Human Rights and the fight for Peace

 

(Above: original image by Diego Mir on Flickr Creative Commons)

Written by: Contributed

The right to live in peace is a fundamental human right. It is not merely the absence of war, but the opportunity for all people to live a full and fruitful life.

This means security of work, food, shelter, healthcare, education and access to factual information. It means genuine equality and opportunity regardless of race, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, language, disability or occupation. The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights carried by the General Assembly in 1948 enshrined these universal rights.

Standing in the way of this is the class system of modern capitalism, developed to its higher stage of imperialism especially in the USA, but also in Europe (Germany, France) and now the formally socialist countries of Russia and China, each with its sphere of influence or domination over other economies. They both collude and compete with each other, manipulating the global economy, global finances and world trade in the scramble for resources and markets on behalf of the giant corporations, multinationals and oligarchs.  

Between them, these imperialist blocs have virtually completed the territorial division of the world into their competing spheres of influence. They can only continue to expand by taking over a competitor’s sphere of influence and seizing access to new resources and markets, or by denying them to others. Hence the devastating war in Ukraine, caught between the eastward thrust of US-NATO and Russia's attempt to resist this and then to restore Ukraine under its own influence.

US imperialism has been the most dominant imperialist force. Since the Korean War and the war in Vietnam, it has fomented and led wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and elsewhere, together with a history of coups, financial crises, sabotage, sanctions and ethnic divisions, leaving famine, chaos and repression in its wake. It is the number one enemy of peace, the main opponent of nuclear disarmament, the main sponsor of human rights abuses such as in Palestine and the Philippines. 

But its hegemony is now being challenged by China in particular, with its expansive Belt and Road penetration of other economies in Asia, Africa and the Pacific. China has been steadily increasing its financial and political influence. (Followed by other developing economies such as Brazil and India) 

Hence the rising tension and war preparations by US imperialism in the Pacific region, aimed at threatening nuclear war on China from regional military bases, (Guam, Japan, South Korea, Australia) and the potential to control China’s access to sea lanes and deeper waters. Provocative actions like military exercises and navy manoeuvres in the South China Sea, or using Taiwan as a proxy, may very well become triggers for war. 

This is the global context in which the working people of the world must struggle to assert their human rights, including the right to live in a peaceful world. They cannot rely on the imperialist/capitalist class to provide or respect their human rights to peace, to food, shelter, healthcare, education, and cultural and social development. They fight for these rights. They will fight to oppose imperialist war where the winners are the armament makers and fossil fuel monopolies and the losers are working people on all sides.

We stand on the side of struggles against military repression. We support the current fierce struggles for peace with justice in the Philippines, Palestine, the Kurdish lands, West Papua and Myanmar.   

The masses of workers, peasants and oppressed peoples learn that their rights are only as good as their struggle and have to be fought over again and again. In the course of struggles against exploitation, repression, devastation of their communities and the natural environment, they are coming to the awareness that the system of greed-based imperialism must be smashed and replaced by socialism which empowers and respects working people and can roll back the other threat of climate crisis.

 

“Human rights” in the service of US imperialism

Nick G.

Australia has been voted onto the 47-member United Nations Human Rights Council. For the three-year term of its office, Australia will strengthen the hand of fellow member, US imperialism, in using the issue of human rights to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign nations.

Let us be clear: there is the human rights perspective of proletarian internationalism whereby the workers and oppressed peoples of all nations support each other’s struggles for liberation, and there is the “human rights” of imperialism, which is the right of imperialism to carry out provocations against its rivals and those who resist its drive for full spectrum domination.  The old cover for its aggression was “freedom” and “democracy”.  In the last decade or more it has increasingly covered its aggression with the deception of “humanitarian assistance” and “intervention to prevent human rights abuses”.

Historically, the Australian ruling class has shown little concern for the human rights of any but the biggest exploiters of the Australian people.  There were no “human rights” concerns when the colonialists unsettled the First Nations communities, stealing their lands and imposing genocidal practices on them.

There have never been champions from the bourgeoisie for the human rights of workers.  Whenever workers or their leaders challenge the interests of the bosses, they are fined, jailed and can now have their assets seized.  The human rights of Australian workers to organise collectively and to fight for wages and conditions improvements are so circumscribed and to be on a par with workers in, say, Turkey or Indonesia.

The 1901 Australian Constitution is concerned only with how to make capitalism a workable system, balancing the interests existing at the turn of the 20th century, namely, those of Britain, the separate colonies and the new federal authorities. It is an unreadable and dated document.  Its creators made no provision for a Bill of Rights or of any definition of personal rights and liberties.  It “disappeared” the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples completely, assuming the absolute correctness of their dispossession and genocide.

The Australian bourgeois state has been a pioneer in the move by developed capitalist countries to renege on the commitments they made to refugees and asylum seekers post-WWII.  It has outsourced the concentration camps into which refugees and asylum seekers are placed to compliant regional states such as New Guinea and Nauru.  Ironically, in 2016, the Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea ruled that Australia’s detention of asylum seekers on Manus Island was illegal and unconstitutional. Its Constitution contains a select number of human rights:

* the right to life, liberty and security of person and protection of the law
* the right to take part in political activities
* freedom from inhuman treatment and forced labour
* freedom of conscience, expression, information, assembly and association
* freedom of employment and movement
* the right to privacy and property

Elected alongside Australia is Spain whose “human rights” abuses of Basques and Galicians must now rank alongside its violent suppression of the Catalan independence referendum.

With terms yet to expire are such “human rights” defenders as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the Philippines and the US imperialists.

So-called “universal human rights” in the hands of states such as these have their “universality” trampled on a daily, hourly basis. In any class society, the question of human rights is basically a class question. Human rights for working people require the elevation of the working class to leadership and control of the state – not as it exists now, but as it will be redefined and restructured to ensure that there will be no going back once independence and socialism are in place.

Strongly condemn the persecution of the Rohingya

Nick G.

The Rohingya refugee crisis requires the strongest condemnation of Myanmar and its leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

The Rohingya, originally from what is now Bangladesh, have lived for centuries in Myanmar, a Muslim minority in an overwhelmingly Buddhist country.

Always a persecuted minority, the Rohingya have suffered attempts over several years to drive them from their homes.  In this respect, the Buddhists are driven by a reactionary religious intolerance of other peoples that is no different to reactionary currents among Christians, Muslims, Zionist Jews and other religious belief systems.

The anti-Rohingya sentiment in Myanmar is also a legacy of British imperialism’s well-known policy of “divide and rule”.  Pushing the line of Buddhist purity and Buddhist exceptionalism, the reactionary Buddhist leaders are serving the interests of the imperialists and local Myanmar bourgeoisie by denying class contradictions within the Myanmar social structure.

Aung San Suu Kyi was embraced by global imperialism for demanding “democracy” and “independence” for Myanmar. She was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize and kept under house arrest by the military rulers.  Imperialism wanted to remove the military dictatorship’s obstacles to the free flow of trade and finance capital, and promoted Aung San Suu Kyi for their own ends, at the same time as her championing of an end to military dictatorship won her the support of wide sections of the Myanmar people.

Whatever she may have done for Myanmar Buddhists since her election as de facto head of state in 2015, she has not extended to Rohingya, referring to them as “Bengalis” and “terrorists”.  The reactionary Buddhists of Myanmar refuse to use the term “Rohingya” because it defines the Muslim minority as people of Rakhine state, a poverty-stricken part of Myanmar.  For the purposes of ethnic cleansing, it does not suit to imply any rights of residence in Rakhine for the Muslims.

Pathetic Australian government response

Australia has been well aware of the ethnic cleansing and persecution of Rohingya for several years.  It has provided authorities in Rakhine with small amounts of aid to “assist” the Rohingya.  However, it has prioritised Aung San Suu Kyi’s efforts to stabilise the murderous regime and “open” Myanmar ahead of the rights of the Rohingya. This was quite clearly the case in March 2017 when the Turnbull Government rejected a Senate vote calling for a United Nations commission of enquiry into the persecution of the Rohingya.  The Government said Myanmar should conduct its own investigation and referred to the “scale and complexity of the transition” that Myanmar is undergoing, and acknowledged “positive steps” taken by its government.

Several weeks later, it reversed its position and co-sponsored a resolution at the UN human rights forum for the UN to send a fact-finding mission to Myanmar.  The change was partly fuelled by an upsurge of reported atrocities against the Rohingya on one hand, and Australia’s hypocritical push for membership of the UN Human Rights Council from 2018.

China incites bourgeois nationalism at home to justify support for Myanmar

China is also well aware of the persecution of the Rohingya, but also prioritises its relations with Myanmar’s ruing circles above those of the Muslim minority. It has provided little coverage of the refugee crisis to its own people and the government online newspaper Global Times admits that Aung San Suu Kyi’s name could not be searched on Sina Weibo, the country’s main internet search engine.

Nevertheless, the paper yesterday (September 17) reported that the Myanmar leader had gained popularity with Chinese netizens, who praised her defiance against “outside pressure while safeguarding her people’s interest”.

Indeed, China should support any state that is standing up to “outside pressure”, but it should not support a state that is oppressing its own people.  Big power expedience and expansionist aims are driving Beijing’s response to the Rohingya crisis, not socialist ideals of proletarian internationalism.
This is clearly evident from the way Global Times has framed the debate: “Another reason for Suu Kyi’s rising popularity is her friendly policy on China which many did not expect. And since she has visited China twice, Chinese leaders might visit Myanmar in the near future, so the Chinese people and government don’t want to damage bilateral ties.”

Myanmar is a pivotal part of Beijing’s One Belt One Road initiative.  Chinese investments in the country include a cross-border oil and gas pipeline that is expected to become an alternative route for energy imports from the Middle East as it avoids the Malacca Strait, a shipping chokepoint in the disputed South China Sea.  Other projects include a port and industrial area in a Special Economic Zone in Rakhine which will expand China’s presence in the Indian Ocean.

No wonder Beijing has backed the military offensive in Rakhine. China’s Ambassador to Myanmar Hong Liang dismissed the issue as an “internal affair” for Myanmar.

The crimes by Myanmar’s army and government against the Rohingya are both a legacy of colonialism and an injustice overlooked by various imperialisms contending for influence and control in our region. At the very least we should demand a substantial aid package for the refugees now in Bangladesh and a rapid expansion of our intake of Rohingya refugees.

The Australian government, which to date has taken in only 37 Rohingya refugees since 2013, has no right to a seat on the UN Human Rights Council if its uses it merely to sit on its hands.