Amnesty International -Taking on the sins of the world

[ray245]

Economist

FOR an organisation that has tried to broaden the definition of human rights, Amnesty International has a lot to say about violations of the old-fashioned sort. Its latest report on the state of civil liberties round the world is a ghastly tale of torture, state terror, the suppression of free speech and the curtailing of due process, under regimes of every ideological stripe.

With its cautious, empirical approach to researching abuse, “The State of the World’s Human Rights” is a tome with moral power—as useful a work of reference as the American State Department’s annual reports (on human rights and more specific matters like human trafficking and religious freedom) and those of fellow NGOs like Freedom House and Human Rights Watch.

Just as Freedom House (committed to the belief that the United States is, or at least can be, a benign power) is sometimes chided for overstressing the faults of America’s foes, Amnesty has in recent years had the opposite aura: it has often seemed to share a rhetorical platform with the opponents of capitalism and globalisation, not all of them very liberal.

But to its credit, the 2009 report pulls few punches in documenting the misdeeds of regimes that use the rhetoric of revolutionary socialism or “anti-imperial” rage. For example, it finds that last year China’s authorities “intensified their use of administrative forms of detention which allowed police to incarcerate individuals without trial.” Far from ushering in a happier, freer China, the Olympic games had brought “heightened repression throughout the country” with tighter state control over human-rights activists, religious groups, lawyers and journalists.

It devotes one of its longer entries to the woes of Iran, where at least 346 executions were carried out in 2008, and 133 juvenile offenders were at risk of being put to death. (Amnesty opposes the death penalty.) Other punishments included flogging and amputation; public stoning was supposedly stopped as a form of execution last August, but two men died by that method in December.

In Iran and many other countries, Amnesty detected a retreat in women’s rights, often in the name of religion. Dozens of Iranian women’s rights campaigners were detained and interrogated. Some were tried; up to ten were sentenced to prison terms and at least two to flogging.

It is not just Muslim theocracies that Amnesty blames for maltreating women or denying their “reproductive” rights. (The organisation has since 2007 added abortion rights to its list of core concerns, a stance the Roman Catholic church has deplored.) Even Finland—often seen as a model of sexual equality—gets a scolding. Less than 10% of rapes in that country are reported to the police, and only one in seven of those cases leads to a conviction.

With regard to its home country, Britain, Amnesty’s main complaint is not about the British authorities’ own actions but about efforts to deport people to places where they are likely—in Amnesty’s view—to be tortured. In at least two ways, the report suggests, torture and inhumanity have been “globalised” to the point where few countries can be islands of virtue. States that would never practise torture found themselves colluding with the “extraordinary rendition” of terror suspects. And migration on a huge scale has tested the ability of countries to deal humanely with desperate people.

As it lists the misdeeds of one country after another, Amnesty’s careful, plodding methodology acts as a brake on ideological fervour. But a sharper tone is struck in a foreword to the 2009 report by Irene Khan, the Bangladeshi-born secretary-general of the organisation. Primarily as a result of the economic crisis, “billions of people are suffering from insecurity, injustice and indignity,” she says. In fact, “we are sitting on a powder keg of inequality, injustice and security, and it is about to explode.”

Amnesty’s individual country reports deal mostly with the sins and failures of governments, or else de facto administrations led by warlords. In other words, the reports reflect the classic human-rights concerns (freedom of the press, freedom from arbitrary arrest) which made the organisation famous after its establishment in 1961. But Ms Khan’s list of adversaries also includes some very elusive ones: big business, climate change (see article) and impersonal economic forces—ranging from the global growth that galloped away until 2008 to the reversal of that process.

It would be hard to deny that globalisation and (to a much greater extent) its reversal have taken a human toll—but in any general account of the causes of human misery, mention could surely be made of autarchic dictatorships. In other words, countries like North Korea and Myanmar, which cut themselves off from the world economy at vast human cost.

Many observers of China agree that for all its dreadful human-rights problems, economic growth has helped to create a freer society: there is only so much control that a regime can exercise over a nation that is developing so rapidly and unpredictably. But Amnesty (perhaps inevitably, given its commitment to accentuate the negative) has little faith in economics or private business as a source of liberty.

Questioned about this, Ms Khan insists that Amnesty still sees governments as the agencies that matter most in delivering or repressing human rights. Where private firms gain too much authority (by using their own security companies, for example) it is still the fault of governments for failing to exercise countervailing power.

But unlike some critics of globalisation, Amnesty’s boss doesn’t see any category of governments as self-evidently virtuous or malign. In her view, the shift of global influence away from the rich north isn’t all good: it has boosted the influence of some countries with a decent stance on human rights (Brazil, Mexico, India) but it is also empowering harsher countries like China.

At its worst, anti-globalisation rhetoric insists (borrowing the silly slogan of Alexander Kerensky, the Russian leader who lost out to the Bolsheviks) that there are “no enemies on the left”—a line which neatly absolves the sins of many a populist dictator, theocrat, kleptocrat or misogynist. By sifting facts from all countries, Amnesty seems to steer clear of that trap.

Sadly, Amnesty still can't seems to get the fact that human rights concern is a luxury for nations that is relatively poor, and getting a poor nation to be very concerned about human rights issues themselves is not likely to happen.

[Rogue 9]

Ray, I've got a question for you. What, in your view, is the purpose of the state?

[ray245]

Ray, I've got a question for you. What, in your view, is the purpose of the state?

Isn't the role of the there to decrease the overall suffering of the nation?

[Teebs]

Isn't the role of the there to decrease the overall suffering of the nation?

Where does abusing human rights come into that? I don't really see how locking up political prisoners or torturing people is a vital part of reducing suffering in a poor nation.

[ray245]

Isn't the role of the there to decrease the overall suffering of the nation?

Where does abusing human rights come into that? I don't really see how locking up political prisoners or torturing people is a vital part of reducing suffering in a poor nation.

Look, while I believe that respecting human rights while trying to maintain stability in a nation is the right thing to do, allowing the freedom of press or speech outright in places such as the USSR could have the effect of destabilizing the nation.

Oh course, that would depends on the stability of a nation.

[Thanas]

Ray, it doesn't matter whethe the state believes it to be a bad thing. The state is not a neutral arbiter here.

And frankly, according to your logic, every state could say "Hey, we can't allow for free speech because it would be destabilizing." No, really? If free press would destabalize a country, that means that there is something really wrong with that country in the first place - something that is not related to free speech/press.

[ray245]

Ray, it doesn't matter whethe the state believes it to be a bad thing. The state is not a neutral arbiter here.

And frankly, according to your logic, every state could say "Hey, we can't allow for free speech because it would be destabilizing." No, really? If free press would destabalize a country, that means that there is something really wrong with that country in the first place - something that is not related to free speech/press.

However, isn't it better to increase the overall stability of a nation through economic growth for example, while slowly giving the people and the press more freedom as compared to giving those liberties outright?

After all, trying to re-stabilize a collapsed state like what happened to Russia when the USSR collapsed is a much harder task than putting down dissent and gain greater economic prosperity?

Hope my phrasing isn't too confusing.

[Thanas]

Ray, we have discussed this very subject in over three threads now, and the end result has always been the same.

Rebuilding a country and having free press is not mutually exclusive.

[Shroom Man 777]

If your developing nation's government has to resort to violating human rights to quell dissent, then either those dissenters are going to get liquidated or they're going to dissent very hard. With Kalashnikovs and Molotov cocktails. It will not make the country any better.

If you need to quell dissent because the dissent is widespread, then obviously the people are dissenting because you are obviously doing something horrifically wrong. Like, your government is probably sending people and Jews to gulags or extermination camps or oversized ovens.

Anyway, Ray's argument can easily be refuted by Adolf Hitler.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

However, isn't it better to increase the overall stability of a nation through economic growth for example, while slowly giving the people and the press more freedom as compared to giving those liberties outright?

I put it down to you having drank too much crap that LKY vomits out of his mouth all the time.

Ray, can you possibly give a reason why any politician, who has gotten use to throwing his weight around and ignoring press liberties would possibly want to limit his power? Why would a politician intentionally shoot himself in the foot?

[Lord of the Abyss]

Sadly, Amnesty still can't seems to get the fact that human rights concern is a luxury for nations that is relatively poor, and getting a poor nation to be very concerned about human rights issues themselves is not likely to happen.

Has it occurred to you that you have things backwards ? That the lack of human rights might be a major reason WHY the nation in question is poor and unstable ? Legions of downtrodden, enraged people do NOT increase stability. Nor are people worked as near-slaves capable of supporting a healthy economy. And then there's women's rights, in a special category due to the sheer numbers involved; a country where half the population isn't allowed to reach it's potential is naturally going to be worse off.

[Setzer]

Ray, it doesn't matter whethe the state believes it to be a bad thing. The state is not a neutral arbiter here.

And frankly, according to your logic, every state could say "Hey, we can't allow for free speech because it would be destabilizing." No, really? If free press would destabalize a country, that means that there is something really wrong with that country in the first place - something that is not related to free speech/press.

However, isn't it better to increase the overall stability of a nation through economic growth for example, while slowly giving the people and the press more freedom as compared to giving those liberties outright?

After all, trying to re-stabilize a collapsed state like what happened to Russia when the USSR collapsed is a much harder task than putting down dissent and gain greater economic prosperity?

Hope my phrasing isn't too confusing.

Economic growth really doesn't benefit everyone without a framework for distributing wealth fairly. If the upper class income bracket in a country has more money, the country as a whole is enriched, but the average man in the street really doesn't see the benefits of it. Look at the USA in the 60s. We had widespread unrest due to racially biased laws. Those who were marginalized by said laws were placated not by increased economic prosperity, but by eliminating racial discrimination in American legislation.

Also, are opressed groups likely to benefit if the laws are against them simply for existing? What's the point of accumulating wealth if the government can take it from them on the thinnest of pretexts? One could argue that economic prosperity is a pipe dream without good laws to allow it to flourish.

[AniThyng]

Arguably, from the perspective of someone who grew up in an authoritarian asian state , it is more important to increase the relative proportion of the middle class - the rich/ruling elite have little incentive to push for extended civil liberties, since they have the mobility and the power to simply go offshore or bribe their way out of any social obstacles the government may place on them, and the poor desire social justice, which strictly speaking may not necessarily include free speech as such, since they also are very likely to support religious-based restrictions on liberties, while demanding the right to speak out about being poor or marginalized or whatever. It would be the middle class, or rather, the children of the middle class* are going to be the ones who adopt a more "western" stance on social and civil rights.

(of course, the upper middle class might well just go to Australia and never come back.... *shrugs*)

[Axis Kast]

Human rights are typically the luxury of established states with stable identities that have achieved a widespread, consensual nation-hood.

Take a look at Mohammed Ayoob's The Third World Security Predicament. Ayoob makes the compelling argument - supplemented in spirit by the Paul Collier piece on elections recently posted to this forum - that since the end of the colonial era, the developing world has been expected to accomplish enormous feats of political consolidation, economic maturation and integration, and social reconciliation that required centuries when accomplished in the West, or else extraordinarily unique circumstances stemming from asymmetrical Cold War relationships in the East (the so-called "Tiger Economies").

All internal conflict and civil war is reflection of state weakness measured across two intersecting dimensions: coercive power and popular legitimacy. Conflict arises in the breakdown of what Dzeidzic, et al. call “viable peace,” or conditions wherein “zero-sum” aspects of political interaction are substantially reduced, and grievances negotiated with stakeholder buy-in. The vital predicate is a government’s exercise of effective suasion: sufficient military force to cow those beyond above-board compromise internally, and secure one’s borders against external threats; and ability to peacefully satisfy demands arising from those same two locations, usually via provision of goods and services. Optimally, suasion will be legitimate, occurring with broad consent. For Weber, statehood thus lay in achievement of monopoly on legitimate force.

The prototypical Western state provides value-added to its citizenry. Benefits include national inclusion in multilateral institutions lubricating trade or assisting in the settlement of militarized and other disputes; access to financial services, including a stable currency; and a variety of so-called “public goods,” including physical security, contract enforcement, and some forms of infrastructure. While many states do not accomplish these goals, Wolf makes the cogent remark that their fulfillment is often sorely missed. Of all that the state might offer, however, social control may be considered its primary, and most vital, function.

Drawing on the European example, Tilly insists that those who make war and build the institutions of governance are responding primarily to their own self-interest: the state is not a byproduct of some “grand bargain,” but a set of institutions, imposed at swordpoint, for the benefit of a power-accumulator. Tilly’s conception of the state is minimalist: it is, quite simply, a collection of functionally discrete, at least marginally coherent institutions whose leadership “more or less successfully” exercises a monopoly of force over those gathered within a “large, contiguous” geographical space. His approach is the more admirable for its subjectivity: there is no requirement of effective governance; merely the existence of palpable social structures with the intent of control, and local predominance.

Tilly attempts to explain how governments obtain their “authority,” which can best be understood as commingling of power and social consent. Authority is obtained by amassing sufficient power to become the final arbiter of disputes in a given area. If the authority is sufficiently strong and fortunate, he may find that he has created the fact of his own legitimacy. Tilly’s exegesis of the history of the state begins with those whose power is already a given. He posits that states were the product rather than the objective of a process of war-making, the original outcome of which was simply rent-seeking in order to continue ongoing military operations. Subordination of rivals and generation/acquisition of wealth were prerequisites of really effective war; they then opened more land to the paramount actor, and, eventually, the maintenance of the total cash flow required some system of reinvestment and administration, or upkeep. Note that in Tilly’s construction, existence of a paramount power broker is an exogenous given, as is his desire to accumulate more of the same.

According to Tilly, the first phases of “the state-making process” were characterized by an absence of both monopoly and legitimacy. Although there might be a preeminent warlord who exercised some of the functions of governance and enjoyed some of the assent mentioned above, this was tenuous: a number of actors were commissioned to do violence or take plunder before a national army existed as one coherent entity. These ranged from individual soldiers to minor subordinate lords that “successfully claimed the right to levy troops and maintain their own armed retainers.” The paramount lord has uneasy relations with subordinate power-brokers: he is at once beholden to them for military support, and at pains to gradually relieve them of the same means. This image can be mapped almost perfectly onto the contemporary state of affairs in the Darfur region, where the government raised tribal militia to compensate for military weakness, but has sometimes been unable to assert itself as their lord and master, as when certain of these forces were reported to have “rioted” in the city of El Fasher, capital of North Darfur State, in April 2008 for want of pay. Though the Sudanese government utilize El Fasher as a major logistics hub, and dispatched troops and police, they were unable to suppress the manifestation. (With respect to dependence on private military force, Sudan’s precursors are an almost endless progression of the dominant European powers as recently as the eighteenth century.)

The state (represented for our purposes by the state-builder) has an inherent interest in primacy: he gains directly from the fruits of his labor. As Frederic Lane put it, governments market protection. Yet, a glut of providers is bad for business. According to Tilly, we imagine that this is the case because the commodity is mutually exclusive (the “buyer” cannot ordinarily obtain it from more than one source), and that sales are under duress (the “buyer” can rarely choose from whom he will take his protection). Thus, there is incentive to rationalize by cutting out the competition. Depending on who manages a government, the balance between profit and rent will differ. Where providers of protection are, in fact, the government (that is, a military junta), we would expect that they would extract as high a monopoly rent as possible, while paying little attention to whether anything useful is done in the way of actually delivering that protection; an oligarchy will try to do the same, save for paying attention to the defense of its economic interests.

Ironically, while initially asserting that his program could inform developments outside of Europe, Tilly elsewhere alleged that post-colonial nations obtained power as an exogenous given, with international borders effectively inviolate by law, and pre-existing military organizations that did not need to be honed over time. These considerations are insufficient to invalidate the model. As Ayoob convincingly argues, Third World elites are as much in the business of consolidating their power as any medieval potentate in the West: the typical developing nation lacks adequate stateness – defined as a balance of coercive capacity, infrastructural power, and unconditional legitimacy” that can sideline alternative power-brokers, deliver public goods, and purport to speak for a unitary national identity. Obtaining these characteristics has traditionally required suppression of alternative identities and interests, in Europe requiring hundreds of years. Power is still acquired specifically to address security issues stemming from relative political immaturity, where insecurity is the condition pertaining when the political consequences of some event are sufficient to result in repercussions that threaten or diminish state power, as manifest in borders, structure, leadership, and response capacities. The implication of this logic is that legitimacy is a historically mediated outcome, divorced from particular moral attachments – a view leading inexorably to exoneration of arms suppliers to “bad men,” the definition of which is now contingent.

Tilly’s state-building mandated four key competencies: prosecution of violence against external opponents; elimination of internal opponents by “[e]liminating or neutralizing;” assistance to “clients;” and, finally, the collection of tax. Building in part on this analysis, Ayoob fixes a new definition with three requirements: war, policing, and taxation, all of which require monopolization of force. Generally speaking, the earlier the phases of this state building, the greater the violence pertaining thereto. Accepting that violence is part and parcel of state creation, Ayoob observes that absence of totalistic legitimacy and the “societal consensus” for unitary action was a problem familiar to state-builders in Europe as much as the Third World; the chief comparative difference lies in that Europe’s struggles are past, while the developing world’s have only just begun. Ayoob admits frankly that state-making has involved “piecemeal incorporation” of actors whose parochial “social, economic or political interests” are at odds with the centralizing state, via divide-and-conquer strategies, or “even . . . using force,” and accepts implicitly that this may also be the future may be as violent. Perhaps equally important, states are today prohibited by tradition (i.e., lack of precedent) from repudiation of their own responsibilities over geographic space: they may not govern, but they are still considered governors under international law, with all the political assumptions (and presumptive rights) therein entailed.

Making similar observations, Herbst claims that African government is almost uniformly frustrated by this legacy, because due to low population density, governance of the expansive territorial states of post-colonial Africa entails unusually high costs. As he explains, statesmen have tended to exercise meaningful control over specific assets – the national capital, “critical urban areas,” and the most important means of production or extraction – while authority in the periphery becomes a function of opportunity. The outcome of the strict application of international norms of sovereignty is the preservation of the weak state despite its demonstrated irrelevance to societies at the territorial margins. Yet Herbst’s complaint that boundaries do not speak to “facts on the ground” is no departure from the familiar European experience. Wedgewood remembers for us that European government was no more competent on the eve of the Thirty Years’ War. As she writes, “The routine of government was ill-organized; politicians worked with inadequate help; honesty, efficiency, and loyalty were comparatively rare, and the average statesman seems to have worked on the assumption that a perpetual leakage of funds and information was inevitable.” Ayoob is also careful to draw the distinction between the functional national state and the ideational nation-state, which is a relatively homogenous polity with respect to its language, religion, and “symbolic identity.” The national state was the historical predecessor of the nation-state, which, Ayoob asserts, was the output of a process of consolidation and integration that only moved forward when the state is already a given, not a thing of dispute.

In conclusion, Sudan is a state with architecture no less fragile than what was known in Europe during the medieval period, but also well beyond. The example of fully-fledged Western democracy has worsened the weight on state-makers of today by introducing both political awareness (thus the possibility of disrupted legitimacy) as well as demands for egalitarian outcomes both from above and below. Where populations adopt “the Western yardstick of political legitimacy” (i.e., popular buy-in), state-builders in the developing world will face a new set of challenges. The problems of modernity are equally significant: the rise of literacy, education on the Occidental model, industrial economics, and rapid communication has (in some cases) restructured the set of “haves” and “have-nots” in developing societies. Distortions of access during the colonial era, and its continued practice in the present day, fuel even hotter resentment.

Anti-statist aspects of globalization also apply. Modern technology permits mobilization across enormous distances in real-time, and rapid transportation; the organizational advantage once inherent in large, central government – with the only funds for developing railways and mail routes – has been neutralized by the satellite phone. The Thuriyya mobile set has played a significant role in marshalling forces on both sides of the Darfuri fault line. The second factor is widespread proliferation of small arms – potent, low-cost, man-portable firepower. Warfare no longer depends on a military-industrial complex requiring large investments. Sudan plays host to a major trade in small arms. The SAS describes Sudan as both a point-of-origin and transfer site for small arms heading to Central Africa and the nearby Horn, while the supply of domestic arms is anywhere between 1.9 and 3.2 million firearms, of which 66% are in private possession, while 20% are in government hands, and the balance is held by “current and former armed groups.” The Survey observed that transit of small arms is facilitated by “longstanding migratory patterns” and the weakness of security organs, which are open to both depredation and the lure of selling their own equipment to obtain private income. Various governments have endowed small arms to non-state actors with which they are in sympathy, as well as to auxiliary troops that replace or augment regular military forces. Thus, one gets the impression that we are seeing war in exactly the place we might expect.

[Axis Kast]

Gah, sorry about that. That was from a paper of mine. On second glance, I didn't manage to cut out all of the case-specific detail (I addressed the issue of state formation as part of a theoretical discussion on potential governance models in modern Sudan). The argument, however, is of course transferable to all developing states.

[Rogue 9]

Isn't the role of the there to decrease the overall suffering of the nation?

Where does abusing human rights come into that? I don't really see how locking up political prisoners or torturing people is a vital part of reducing suffering in a poor nation.

Look, while I believe that respecting human rights while trying to maintain stability in a nation is the right thing to do, allowing the freedom of press or speech outright in places such as the USSR could have the effect of destabilizing the nation.

Oh course, that would depends on the stability of a nation.

Okay, so the purpose of the state is to provide stability. Now, leaving aside the question of whether or not oppression actually provides stability, I'm going to ask you this: Why is stability a desirable goal?

(And yes, I acknowledge that it is a desirable goal; I just want you to think about the reason why.)

[ray245]

Okay, so the purpose of the state is to provide stability. Now, leaving aside the question of whether or not oppression actually provides stability, I'm going to ask you this: Why is stability a desirable goal?

(And yes, I acknowledge that it is a desirable goal; I just want you to think about the reason why.)

Well, doesn't stability of a nation reduce the likelihood of people in a nation falling below the proverty line, being able to have a functional justice system and is able provides adequate welfare to society?

Arguably, from the perspective of someone who grew up in an authoritarian asian state , it is more important to increase the relative proportion of the middle class - the rich/ruling elite have little incentive to push for extended civil liberties, since they have the mobility and the power to simply go offshore or bribe their way out of any social obstacles the government may place on them, and the poor desire social justice, which strictly speaking may not necessarily include free speech as such, since they also are very likely to support religious-based restrictions on liberties, while demanding the right to speak out about being poor or marginalized or whatever. It would be the middle class, or rather, the children of the middle class* are going to be the ones who adopt a more "western" stance on social and civil rights.

That's what I'm trying to say. That the end goal is still giving more civil liberties to the general population, but it depends on creating a sizable middle class who is in a position to force the state to give more civil liberties and the nation is stable enough to sustain those reforms.

Has it occurred to you that you have things backwards ? That the lack of human rights might be a major reason WHY the nation in question is poor and unstable ? Legions of downtrodden, enraged people do NOT increase stability. Nor are people worked as near-slaves capable of supporting a healthy economy. And then there's women's rights, in a special category due to the sheer numbers involved; a country where half the population isn't allowed to reach it's potential is naturally going to be worse off.

Of course, a total disregard towards all human rights would decrease the overall productivity of a nation. However, aren't the majority of a population willingly to overlook certain but not all civil liberties as long as they are able to increase their living standards from the poverty line? After all, there are many cases of nations increasing their wealth even if they don't have a good human rights record, such as China or the four Asian tigers.

Maybe I'm wrong, but doesn't a rapid introduction of freedom of speech and press liberties in the USSR cause a more people to fall below a poverty line rather than a slow and steadier pace of economic and civil liberties reform? The reason I hold this belief is purely due to what I can understand about the fall of the soviet Union. Of course, my opinion can be changed if people show me the fall of the USSR isn't due to Gorbachev allowing the people and the press to criticizes the government.

Ray, can you possibly give a reason why any politician, who has gotten use to throwing his weight around and ignoring press liberties would possibly want to limit his power? Why would a politician intentionally shoot himself in the foot?

Perhaps he can realize that refusing civil liberties towards people would further aggravate the majority of the people as time pass by? A politician stays in power as long as he can give people what they want.


P.S. I'm won't be able to response to any replies for the rest of the week as I'm having my exams. Will response when my exams are over.

[Rogue 9]

Okay, so the purpose of the state is to provide stability. Now, leaving aside the question of whether or not oppression actually provides stability, I'm going to ask you this: Why is stability a desirable goal?

(And yes, I acknowledge that it is a desirable goal; I just want you to think about the reason why.)

Well, doesn't stability of a nation reduce the likelihood of people in a nation falling below the proverty line, being able to have a functional justice system and is able provides adequate welfare to society?

So to sum up, would it be fair to say that you agree that the end purpose of the state is to serve the overall well-being of it's citizens?

Since you cannot reply until your exams are over, I'm going to proceed from the assumption that this is not misrepresenting your viewpoint and predicate my argument upon that. If I have misinterpreted your meaning, please feel free to correct me when you return.

If the purpose of the state is the well-being of it's citizens, then the state must, in a sense, serve the citizens, or at least serve their interests. It is important to bear this in mind when discussing the state; it's function is that of servant, not master.

With this in mind, the question arises: What right does the state have to rob its citizens of their liberties and their own voice in government? To do so is directly counter to the interests of the citizens, and therefore to the purpose of the state. To do so is to suborn the reason the state exists in the first place; I contend that a state that behaves as such has abrogated its own right to exist and ought to be replaced with another that does not behave so. Even if you do not hold such an admittedly extreme viewpoint. it follows that for a state, the purpose of which is to protect the rights and welfare of its citizens, to undermine and damage the rights and welfare of its citizens is contrary to the reason states are desirable in the first place; when the state becomes the very source of the ills that it is supposed to protect against, then something has gone seriously awry with the state.

I wish you the best of luck with your exams, and eagerly await your reply.

[PeZook]

With this in mind, the question arises: What right does the state have to rob its citizens of their liberties and their own voice in government? To do so is directly counter to the interests of the citizens, and therefore to the purpose of the state. To do so is to suborn the reason the state exists in the first place; I contend that a state that behaves as such has abrogated its own right to exist and ought to be replaced with another that does not behave so. Even if you do not hold such an admittedly extreme viewpoint. it follows that for a state, the purpose of which is to protect the rights and welfare of its citizens, to undermine and damage the rights and welfare of its citizens is contrary to the reason states are desirable in the first place; when the state becomes the very source of the ills that it is supposed to protect against, then something has gone seriously awry with the state.

You are making the unreasonable assumption that all states are the same, that they face the same conditions and challenges and have no prior history of violence, ethnic hatred, economic collapse and other niceties.

If a politician comes to power in a state torn apart by ethnic violence, and wishes to engage in good governance, he needs to set his priorities: restoration of order comes first, and it may be necessary to violate some people's human rights in order to do it - by, say, killing them due to collateral damage, imprisoning them in poor conditions, suspending freedom of assembly, nationalizing their property, etc.

In this sense, human rights are a luxury - for this particular nation. While it's true that respect for human rights generally helps with stability and economic well-being, situations sometimes dictate they have to be violated. To use an extreme example, the Allies killed a fuckload of people during their preparation for Normandy landings, when entire French towns were levelled from the air to impede progress of german armor. Resistance fighters executed collaborators, bombed German cafes and cinemas, the Sri Lankan government had to kill hundreds of their own people in order to wipe out the Tamil Tigers. In all these cases, the government clearly did the right thing, openly violating human rights in the process.

[Teebs]

If a politician comes to power in a state torn apart by ethnic violence, and wishes to engage in good governance, he needs to set his priorities: restoration of order comes first, and it may be necessary to violate some people's human rights in order to do it - by, say, killing them due to collateral damage, imprisoning them in poor conditions, suspending freedom of assembly, nationalizing their property, etc.

In this sense, human rights are a luxury - for this particular nation. While it's true that respect for human rights generally helps with stability and economic well-being, situations sometimes dictate they have to be violated. To use an extreme example, the Allies killed a fuckload of people during their preparation for Normandy landings, when entire French towns were levelled from the air to impede progress of german armor. Resistance fighters executed collaborators, bombed German cafes and cinemas, the Sri Lankan government had to kill hundreds of their own people in order to wipe out the Tamil Tigers. In all these cases, the government clearly did the right thing, openly violating human rights in the process.

The obvious (but ignored) point in both the examples you provide is that the violations of civil rights took place as part of a war, and were commited against people on enemy held territory. Hardly the same thing.

[PeZook]

The obvious (but ignored) point in both the examples you provide is that the violations of civil rights took place as part of a war, and were commited against people on enemy held territory. Hardly the same thing.

If we can excuse human rights violations against one's own citizens (collaborators and people too close to army operations in Sri Lanka) during war, then this is effectively a concession that in some cases, the state is allowed to disregard human rights to pursue a more important goal, such as physical survival or restoration of order. Therefore, for some states, protecting human rights can be a luxury they cannot afford.

It's just a question of determining when it's excusable, and when not. Obviously, "maintenance of my personal power" is not, "protecting stability" is in some cases, "physical survival of the nation" is in most cases entirely excusable.

[Axis Kast]

If the purpose of the state is the well-being of it's citizens, then the state must, in a sense, serve the citizens, or at least serve their interests. It is important to bear this in mind when discussing the state; it's function is that of servant, not master.

Who defines the citizenry, and to what standards of behavior is the servant to be held?

The contemporary West is a byproduct of hundreds of years of self-aggrandizement ("the Wars of Kings"), genocide (the obliteration of Native American culture in the Americas), and the often bloody imposition of national consensus, all in the absence of mature conceptions of human rights, and usually accountability, too.

By the standards of even 1800, for example, what is going on in Darfur may be understood simply as rebellion against a distant sovereign.

What is the government of a developing nation to do when democracy would give rise to unfettered aspirations of ethnic hegemony, as in the former Yugoslavia? How about under conditions in which "state death" is practically unheard of? Haven't we done away, to some extent, with the evolutionary process of national cohesion? There is no practical consequence, anymore, for being a failed state except an indefinite period of chaos and brutality.

[Thanas]

Okay...can anyone point out to me when exactly free press has resulted in the destruction of a country?

[AniThyng]

Free Press != Responsible press though - sensational reporting can cause quite a lot of damage if it results in the incitement of (admittedly preexising) unrest. Like some of the other rights enumerated here, a free press is a luxury best reserved for nations have have already achieved a certain level of social and political maturity.

Not that I necessarily agree that a muzzled government controlled press is a good thing, mind.

[Thanas]

Free Press != Responsible press though - sensational reporting can cause quite a lot of damage if it results in the incitement of (admittedly preexising) unrest. Like some of the other rights enumerated here, a free press is a luxury best reserved for nations have have already achieved a certain level of social and political maturity.

Why? All you need is good regulation.