Reflections A very human right By Hani Shukrallah Today marks the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document which, despite its many shortcomings, records one of the great moral victories achieved by humanity in this and any other century. It is all the more remarkable in that the cut-throat states that voted for it in the UN General Assembly were not committed to its principles, nor did they have any intention of seriously observing them -- not even the "right to own property". Millions of dispossessed farmers throughout the world before the issuing of the Declaration and after it -- not to mention the little matter of a nation called Palestine -- give ample testimony to the disrespect for this right capitalism actually shows outside the realm of ideology. Ultimately, the document is a moral statement, a credo of this century, reflecting a history of human struggle against oppression, in which the defeat of fascism was then only the last of manifold chapters. And despite its shortcomings, the document has not paled with age. Rather, it is the reality that we see around us, in the advanced Western countries as in the rest of the world, that presents a very sorry sight when contrasted with the resolve expressed in the Declaration. How "Western" are human rights? And how is a local, nationally- or culturally-specific discourse on human rights developed? More important, can a human rights movement put down roots in a country such as Egypt, and how? I have tried to discuss some of these issues, in this space and elsewhere, on many previous occasions. As I write today, however, such questions seem a luxury. An influential group has apparently decided to mark the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration by acting to liquidate the Egyptian human rights movement. The tools of their trade -- basically a combination of brute force and vulgar journalism, based on vicious slander, outright lies and innuendo -- are too crude to evoke a desire for the serious debate of serious issues. "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment," reads Article 5 of the Declaration. Is this by any chance a Western notion, supposedly alien to our "culture"? I have written before about the European envoy who told a Human Rights Watch representative that "Egyptians expected to be mistreated while in police custody". He would seem to believe that Article 5 of the Universal Declaration is a Western notion that may apply in his home country, but not in Egypt. But so, of course, do the officials and "independent" journalists for whom reports on the police raid on the Upper Egyptian village of Al-Koshh were an occasion to plunge into a frenzied attack on the human rights movement in Egypt. Since everybody admits that certain forms of "torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" did take place in Al-Koshh, there can be only one rationale behind the accusation that only spies (in the pay of the UK or other "enemy" states) would object to such treatment being meted out to Egyptian citizens. That rationale can only be that Egyptians like being tortured, abused and mistreated, or at least do not object to it too strongly. I find this whole notion of "tarnishing Egypt's image abroad" demeaning; it manages to transform us into a nation of dragomen whose only concern is the next tourist season. But what is more "tarnishing" to our image anywhere; to "expect" to be tortured and humiliated by our security bodies, or to rise up against such practices? As it happens, Egyptians -- most of whom have never read the Universal Declaration or even heard of it -- do object, very strongly, to being tortured or subjected to any kind of "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment." So much so that, in the '70s, in what was then described by officialdom as "regretful incidents", tens of thousands of people would riot and stone and even put to the torch police stations where torture was being conducted. Similar incidents took place as recently as this year, most notably in the Delta town of Bilqas -- though they did not take the phenomenal form that they had in the '70s. Article 5, I am the first to admit, does not settle the question of whether human rights are by their very nature culturally-biased or not. I would be very happy for the moment, however, if this question at least is settled. So long as a single person is being tortured or subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by our security bodies, and so long as such practices take place without the most fierce denunciation from all sections of the society, then we should mark 10 December every year by hanging our heads in shame.
