, are well known.
10. Bottom line here:It is better to burn out than to fade away. (K. Cobain as cited by Padura)
If a state or a political system does not allow its citizens to enjoy and practice their human rights, it is because that state or system is a failed state or system
-The problem with the line of argument that citizens cannot enjoy and practice their HR is that it presumes that we have to live with the consequences of tyranny; that there are no circumstances when we must do what is right, not as a strategy, but simply because it is … right. (YanisVaroufakis)
-Subjugation, by definition, denotes a failure.
11. For all members of a community, the most important value is their dignity; they should never underestimate the indeed reachable possibility of practicing and living in liberty. And this will mean that potential claim holders have to literally learn to recognize how a blind faith in the mandates supposedly conceived and implemented ‘for-their-own-good’ (…and antithetical to liberty…) can and do become a jail for what is the substance that distinguishes us as human beings, namely our intelligence and our free will. The challenge thus is not only to understand, but to interiorize the gains in liberty and in HR that living without fear brings, because one never should live subjected to humiliation; because there are values with which one is born and one ought to grow up-with to which, as the HR covenants clearly tell us, we cannot renounce no matter under how much economic and political pressures we live under.
12. Think: Liberty, dignity and HR are the highest values for us humans. Not practicing them and living by them, when it is within the realm of the possible, is something nobody should have to go through, because absolutely nobody can block us from doing so! Renouncing to them is commensurate with a sin –a veritable offense to our humanity. But everything has a price and the price of liberty, of dignity and of HR is usually high. To aim-for and attain them, (regardless of whether there is, or whether it is said there is, space given to do so), claim holders are liable to have to go through quite a bit of hardship, because there always are duty bearers that understand liberty, dignity and HR in other ways –going to the extreme of thinking that their way is the only correct way. And, given their power, duty bearers ‘decide’ how claim holders have to practice their HR the duty bearers’ way. And that is the end of liberty, of dignity and of HR, because there is nobody to tell claim holders how to enjoy their rights.
13. In a way, we are fortunate, because we live in the era of HR. But the word ‘liberty’ is also way discredited given the fact that, in the name of liberty, it is the same duty bearers who force claim holders to obey the laws that they have come up with often assuming that they are interpreting divine pronouncements.****
****: Each new generation is forced to respect these laws, but also has the responsibility to study and analyze them, because their texts must be (re)interpreted according to the spirit-of-the-times that are ever changing.
14. Bottom line, it is ultimately not only worth, but rather imperative to become a militant …in the ‘tribe’ that one has chosen consciously and freely. Never forget: Little is much if HR are in it.
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
cschuftan@phmovement.org