generalspeaking

Issues of Relativity

The African Union and the Arab League stand together, bravely fending off accusations from Western nations that collectively their status as human-rights-defending nations offering freedoms and stability and a forward-looking economic future for their people is found wanting. The attention of the world seems to turn toward countries of Africa and the Middle East disproportionately, representative of national governing failures. Where tyrants and autocrats, theocracies and kingdoms routinely fail the basic human needs of their people.

From Rwanda to Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe to Sudan, Somalia to Central African Republic. From Syria to Iran, Lebanon to Saudi Arabia, where corruption and terror take their toll and human rights are dismissed as negligible concerns, while children and women are taken into slavery, and tribal wars re-ignite old wounds. The odious excesses of brutal regimes incessantly waging wars instead of creating a stable environment for their populations are a regularly-occurring blight.

Yet the Arab League and the African Union will not tolerate expressions of blame from outside, while at the same time demonstrate no willingness to themselves exert some pressure on those nations whom they represent to submit to even modest reform. Robert Mugabe continues to be respected while Zimbabweans starve. Omar al-Bashir is feted as a champion of his people even while his militias and that of the Janjaweed continue their carnage.

Syria, Iran and Lebanon continue to breed the deadly pathology of terrorism, bred from fanatical Islamists' love of violent jihad. The civilizing factor of enlightenment has managed to bypass these traditionally clan-based and tribal values that recognize only those who share a like heritage, religion and ideology, preparing to lay waste all others who do not conform.

Pakistan and Afghanistan have suffered a complete perversion of their original religious thought through the importation via Saudi Arabia's madrassas of Wahhabist-style fundamentalism. Their tribal fundamentalist version of Islam was sufficiently medieval as it was, now transformed to an utterly hateful disease of urgent potential; to destroy all that stands in its path.

So in condemning the African Union and the Arab League for failing to hold themselves to account for their lack of civilization, for continuing to embrace rigid authoritarianism and brutal social oppression, the West is not at all holding them to a different yardstick. Why should what is seen as appallingly racist, misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic be acceptable in Iran or Syria, if it is not elsewhere in the world?

Holding countries to different standards of behaviour, action and values simply affords them the relief of acceptance and validation of their dreadful record of institutionalized social abuse of their dependent people. And as long as such countries feel they can do as they will - causing untold deaths among their own for political purposes, ravaging those they hold in faint esteem - without international censure, they will continue to do so.

As human beings we have an obligation both to ourselves and to others to honour our common humanity. To overlook the odious human-rights excesses that countries engage in, sacrificing lives and futures for their leaders' own unspeakable purposes, diminishes us as human beings, and certainly marks us as conscientious failures. The desperate plight of the forgotten and the abused is ours, too.

The abusers must be held accountable. Self-respecting countries who resent members of their shared heritage or religion being censured, must take it upon themselves to mentor and to demand of their nation-members recognition of their humane responsibilities toward those dependent upon them. Human rights are not culturally relative; they are universal.

As for condoning or overlooking the cesspool of jihadist militias threatening the stability, peace and existence of others, there is much to account for. Whether al-Qaeda stationed in the Middle East and the African Maghreb, or Hamas and Hezbollah in the Middle East, terrorizing and threatening local and world peace, there must be a universal rejection of these scourges against humanity.

Until the Arab League and the African union take that basic lesson in humanity and fundamental human obligations toward one another seriously they can continue to rail against the unfairness of exposure to condemnation of their own who defy the humanity of others. And ultimately pay the piper when they become themselves victimized by those whose viciously murderous rampages they support.

Labels: Terrorism, Traditions, Troublespots

posted by Pieface @ Friday, May 01, 2009