By Zabih Ullah Khattak (Pakistan)
Thousands of pages have been filled, hundreds of thousands of videos, reports, documentaries have been made but no solace is seen at the horizon. The Human Rights mantra is largely anticipated and one is not dare to call himself a human rights activist but a question that could be circulating around my mind is that if everyone is sane then who the aligns are that could relinquish us with a drastic human rights crisis?
Writers, Bloggers, Youtubers and reporters are the central entities from where we hear the Human Rights discussions. However, the information emanating from these sources are distorted due to their personal tilt to the acceded facts by them. Furthermore, those who are reluctant to obscure the hidden facts and voice to the voiceless are not solely contributing on the basis of humanity but rather their personal interest.
Long ago the US and Europe displaying themselves as the ultimate panacea for those who are facing human rights violation but here one can conspicuously raise a question once read and check the past history of them or their contemporary self explained human rights violation. Adding to that, European imperialism maimed the entire world and every corner of the world was illegally occupied as Aljazeera reported that the British Empire during ruling on India stole $45 trillion. Similarly, British imperialism imprisoned the people of Africa, North America along with intervention into the Chinese kingdom. Most recently, under the pretext of the Balfour declaration they could decide to give the Palestinian land to the Jewish settlers which made the situation even murkier. Moreover, the world wars and inter war period could not guess them as the protector of human rights.
Henceforth, the cold war era did see deadly fighting among nation states and despite bringing them on the negotiation table, they did draw a stark line between eastern and western which further split the world and human Rights was an unseen phenomenon.
The aftermath of the USSR invasion of Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of civilians became homeless, thousands of innocent people had been killed, and theirhomes were tarnished would one not be suspicious about the largely anticipated Human Rights drama. Adding to that, the US did criticize USSR and provided a whopping amount to mujahedeen and took those legitimate freedom fighters but a decade later the similar force became terrorists and once again jostled the Afghanis into the hell fire and for twenty years they did bear the brunt of war.
Moreover, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine portrayed another picture of a volatile human rights picture and increased the intensity of the matter that those who are uttering Human Rights day and night are the real perpetrators which temperate the situation.
The recent carnage on the people of Palestine and the US’s widespread support of Israel revealed that a largely believed human rights protector dare not speak about the Ghazans and Lebanese civilians relentlessly bearing the Israelis’ carnage. The war criminals are widely getting assistance from those who repetitively stress upon the rest of the world to accept them as leaders.
In a nutshell, the two words Human…..and…Rights are no use once demanded of their implication from your side and it would be easy to criticize, advise, recommend and curse if altered to their norms, while rendering once one system under the shadow of human rights to be provided to the people is quite difficult task and no one seems better comply to the requirements.
In conclusion, Human Rights cannot be channeled where the interest of the party does not serve, we need a universal Human Rights body that could work to overcome the human rights violation and shall not use tactics to skip the Human Rights when needed.
