HUMAN RIGHTS-OUTLOOK 2000: Chastening the Abusers

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

MEXICO CITY, Nov 23 1999 (IPS) - The last decade of this millenium has provided human rights activists moments to rejoice in. It began with the release of Nelson Mandela from prison and has been drawing to an end with the birth of a new nation, East Timor.

The symbolism of Mandela’s freedom was its signal of the end for the racist apartheid policy perpetuated by South Africa’s minority white rulers. And East Timor’s struggle from Indonesian domination signified a re-affirmation of the universal right of self-determination.

In addition, activists have welcomed the growing universal support to establish regional human rights bodies, the admission by multinational corporations that human rights concerns matter and a public commitment by an increasing number of governments that the use of child soldiers should end.

Then there was that judgement delivered last month in Britain: to extradite former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

The magistrate who made the ruling in early October declared that Pinochet enjoyed no immunity for “a course of conduct amounting to torture and conspiracy to torture” and would have to face the charges brought against him in Spain by a judge.

“This historic decision brings us one step closer to the day when Pinochet will have to answer in a court of law for his terrible crimes”, said Reed Brody, advocacy director of the US- based Human Rights Watch (HRW).

In his view, Pinochet’s prosecution had awakened groups of victims around the world to explore means of using foreign courts to bring their tormentors to justice. “The world is becoming a smaller place for people who commit atrocities”, he observed.

Pinochet, who once boasted during his rule that “Not a leaf moves in Chile unless I, Augusto Pinochet, says so,” becomes the first ruler to face extradition for human rights crimes. A Commission on Truth and Reconciliation in Chile has established that there were 3197 violations of human rights — between assassinations, summary executions and forced disappearances — linked to Pinochet’s regime.

For Deepika Udagama, who teaches human rights law at the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, the judgement affirms the achievement of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

“It is the result of human rights consciousness that the UDHR brought about,” she adds.

The release of Mandela, in her view, was the outcome of similar circumstances, too. The global campaigns for his release underscored an idea fostered by that document — how a State treats its people was not a domestic matter, as South Africa maintained during the Apartheid years.

In her estimation, the UDHR was the first attempt by the global community to commonly articulate a form of universal rights for individuals that States were bound to respect and protect. (more-2-E)