Opposition activists throw stones against National Guard members during a
protest against the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro,
in Caracas on March 3, 2014. AFP PHOTO /Juan BARRETO
Across the world, it seems that democracy and human rights are under siege. There is even a book called The End of Human Rights!
And at this meeting of human rights defenders from across the world in
Sweden that I am attending, the laments are loud and clear.
From
activists in Belarus who face jail and torture to land rights
campaigners in Cambodia and Guatemala who are summarily evicted from
their land either for “development” or to extract natural resources, the
stories are eerily similar.
From the journalists in
Somalia who are targets of not just the regime but also Al-Shabaab to
the Roma activists in Sweden who face persecution from ordinary Swedes
who see them as “different”.
There are the powerfully
eloquent women activists from Bahrain who led a campaign to stop the
export of three million canisters of tear gas from South Korea to
Bahrain, which has a population of 650,000, working out to three
canisters of tear gas for every child, woman and man. Tear gas has
already led to the deaths of 70 people in Bahrain.
And
there are the LGBTI activists, attacked by both state and society simply
for being different. And yet, as they keep asking, they hurt no one,
they interfere with no one, so why this determination to haunt them, to
jail them, to kill them?
These are tough times for
human rights. But yet, the resilience of people in Turkey, Ukraine,
Cambodia, Venezuela who brave bullets, beatings and jail for freedom and
space is awe-inspiring.
The Arab Spring, though it
faltered, led to the “end of fear” for so many in the Middle East. And
while it is possible to bring back fear, that can only be short-term,
before it springs back again as it did in Ukraine.
The
1990s were the great years of human rights and democracy. The fall of
the Berlin Wall heralded the rise of freedoms and democratic space
across the world. There was the end of apartheid in South Africa in
1994, the Vienna Declaration of Human Rights in 1993 which finally
concluded that all rights were equal, indivisible and inalienable,
ending a cold war battle between East and West over which set of rights
was more important than the other.
There was the trial
of Pinochet in London, which started a process of efforts to hold the
powerful accountable, and which memorably stated that there could be no
immunity for heads of state for committing violations of human rights.
There
was the Rome Statute of the ICC in 1998, the end of military rule in
Nigeria in 1999, and the return of multiparty systems, if not democracy,
across Africa. On the negative side there was the genocide in Rwanda
and the war in former Yugoslavia denting the 1990s.
But
9/11 in the US started the roll back for democracy and human rights as
“securitisation” of society returned in earnest. All this made worse by
the illegal invasion of Iraq by the US and UK in 2003 which, though
intended to show strength and power, revealed weakness and myopia
instead.
And it has been downward since with
traditional democracies speaking from both sides of their mouths. It is
these inconsistencies that are increasing the pace of the shrinking
space in Kenya (and globally) where many of our leaders believe in might
over right, but only when they are the ones exercising that might. That
is short-sighted, for inevitably they will lose that might.
For
history is on the side of right over might. History shows that the
human spirit can be subdued for a while but it will surely rise for
dignity is about material as well as intellectual and emotional
wellbeing, based on freedom.
mkiai2000@yahoo.com
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