Last year, we celebrated the 70th anniversary of the creation of the bible of civil liberties- The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, and yet, what an appalling year it has been for the same. Probable genocide in Myanmar; imprisonment and murder of journalists in Egypt and Turkey; authoritarian minded leaders voted to power in Brazil, India, Hungary, Russia, Italy and Austria; Oppression in China, Cambodia and Venezuela; Children separated from their parents and locked upright in the heart of Trump’s America. And let us not even mention North Korea.
Let us recall a time when abuses were called on people who harmed humanity, human right violators had something to fear. But the silence of public officials today is astounding; their hypocrisy, senile. The fear brims that these people are neither willing nor able to raise opposition, which allows the worst violators to act with impunity.
In Yemen recently, a bus carrying school children was blown up, struck by a missile. These attacks, rapidly and gradually, are becoming extremely commonplace. Children targeted as they go to schools, walk out to play, attend weddings. Schools left in tatters. In Syria, if one notices the rhetoric of the west, the rhetoric is quite strident. Where is the severe condemnation these airstrikes should have called for?
What does this say about the leaders that sit on the thrones of Member nations of the security council? To be very honest, it doesn’t say very much, really. The way the release of their defence contracts resonates silences. There might as well be a nexus between weapon sales, and the resulting muted repercussions to what is happening in Yemen today.
The Rohingya population in northern Rakhine: In October 2016, there was a major attack. In the conference that followed, speculations cite that the word, ‘Rohingya’ wasn’t even mentioned in the entirety, the distinct recognition of these people. If your identity, your recognition is taken away, what do you become? You become- Disposable.
Our world is far from perfect. We lack resistance. But when will we start fighting, When the very base that makes us human lies discombobulated, in shackles? It is easy to believe, that now that we have our human rights, they will remain with us forever, never be eradicated. But they are essentially like the air you breathe. You take it for granted until you are gasping for your last one.