(TALKZIMBABWE) The politics of human rights

The politics of human rights
Reason Wafawarova - Opinion
Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:05:00 +0000

WHILE most countries are signatories to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and are party to the International Convention of Civil and Political Rights (1966), the reality about the human rights regime is that countries relate to the human rights system based more on political pragmatism than on principle.

There are widespread media reports castigating Zimbabwe for its decision to disagree with a Sadc Tribunal ruling on the issue of white commercial farmers fighting eviction from farms that have been designated for resettlement by the Government, as well as the subsequent decision by the Zimbabwe Government to pull out of the Tribunal altogether.

The way this development has been treated in the Western media gives the misleading impression that the behaviour of Zimbabwe is not only out of line with the rule of law doctrine, but also that it is an unprecedented act of lawlessness.

However the reality with International Law is that human rights are often regarded as subsidiary to other policy concerns, such as national security, economic interests or a country’s relationship with powerful allies.

Often the sovereignty argument is particularly employed regularly to divide the human rights regime from the individuals that the regime is intended to protect. In this scheme of things claims of sovereignty may sometimes be nothing more than empty and misplaced rhetoric, in such cases used to distract attention from some of the more fundamental issues involved in the balance between human rights and government policy.

When the protection of human rights comes up against other issues of concern to the majority of a country’s citizens, it often becomes more economical and less complex for policy makers to pursue policy aims without concerning themselves with human rights.

Where human rights are prioritised, it is often due to the interests of particular individuals, or in pursuit of particular foreign policy goals, or any other politically motivated agenda.

In Zimbabwe Jestina Mukoko, Roy Bennet and others like that have enjoyed prioritised attention from the Western media and governments, not exactly because their individual personalities are of concern to those who claim to be fighting for their human rights, but largely because their position in the human rights regime serves well a political agenda that promotes the foreign policy interests of the countries from which they are enjoying sympathy.

We have already looked at the example of Zimbabwe rejecting the ruling of the Sadc Tribunal and as stated earlier this is not a unique case to do with tyranny or egregious dictatorship as is often portrayed in sections of the media.

As of January 2006, the United Nations Human Rights Committee had handed down decisions in 44 claims concerning Australia, and eleven of these claims were decided against Australia. These violations of human rights were found to include the following:

• Mistreatment of children – for example, in Bakhtiyari vs Australia, the Human Rights Committee found that the detention of two children in immigration detention for two years and eight months violated children’s rights.
• Inhumane treatment of prisoners – for example, in Cabal and Bertran vs Australia, the Human Rights Committee found that the detention of two prisoners in a triangular cage the size of a telephone booth was inhumane.
• Denial of the right to family life – for example, in Winata vs Australia, the Human Rights Committee found that deportation of the parents of a thirteen year old child who was born in and had grown up in Australia constituted an infringement on the right to family life.
• Undue trial delay – for example, in Rogerson vs Australia, the Human Rights Committee held that a two year delay by the Northern Territory Court of Appeals to deliver its decision a criminal contempt charge constituted undue delay.

In response to all the eleven findings against Australia, the Howard government reiterated that the Human Rights Committee was not a court and its views were not binding, just like Zimbabwe has argued in dismissing the Sadc Tribunal as illegitimate since its existence is supposed to be on the basis of a 75% ratification by Sadc member states, something that has yet not happened.

In this, both positions are technically correct. The argument is that the findings and decisions of both the Human Rights Committee and the Sadc Tribunal may still be regarded by some as an authoritative guide to the interpretation of member states’ obligations to the ICCPR.

In this vein the rejections are viewed as effectively a denial of international obligations that member states voluntarily assumed.

It is like the United States’ dismissing of the findings of the same Human Rights Committee on the happenings at Guantanamo Bay, under George W. Bush.

The only difference is that the rejections by Australia and the US are seen in a different light and that of Zimbabwe is viewed as a product incivility and tyranny.

One of the decisions against Australia was issued on 3 April 1997, where Mr A, a Cambodian citizen, had been detained at the Port Hedland Detention Centre
for over four years without access to legal advice or court review of his detention.

The Human Rights Committee held that Mr A’s detention for such a long period was arbitrary and a violation of Article 9(1) of the ICCPR.

The Howard government responded to the committee by rejecting its findings outright. Alexander Downer stated:

“The Government does not accept that the detention of Mr A was in violation of the Covenant, nor that the provision for review of the lawfulness of that detention by Australian courts was inadequate. Consequently, the Government does not accept the view of the Committee that compensation should be paid to Mr A.”

One can compare this argument to Zimbabwe’s argument that the ruling of the Sadc Tribunal was unacceptable because it rendered the constitutional laws of Zimbabwe of no effect, and that it sought to restore a colonial imbalance that the Government had already redressed through the land reform programme.

In its concluding observations to Australia’s 2000 report on monitoring compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the committee responsible for this convention applauded Australia’s implementation of many positive legislative and policy measures designed to reduce the incidence of racial discrimination and to promote the idea of multiculturalism, including the establishment of the now disbanded Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.

However, the committee also criticised Australia, particularly expressing concern about the absence of an entrenched constitutional guarantee to preclude the enactment of racially discriminatory legislation and the failure to consult representatives of the Aboriginal community adequately in drafting amendments to the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth).

The committee also castigated the high rate of Aboriginal incarceration in Australia’s prison system and the “continuing discrimination experienced by the Indigenous population in the enjoyment of their economic, social and cultural rights”.

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination regretted that the Australian government had been unable to apologise to the members of the Stolen Generation (later done by the Rudd government) as part of redressing the “extraordinary harm inflicted by these racially discriminatory practices”.

The response of the Howard government was immediate and fierce; rejecting every aspect of the criticism as “an unbalanced and wide-ranging attack that intrudes unreasonably into Australia’s domestic affairs”.

If one replaces the name Australia with Zimbabwe in the above quote, this argument will be the all too familiar “rants of the dictator”, but not when coming from the democracy that Australia claims to be.

The government statement continued; “We are seriously disappointed about the Committee’s comments on race relations in Australia. The Committee has apparently failed to grapple with the unique and complex history of race relations in Australia. It has paid scant regard to the Government’s input and has relied almost exclusively on information provided by Non-Governmental Organisations. This is a serious indictment of the Committee’s work. It is unacceptable that Australia, which is a model member of the UN, is being criticised in this way for its human rights record.”

It is interesting to compare how the argument by the Australian government fares alongside Zimbabwe’s argument that the history of its land tenure is unique and complex and has to be understood first before anyone comments on the land reform programme. Also interesting is the attack on the exclusive use of information provided by NGOs; unacceptable in this case to both Australia and Zimbabwe.

So irate was the Australian government about the committee’s views that Alexander Downer threatened that the committee risked leaving Australia “with a bloody nose” while Prime Minister John Howard remonstrated that “in the end we are not told what to do by anybody”, adding that Australia was not going to “dance attendance on views of committees that are a long way from Australia.”

There was a sense of victimisation in Australia’s response just like there is a sense of victimisation in the case of Zimbabwe. In the end the utterances of John Howard could easily be mistaken for words from Mammoud Ahmadinejad of Iran or Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, judging by how these two are often portrayed in Western media.

John Howard threatened to pull out of the UN treaty committee system four days after the committee released its media statement, and he argued that this was prompted by the “blatantly political and partisan approach” taken by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Although there never were any screaming headlines claiming that Australia does not respect the rule of law, or that the country has no respect for human rights, the arguments given by the Australian government are literally identical to the arguments given by Zimbabwe when the country’s judicial system is attacked as partisan and partial, or when the land reform programme is criticised as a racist policy or an unsound policy violating “property rights”.

Like Australia and many other countries we could cite here, Zimbabwe argues on the basis of sovereignty, cultural context, historical context, political interests, economic interests or the general scope of government public policy.

The only difference is that there is a general consensus in the West, supported even by some from the none-Western world; that there must be more concentration in attention on states perceived to be guiltier by way of graver human rights violations.

The outcry about human rights abuses in Zimbabwe may be louder than elsewhere, but it is not an outcry based on the isolated nature of the alleged happenings in the country. Neither is Zimbabwe’s response to the criticism levelled against it an extraordinary act of obnoxiousness.

Stripped of the propaganda and over-publicity the political events in Zimbabwe are characterised by, the human rights regime in Zimbabwe is hardly a matter of headline news, or an issue warranting debate over sanctions or international isolation.

What actually earns Zimbabwe headlines and the decision to be sanctioned by Western countries are underlying policy differences that are more a matter of political pragmatism and economic interests than anything directly to do with a breach of human rights.

This does not mean that there are no human rights breaches in Zimbabwe or elsewhere. Far from it. It is just that human rights are not the issue with Western countries and even with many of the NGOs that grandstand as human rights defenders in Zimbabwe or in Iran.

For Western governments it is the regime change agenda that itself is motivated by underlying political and economic interests on the global scene. For many of the NGOs, particularly those that are locally founded in Zimbabwe, the motivation is often no more than tapping into the multi-billion dollar charity industry for the personal financial gains of the staff that man these organisations.

It is immoral for organisations to cash in on the plight of suffering and under privileged people but in reality this is the lifeline of many NGOs today.
Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

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*Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can be contacted on wafawarova@yahoo.co.uk or reason@rwafawarova.com or visit www.rawafawarova.com