On Discussing and Promoting Human Rights

Much of the confusion in the current discussion on human rights and politics comes from the tendency to blur all the aims and values attached to human rights into one absolute, non-analytical package. This lack of clarity serves neither academic objectivity nor improving the human rights situation.

by Taru Salmenkari, University of Helsinki

Courtesy: Nordic Newsletter of Asian Studies/1997 no. 3
http://130.225.203.37/articles/issues/1997/3/PromotingHR/

Western thought (although not exclusively Western) shows a tendency to catagorise as absolute rather than observe the relativity of values. Perhaps for this reason one ideology or theory often becomes the standard of correctness. This ideology dominates politics and the media and is reflected in the academic world as well. In the 1980s and 1990s, the prevailing ideology has been liberalism with its emphasis on market economy, electoral democracy and human rights. When the ideologies and values they contain become "politically correct" ones, the rationality of these ideas is beyond discussion and any other ideology or set of values is rejected as non-rational, non-ethical, or otherwise incorrect. As a result, "politically correct" concepts become more and more vague and are used for various aims other than the issue itself. At the moment, one term in danger of developing into "political correctness" is the concept of human rights. This "political correctness" has even crept into the recent human rights discussion in NIASnytt, in which "political correctness" has been used as a reason to question human rights themselves or to make a moral judgement over other participants. In other words, the difference between human rights themselves and their political use is forgotten.

Dominant ideologies tend to serve their values in an unquestioned package. The connection between democracy and human rights, for example, is by no means beyond doubt. Democracy itself is not based on a conception of human rights but rather of citizen rights. In practice, full citizen rights are limited not only according to nationality but also by age. Formerly, the West had efficient democratic systems with an even more limited definition of citizenship with exclusions on grounds of race, gender and amount of property. Whilst recognition of some political rights which can be understood as human rights (e.g. freedom of speech and association) may be a precondition for a political civil society - and thus democracy - to work, a strong civil society does not necessarily lead to a democratic system. Even in democracies, rights of participation in a civil society need not be based on a recognition of one's humanity but rather of one's citizenship. In fact, some human rights legislation, e.g. rights of association and demonstration, discriminate against non-citizens in some Western democracies. Neither does democracy necessarily lead to a respect for human rights. There is sufficient proof from history to show that it is possible to democratically violate the human rights of a minority (the criminalization of homo-sexuality is just one recent Western example of this) or even to deprive a majority of many of their political rights (the most recent Western example of which is Switzerland).

Vagueness of contents is another typical characteristic of a dominant ideology or value. As long as the contents of human rights are not very clear, even in the West, it is hypocritical to claim that they should be universal values. Whether we should understand them simply as a freedom to act in society or as a concrete provision of a means for this kind of action in society is debatable. Which particular rights are human rights is another pertinent question. They are understood differently among the Western countries in issues of, for example, the death penalty or the availability of abortion (logically speaking, if human rights claims are made over China because of its population policy, the human right in question must be the right to decide about one's own reproduction, which surely makes the availability of abortion and contraceptives a human rights question). Which violations are human rights violations, is yet another question. Amnesty International has constantly redefined its stand on this question, for example by recognizing that the state is not the only entity able to violate human rights. At present, the main arenas of using human rights as a catchphrase and a standard are in the fields of the media and politics. In promoting human rights, these arenas often combine mixed and even contradictory aims. For the media, human rights violations sell newspapers and attract audiences. In politics, human rights issues involve personal values, pleasing one's own constituency as well as furthering the political and economic interests of one's own state. This contradictory combination is often harmful to the progress of human rights. Discussion in academic circles tends to be more balanced, however, it is still not free from prejudices and one-sidedness. Scholars of human rights issues should be careful not to let their own opinions distort their studies, as should scholars of all convictions.

In the situation outlined above, the main issue, namely promoting human rights, suffers. Take an example in China. During my own three-year stay in China (1993-1996), it seemed that pressure from the Western human rights brigade caused the attitudes towards human rights among the populace to grow increasingly hostile. Western countries are seldom aware of the effective channels the Chinese government has to disseminate to the people its own motives and aims. Western human rights policy is constantly commented on in the media, and Chinese citizens can hardly be unaware that this question they feel to be of no great or primary importance is being used in international arenas against their fatherland in order to curb its political and economic power. The worst kind of advertisement for human rights was the denial of the hosting of the Olympic Games of the year 2000 to Beijing after the Chinese media had made it clear for weeks that the main obstacle would be Western human rights claims on China. Nowadays it is common for a foreigner to meet ordinary Chinese people who want to correct Westerners' conception of China and report that the Chinese are happy under their present government and economic progress and content that the system is improving in the right direction.

One of the two most common views about human rights I heard in China was a denial of the violations altogether. Even former activists in democracy movements stated that after the Cultural Revolution human rights violations have been non-existent or negligible in scale. Another common view was that until all the Chinese enjoy decent living standards and education, there is no point in stressing human rights yet.

Both of these types of answers reveal human rights concepts and values among the common people in China which differ from the West, or even a misunderstanding of the Western human rights issue.

Obviously, the Chinese human rights concept does not refer so much to freedom from repression or even state interference (I call this a negative programme), as was the case in classical liberalism, but rather it means the right to something (a positive programme). This understanding is evident not just in the above types of comments by common people but also in mainland Chinese academic studies about human rights, which concentrate on the rights of women, the elderly, ethnic minorities etc. Seemingly, human rights are viewed as a means to a fuller self-realization of one's humanity, not in terms of a negative programme but rather a positive one.

The fact that only the Western culture has produced the concept of human rights appears to be due not just to our individualist tradition but also to our legal tradition, which turns a right into a legal concept. Many other societies, however, like China, have developed their own understanding of rights. According to Confucianism, people were entitled to the means of subsistence and moral education. Although the Chinese people could not sue the state if it violated these rights, they had a moral justification to rebel if their basic needs were not guaranteed. Communist ideology later developed this tradition further by adding the concept of human equality to the right to satisfy one's basic needs. Asian and/or Chinese values of humanity and human rights, therefore, although useful as a meaningful generalization, should not be used as a dichotomy between the East and the West or as an absolute definition of Asian values. After all, values, by definition, are something not shared by everyone. The fact that the concept of human rights originated in one culture does not necessarily mean that the countries within that culture enforce human rights any better than other countries, although the existence of terminology and awareness of the problem may diminish violations. All countries violate human rights to some extent (no country is free from e.g. cases of police violence), although there are differences in how systematic these violations are and how likely they will be investigated and judged. There is nothing cultural in a human rights violation itself. Often the most efficient methods of improving the human rights situation are non-cultural: making violations public and creating juridical systems to investigate and judge them. Reasons for a human rights violation could involve a cultural factor, such as the attitudes inherited from traditional Chinese law and practice, which demanded a confession and recommended torture as a method of gaining it. These cultural factors can be changed over a long period of time by education and example.

In terms of international law, unless a state wilfully accepts the mediation of an international court on a particular issue, questions of human rights violations lack proper jurisdiction. In practice, violating the sovereignty of a state in human rights problems less severe than "crimes against humanity" (e.g. genocide) poses a problem since all countries violate human rights to a greater or lesser extent. Therefore, powerful countries will always be able to use human rights as a pretext for imposing their will on smaller states and the international promotion of human rights will always involve subjective political factors. Take China for example, which is obviously paying for being a socialist country in the international political arena and in the Western media, although its human rights situation is no blacker than that of the other populous Third World countries in the area, namely India and Indonesia, and is constantly improving (a fact that can be objectively measured, for example, in terms of better human rights legislation and jurisdiction).

The academic world can best contribute to both the general discussion on human rights and politics as well as the human rights situation itself by clarifying the contents of the human rights concept and the values it involves. This does not mean defining human rights tightly, after all, values are changing and shaped by the situations they are applied to. Rather, the contents of human rights and their values should be constantly discussed and developed, so that this concept will have a meaningful and practicable content and, if one prefers, the theoretical stability to convince sceptics of its importance. The objectivity this process requires can only be achieved with a strict awareness and recognition of one's own values. Much of the confusion in the current discussion on human rights and politics arises from hiding idealistic aims under the guise of objectivity, or concrete gain under an idealist call for human rights. This kind of confusion reduces the clarity of the human rights concept and thus harms both scholarly objectivity and work for human rights. As a simple solution in the academic discussion, I suggest that all scholars of human rights issues recognize their practical and theoretical aims. Different aims require different approaches. If one studies theory, differing concepts of human rights and the cultural background which produces these concepts is a good area to study. But, if one aims at improving human rights, this kind of study is more likely to lead to a contrasting of concepts and finding faults with a non-Western set. Declaring one party to be guilty does not change the situation, it is more likely to make that party unwilling to accept further dialogue. Therefore, existing attitudes and ways of changing them are fruitful questions to study for a scholar studying human rights with the practical aim of improving them -in our own or any other culture. Understanding, combined with practical study of values as well as legislation, rather than contrasting and condemning, is a proper approach for a scholar of this kind, even when one does not approve of the human rights violations themselves.

History seems to prove that the concept of human rights is by no means "human" in the sense of being innate. Rather, members of all societies seem to have had some claim to their society (i.e. rights), if only for social order and some sort of legal protection, although endless histories of war, slavery and repression of minorities seem to suggest that this concept of rights was not extended to non-members, whether inside or outside a given society (enemies, slaves, ethnic or religious minorities). This means that human rights are questions of values and, in order to convince others to share these values, the contents of the human rights concept, like all values, must be constantly discussed and developed. The fact that there seems to be no innate concept of human rights does not make promoting human rights less valuable. On the contrary, just because it is not one of our basic instincts, working towards a world of less repression and more equality is an even more admirable aim.