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On International Human Rights Day, Muslims Around the World Suffering
WASHINGTON, Dec. 10 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - This year's International Human Rights Day - the first of the 21st century - falls in a time of ongoing human rights abuses across the world, especially throughout the Muslim world, as the holiest days of Ramadan are marked with tremendous turmoil and suffering.
Amnesty International, one of the world's most renowned and respected champions of human rights across all borders, said that Human Rights Day comes "amidst global turmoil, world leaders beating the drum of war, and human rights abuses."
"On the first human rights day of the century," a statement issued by the watchdog on Monday read, "refugees are still fleeing in fear from Afghanistan; families are mourning their loved ones in the Occupied Territories and Israel; refugees and asylum seekers are turned away in Europe, Australia and many other parts of the world; children are being recruited to fight adults' wars in Africa; human rights defenders are under threat in Latin America and elsewhere; and the United Nations is shamefully silent as Parliaments undo human rights provisions."
For their part, Muslims in many different regions raised their voices on International Human Rights Day to protest against violations of human rights in their countries.
In Banja Luka Monday, a human rights group used World Human Rights Day to warn that no human right was fully respected in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
"We do not have a single human right which we can say is fully respected without discrimination," Branko Todorovic, head of the Bosnian Serb Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, told a news conference.
"Almost all of us [Bosnians] are deprived of some human right," he said, speaking of the thousands of refugees in the country who had still been unable to repossess their homes six years after the end of Bosnia's 1992-95 war, in which around 200,000 people were killed.
The Bosnian Serb prime minister, Mladen Ivanic, admitted on Monday there had been "serious problems" of human rights in both the Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat part of Bosnia over the last few years.
In Kashmir, a demonstration also timed to coincide with International Human Rights Day, led Muslim lawyers on a march through the streets of Srinagar on Monday to protest against India's strict new anti-terrorism law.
The law, which has not been formerly passed by parliament, is meant to cut at the communications and funding of suspected "terrorist" groups. But it also grants sweeping powers to Indian occupation forces - accused by Muslim groups of atrocities against Kashmiris - and has aroused strong criticism from human rights groups.
And on Monday in southern Lebanon, dozens of Lebanese once detained by Israel staged a demonstration at the United Nations headquarters in Tyre to protest what they said were human rights violations in Israeli prisons.
"Human rights are flouted in Occupied Palestine," read one banner held by protestors during the rally held to mark U.N. Human Rights Day. "Human rights are not respected in Israel prisons. Free the prisoners," said another.
Israel, which withdrew its forces from Lebanon in May 2000 after more than two decades of occupation, still has at least 19 Lebanese prisoners held without charge or trial, including Lebanese Islamic activists.
Palestinian suffering under Israeli military occupation, closures, checkpoints and under documented increase of torture in Israeli jails, has been cited time and again by Amnesty and other human rights watchdogs, including some Israeli groups.
This year, Ramadan in the Occupied Territories is more difficult than ever under the shadow of a flagging economy, destruction of homes and loss of life.
And Ramadan in Afghanistan posed no obstacle to the ongoing U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan. The campaign began on Oct. 7 against the now-fading Taliban militia's refusal to hand over Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, whom Washington blames for the deadly September 11 attacks on the U.S. - in which many Muslims also died, which has largely gone unreported in the press, and for which "Islamic terrorism" is blamed.
In what the U.N. before September 11 called the "world's worst humanitarian crisis," an unknown number of Afghan civilians have been killed and Afghan homes and resources destroyed due to U.S. bombing. An estimated 160,000 Afghans have fled from the conflict in their native land, adding to the 3.6 million already displaced to other countries.
As the "civilized world" goes to war against terrorism, voices raised in concern for human rights are calling for global measures to both prosecute and prevent further violations of human rights.
On Monday, a group of Nobel laureates gathered in Oslo for the establishment of the International Criminal Court, urging governments to ratify the Rome Treaty to create a permanent war crimes court.
"We call for the prompt establishment of the International Criminal Court and full implementation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including economic, social and cultural as well as civil and political rights," a group of around 16 former laureates said.
Many Nobel laureates also gathered in Oslo, Norway last week for a three-day symposium on conflict avoidance to mark the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prizes. The meeting came ahead of the awarding on Monday of the 2001 Peace Prize here to the United Nations and its current secretary-general, Kofi Annan.
In a call to prevent continuing violence and human rights violations, the Nobel laureates warned last Thursday that poverty, inequality and despair posed global threats to peace and that the issue must be addressed if battles against terrorism and other conflicts are to be won.
Rigoberta Menchu Tum, who won the prize in 1992 for her defense of Mayan Indians and other civilians threatened by death squads in Guatemala, stressed that terrorism was "born from the insecurity and hunger that gives birth to despair" and could not be eradicated by simple repression.
She echoed one of the world's most well-known voices for peace, 1993 Nobel Peace Prize winner and former South African president Nelson Mandela, when he declared recently, "Our fight for peace is… also a war against poverty and deprivation."
Speaking near Washington, D.C. just over a month after the Afghanistan conflict began, Mandela said, "We allow fertile breeding ground for discontent and extremism and terrorism," adding that recent events should serve as a wake-up call "to address the underlying causes."
The message of Amnesty International also reflected this call, urging an examination and remedy of the roots of violence.
Secretary General Irene Khan pointed to the responsibility of able countries to struggle against everything that led suffering people to reckless despair, feeding the cycle of continuing human rights violations.
"We must struggle not only against torture, arbitrary detention and unfair trials, but also against discrimination, poverty and illiteracy," she said. "Festering social injustices will drive the oppressed, the voiceless, to despair and the cycle of violence is likely to continue."
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