Whew!
So I breathe a sigh of relief that today’s protest against police brutality passed off without incident. All right, the turn out was small but the fact that not a single arrest was made is worth celebrating about. For those couple of hours, people in the Maldives who were there at the protest were able to express their views freely and most importantly hear what they wanted to listen to.
Freedom of expression is the keystone of every democracy. In the first session of the UNGA resolution 59(I) was adopted which states "Freedom of information is a fundamental human right and ... the touchstone of all the freedoms to which the United Nations is consecrated."
We cannot make informed decisions if there is no freedom of expression. We would be living in the Dark Ages like we were before in the Maldives. We would be whispering in hushed tones and give scared glances around in case someone was listening and someone reported us; took us to into custody and tortured us. That is sadly what happens most of the time. But not today. Not for those few hours.
Why is the government so scared of giving us something that is guaranteed by the virtue of us being born humans? Answer? simple!
I believe Golhabo is frightened because it gives us Maldivians dignity. It makes us human. And he cannot afford that. If he allows all those in the opposition to be “human” then he cannot get his Golhaa Force to beat them up and torture them. So he has to dehumanize the opposition. So that his Golhaa Force will not hesitate to act on his behalf. They will not stop and think “wait! These guys are human beings like us”.
So he cannot afford to give them the freedom to think. Because freedom means choice.
And they just might choose someone else.
They just might.
Just might.
Might.
4 comments:
Fear has a funny face. If you are frightened then your decision-making can be flawed. I am not trying to give excuses for President Gayoom's actions in recent times with regard to the demonstrations in the Maldives. On the contrary, merely pointing out that rational decision-making is unlikely if he is petrified of losing power. Hence, the repression.
I was just posting on Mary-Jo's blog about the relativity of the term "human" when I saw this. It's such an obsolete and unreal idea to me. Certainly the UDHR and subsequent documents have practical applications to limit the power of government and military yet I think the U.S. is mainly responsible for showing us that an appeal to a universal condition of humanity has become inapplicable. The word "human" never really implied a secular universality anyway. It would be more prudent to actually recognize our differences and why those differences prevent us from seeing ourselves as the same. People in the police force make a valid point. They ARE doing their job and they ARE entitled to the right to do it. The means in which their job is carried out of course has far-reaching implications for the rest of us. However I get the fact that the protest was about the means by which the police are taught to exercise their authority. Freedom of speech isn't really about listening to what you want to hear (even when it's talk of liberty and equality) it's the possibility of being able to hear what you didn't want to. Freedom of speech as defined by the U.N. however is the freedom to speak of the normative rules and regulations for society that the U.N. itself posits.
a human being or more appropriately the human kind can never be obsolete as a concept as long as we find commonalities. But you are right about differences and the understanding of those.
I suppose at the end of the day it all boils down to which pair of glasses you are wearing. If you are wearing those of an idealist, then yes, the UDHR is at the top of your wishlist. But if you do look at the world through a pair of realpolitik glasses then there is no such thing as a human.
Roll on Machiavelli! hehe
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