TW: Mentions Of Rape, Sex Trafficking
Human Rights (HR) are two words which when explained with the basic meaning will be rights for humans where the word human means being gentle and kind; otherwise, these right also equate to rights for people who are committing treacherous and unscrupulous crimes but demanding a safe and clear passage.
History Of Human Rights
HR is not as new as UNHRC and goes back to the time of King John and the Magna Carta but has gained prominence only after Hitler bashed the Treaty of Versailles black and blue while committing horrors against jews, genocides, killings, massacre etc. HR has always been evolving and has a constructed focus. After Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo, it was the Concert of Europe that acted as the authority, after WW1, it was the league of nations (too idealistic to see WW2 brewing) and after the league was dismantled and WW2 was over, it was the UN which takes cares of issues at a global level.
The UN is a conscious body for bureaucratising the problems that are faced on the canvas and at the lower strata of the pyramid. HR is more of a disco ball which is big but reflects even the smallest of issues. Peace, conflict and development are the three pillars on which HR rests, representing the trident of Atlan. A gulf between the developed and developing is where the violations of HR occur. We have seen internationally that the least developed counties and their people are the ones who are subjects to violations whereas developed countries face fewer issues of HR violations. Historically the biggest HR crisis has been seen in the forms of migrant crisis, forced prostitution and human trafficking, HR crisis based on religious fundamentalism, discrimination, economic parity etc.
The Indian martyrs of WW1 were never remembered until 1931 when India Gate was made to commemorate them.
Internationally, we have witnessed that in history, the migrant crisis has always been pertinent and acted as modus operandi for the benefit of the colonialist and their deliberate militant policies, converting the colonies into a cash cow for their own personal gains. We have seen millions of Africans who were forced to migrate or transported across seas as cheap labour. They were stashed like woollens in ships for transport whilst many died on the way due to suffocation.
They were deprived their means of livelihoods and kept in poor conditions. During the British rule over their commonwealth countries, millions were migrated to benefit the British for their purpose and few themselves migrated to search for a better livelihood away from the cons of the colonialist. Approx. 1 million men were migrated in WW1 by Britishers from India and many more were displaced, arrested, killed and imprisoned. There was not even a memorial that was resurrected in their honour and was only constructed in 1931 when India Gate was built to honour the martyred.
In WW2 it was much worse, 2 million approximately. The Britishers brought in Imperial civil services (ICS) in 1858 after sepoy mutiny which was used as a means to discriminate against Indians further. They wanted to promote the concept of ‘divide et impera (divide and rule)’. They said we want people who are Indians but dress and speak like us. We literally paid for our own oppression and the violations of HR. Jawaharlal Nehru said that ‘these services were neither civil nor imperial and neither serving the Indian purpose’.
Forced Prostitution And Sex Trafficking
Another issue in HR violation is forced prostitution. Prostitution was abolished in 1819 in India but yet it has not disappeared from the face of India. Places like GB road in Delhi and the red light area in Mumbai are opened as loquacious centres where sex trafficking is rampant. Yet, they are functioning in broad light. Many women and girls below the age of 18 are forced into prostitution and are sold away. The UN has ratified the Palermo protocol through ILO to fight against sex trafficking but such activities are yet carried out in broad daylight with the administration both hand in glove.
In the times when RTE and NEP are formulated for children to study and become a better person, many girls are still pushed off the cliff into the terai from which they can never come out easily. It is believed and said that ‘if one educates a boy, the family prospers but if one educates a girl, the whole society benefits’. Our country is grasped with the orthodoxies but we fail to understand that if boys and girls both earn, work and study, the country as a whole can benefit on the socio-economic-political grounds.
If 40% of those forced to be housewives are allowed to work, then not only the family is better off financially but they also can contribute to the GDP of the country. Statements like ‘Maa ka haath ka khaana accha hai (food made by mother is best)’ ignore the fact that this is because she works inside the four chambers of the home and is not allowed to work outside. If allowed she can make the world a better place for all, re-amending the statement to ‘maa sabkuch karsakti hai (mothers can do anything)’. This can also help in ensuring that the demographic dividend doesn’t convert into a demographic disaster.
Religion And Discrimination
HR violations are mostly seen and committed in the name of religion but exceed to be qualified as religious fundamentalism, totalitarianism, absolutism etc. Many of the kingpins are educated who execute terror for their benefit and are the major catalyst for wreaking havoc and disrupting human rights. We see that there are religious scriptures that were written ages ago and hence as time changes and the fish keeps diving deeper into the pond when the above surface evaporates, these scriptures aren’t open to change and criticism and are static.
Some orthodox dogmatic preachers have become fanatic while some others have manipulated the scriptures in a way that they as a community can benefit as a whole by pushing aside others. The biggest problem we face that people have elevated the ideals to a realist position and then idealised the then realist position to a place where they have not been subjected to change. As we know that preaching an idea can help attain moksha but preaching any ideal blindly can only lead to disorder and distress.
Discrimination and economic parity are both reverent in contemporary times for HR violations. In India 10% of the people hold 74.3% of the wealth and 90% of the people live on mere subsistence and subsidies. We see grand examples between the discriminatory displacements of salary, the gulf between a person living in a condominium and the one living on the streets and begging. A taxation system was introduced to bridge the gulf but red-tapism entered its doors and overtook its sole objective.
Due to this wide gulf, some people look for an easy way to earn money hence giving into stealing, murder, arson etc. Such acts are means and ways to violate HR and hence disrupting the fabric of the country.
Women’s Rights
In India, one of the biggest women’s right violations was seen quite recently when a 23-year-old girl was brutally tortured and raped in a moving bus on a cold winter night on the roads of Delhi on 16th December. She was travelling with her friend when she was gangraped by few men who committed extremities using an iron rod for penetration and committed the most ugliest-heinous acts to which even Hades would be ashamed of.
Later, the boy and the girl were thrown out of the moving bus on an empty road only to be discovered and sent to the hospital. Later she was sent abroad for an operation where she succumbed to her death. This act outraged a lot of people to gather and protest shaking the administration and forcing them to look into the safety of women and the HR issues as a whole. This was a mass united to stand for a cause that was exactly parallel to HR.
There are hundreds of HR violations across India and the world, whether it is Kashmir, North East, China, Yemen, Middle East etc. We have seen many HR violations in China but due to their carefully constructed firewall we never get to know the atrocities committed there, few that we know of were of the Uyghur Muslims and the Tiananmen Square incident.
We also see the USA recently under president Biden’s administration standing for HR both in China and Russia where he condemned the attacks on HR in both countries and especially in Russia for HR violations against Alexei Navalny. We see HR violations in all fields, gender; whether it is a boy, girl, young, old and whether he belongs to any religion. Issues of HR violations has always caused entropy. The above mentioned are a few of the many millions that give a lie to the myth of betterment.