Category Archives: human rights and democracy

BBC

RaefBadawiThe activist, Raef Badawi, co-founded the Free Saudi Liberals website, an online forum for public debate.
He was arrested last year and convicted on Monday of setting up a website that undermined general security.
Mr Badawi was originally charged with apostasy, or abandonment of religion, a crime in Saudi Arabia that carries with it the death penalty.
Mr Badawi, a father of three, had confirmed in court that he was a Muslim but told the judge “everyone has a choice to believe or not believe.”
He was convicted of the charges of setting up a website that undermines general security and of ridiculing religious figures.
The judge ordered that the 600 lashes be administered 150 at a time.

Hugo Swire

Hugo SwireWhat democracy with universal suffrage in Hong Kong will look like is, of course, for the governments of Hong Kong and China – and the people of Hong Kong – to decide in line with the Basic Law. There is no perfect model anywhere in the world, but the important thing is that the people of Hong Kong have a genuine choice to enable them to feel they have a real stake in the outcome. This is no easy undertaking, but then few things worth having are.
Dialogue and co-operation between all parties will be vital for a smooth resolution of this important issue. And, of course, Britain stands ready to support in any way we can.
But it is not just because of my belief in democracy as a universal right that I am a supporter of the transition to universal suffrage. Certainty over Hong Kong’s constitutional future is also important to business and investor confidence in Asia’s leading international financial centre. The city is home to around 1,000 British businesses, many of which have made Hong Kong their regional hub.
Like many others in the international community, the UK therefore has a big economic stake in seeing Hong Kong continue as the prosperous, stable and energetic centre that we see today.

Amnesty International

REPORTED EXECUTIONS IN 2012

Afghanistan (14), Bangladesh (1), Belarus (3+), Botswana (2), China (+), Gambia (9), India (1), Iran (314+), Iraq (129+), Japan (7), North Korea (6+), Pakistan (1), Palestinian Authority7 (6, Hamas de facto administration in Gaza), Saudi Arabia (79+), Somalia (6+; 5+ by the Transitional Federal Government, and 1 in Puntland), South Sudan (5+), Sudan (19+), Taiwan (6), United Arab Emirates (UAE) (1), USA (43), Yemen (28+).

At least 682 executions were known to have been carried out worldwide, two more than in 2011. However, these figures do not include the thousands of people who were believed to have been executed in China. Since its 2009 report, Amnesty International stopped publishing its estimates on the use of the death penalty in China.
Official figures on the use of the death penalty were available only in a small number of countries. In Belarus, China, Mongolia and Viet Nam, data on the use of the death penalty continued to be classified as a state secret. Little or no information was available in some countries, in particular Belize, Egypt, Eritrea, Libya, Malaysia, North Korea, Suriname and Syria, due to restrictive state practice and/or political instability.

A former staff of the Committee to Investigate Lese Majeste Cases in the Royal Thai Police

Do you think the law needs to be reformed?
We know that lese majeste is not doing any good to His Majesty but we are put in a very difficult position. As police, we feel society expects us to persecute those deemed a ‘threat to the nation’. There is too much emotion in society about the royal institution. If the Committee begins to relax its role, then other units both within and outside the police will scrutinize us. It’s difficult to find an alternative to satisfy everyone. Hence, the status quo.
I do think that article 112 does need reform. But before we reform it we need to ask ourselves again for what or whom this article is meant? If the purpose of article 112 is national unity then I think the punishment is too harsh. Perhaps the problem is with the case processing…why is it a police’s responsibility, for example? Could the Bureau of Royal Household take over? I don’t think it is practical to do away with article 112 altogether. Too many people in society will oppose such move.
What should be reformed?
Indeed some people believe there is nothing wrong with the actual wording of article 112 per se, but the problem is its application. There is too much societal pressure to persecute violators so harsh that it becomes difficult to properly use the law. In truth I feel that since the law itself is flawed, enforcing it becomes inherently problematic.

David Cameron, Mats Tunehag

Freedom of ReligionDavid CameronDavid Cameron: I believe a genuinely liberal country does much more; it believes in certain values and actively promotes them. Freedom of speech, freedom of worship, democracy, the rule of law, equal rights regardless of race, sex or sexuality.

Mats TunehagMats Tunehag: Freedom of religion includes the right to have a faith, to manifest it and propagate for it, alone or together with others, also in the public arena. It also gives the right to change beliefs and religious affiliation. This is what democracies would adhere to.
Freedom of worship is a definition practiced (sic) in countries influenced by Islam. You may be allowed to be a Christian, but you mustn’t take it into the public arena or share your faith with others. If you are a Muslim you are free to be a Muslim and display it publically but you can’t leave Islam.

David Koyzis

helmetgg2If, as Melanie Philips puts it, human rights is a religion for a godless age, then this edifice must be its temple: Human rights museum details unveiled. The magisterium for this new faith will be located in Winnipeg. Of course every ecclesial establishment must have its own website. Just how many Canadians can be expected to make the annual hajj to the holy city on the Red and Assiniboine Rivers is unclear.

HRmuseum1Human-Rights-Museum-1121128 aerial photo20 bm.JPG

Melanie Phillips

More seriously still, human rights law has been used to destroy control over the country’s borders. A series of court rulings laid down the right of illegal immigrants to welfare benefits — thus undermining the very basis of citizenship — and refused to allow the deportation of terrorist suspects to countries where there was any record of abuses of human rights.
The ideas that rights in Britain depend on human rights law is grotesque. England, after all, is the cradle of Western liberty as a result of English common law, which held that everything was permitted unless it was prohibited. Now, only what is codified and court-approved can be allowed.
Not surprisingly, liberty in Britain is now in fact much diminished. The universities close down politically incorrect debate. Anyone who criticises a minority group risks vilification and the loss of promotion or job prospects.
Freedom of religious conscience, the defining value of a liberal society, has effectively been abolished. Catholic adoption agencies will be forced to close if they refuse to place children for adoption with gay couples. But then “human rights” has come to be seen, in the words of one activist, as “a religion for a godless age“.
Human rights law has nothing to do with true liberalism. It is instead a judicial delivery system for cultural Marxism. In short, Britain’s human rights culture should more properly be known as a culture of human wrongs. Australia, be warned.

Michael J. Perry

The idea of human rights consists of two parts: the premise or claim that every human being is sacred (inviolable, etc.), and the further claim that because every human being is sacred (and given all other relevant information), certain choices should be made and certain other choices rejected; in particular, certain things ought not to be done to any human being and certain other things ought to be done for every human being. One fundamental challenge to the idea of human rights addresses the first part of the idea; it contests the claim that every human being is sacred. Another fundamental challenge, the one with which this article is principally concerned, addresses the second part of the idea. According to this latter challenge, whether or not every human being is sacred — and, so, even if every human being is sacred — there are no things that ought not to be done (not even any things that conditionally rather than unconditionally ought not to be done) to any human being and no things that ought to be done (not even any things that conditionally rather than unconditionally ought to be done) for every human being. That is, no putatively “human” right is truly a human right: no such right is the right of every human being; in that sense, no such right — no such “ought” or “ought not”–is truly universal. Before addressing this challenge, which shall be referred to as the relativist challenge to the idea of human rights, a comment on the other fundamental challenge, which contests the claim that every human being is sacred, is in order.

Barack Obama

ObamaEgyptAmerica cannot determine the future of Egypt. That’s a task for the Egyptian people. We don’t take sides with any particular party or political figure.
We’ve been blamed by supporters of Morsi. We’ve been blamed by the other side, as if we are supporters of Morsi. That kind of approach will do nothing to help Egyptians achieve the future that they deserve. We want Egypt to succeed. We want a peaceful, democratic, prosperous Egypt. That’s our interest. But to achieve that, the Egyptians are going to have to do the work.

Marina Ottaway, David Ottaway

OttawaysIn spite of the massive popular protests that have swept away two Arab strongmen and shaken half a dozen monarchies and republics, the Arab world has yet to witness any fundamental change in ruling elites and even less in the nature of governance.
The uprisings sweeping across the Middle East have similar causes and share certain conditions: authoritarian and ossified regimes, economic hardship, and a growing contrast between great wealth and dire poverty, all worsened by the extraordinarily large number of young people who demand a better future. But the consequences will not be the same everywhere.
In Tunisia and Egypt, the same well-developed bureaucratic states and powerful military and security forces that buttressed authoritarian rule remain intact and seemingly determined to curb the pro-democracy momentum generated so far. A change in ruling elites and system of governance is still a distant goal.
Democracy can only emerge in the context of functioning institutions, not of chaos. Unfortunately, the strong state institutions also bolstered the old regimes. They were not one-man affairs: no matter how authoritarian Mubarak or Ben Ali were, they did not rule single-handedly. Their regimes were multi-layered, supported by massive security apparatuses and extensive bureaucracies, and used, among other purposes, to produce landslide electoral victories for the ruling parties.

市川房枝

FusaeIchikawa2出たい人より出したい人を

平和なくして平等なく、平等なくして平和はない

母の女の悲しみが、私の小さな体にしみついた

私の長い人生は母の嘆きを出発点に選んでしまったようである

誠実、正直、権利の上に眠るな

選挙を清潔にできないで、政治をきれいにすることはできない

易延友

Img381756292清华大学副教授易延友
强奸陪酒女比强奸良家妇女危害性要小。”

Yi Yanyou, Head of the Law School Evidence Act Center of Tsinghua University, wrote that raping a hostess [women hired by bars and clubs to fill up the venue, dance on the dance floor, drink with customers but rarely anything more] is less harmful than raping a woman from a good family.

qinghua-professor-raping-hostesses-is-less-harmless-01「ホステスをレイプするのは良家の女性への(同様の)行為に比べ、悪質性は低い」。中国の有名大学、清華大の男性教授が短文投稿サイト「微博(ウェイボ)」に対し、ホステスらへの暴行を容認したとも受け取れる差別的文章を投稿し、人権や法の下の平等を理解していないとして猛烈な批判を浴びている。

Le Monde.fr

marine-le-penLe Parlement européen a décidé mardi 2 juillet de lever l’immunité parlementaire de Marine Le Pen, à la demande du parquet de Lyon, lequel veut l’entendre dans le cadre d’une enquête pour incitation à la haine raciale.
La présidente du Front national, députée européenne, est visée par une plainte du Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l’amitié entre les peuples (MRAP) relative à ses propos du 10 décembre 2010 établissant un parallèle entre les prières des musulmans dans la rue en France et l’Occupation.
Ce jour-là, Marine Le Pen avait évoqué en ces termes certaines prières musulmanes en public :

“Je suis désolée, mais pour ceux qui aiment beaucoup parler de la seconde guerre mondiale, s’il s’agit de parler d’occupation, on pourrait en parler pour le coup. C’est une occupation de pans de territoire. Certes, il n’y a pas de blindés, il n’y a pas de soldats, mais elle pèse sur les habitants.”

Le 18 juin, à propos de ces mêmes prières et en pleine polémique sur les apéros saucisson-pinard, l’éurodéputée avait déja usé de la comparaison :

“Très clairement comme en 1940, certains croient se comporter dans la France de 2010 comme une armée d’occupation dans un pays conquis.”

Les eurodéputés ont accepté de lever son immunité, conformément à l’avis rendu par leur commission juridique qui, réunie à huis clos, s’était prononcée à une large majorité dans ce sens, le 19 juin.

Michael Ignatieff

AmericanHumanRightsSince 1945 America has displayed exceptional leadership in promoting international human rights. At the same time, however, it has also resisted complying with human rights standards at home or aligning its foreign policy with these standards abroad. Under some administrations, it has promoted human rights as if they were synonymous with American values, while under others, it has emphasized the superiority of American values over international standards. This combination of leadership and resistance is what defines American human rights behavior as exceptional, and it is this complex and ambivalent pattern that the book seeks to explain.

Islam Times

n00237257-bIslam in the Kingdom of Al-Saud is but only a thick cover behind which a bunch of corrupt people hide, those who have a crazy desire to impose their thinking, wishes, desires, and doctrines on others, even if by force and coercion. Hence, which Islam is the one that is filling the prisons, silos, and secret torture detention centers with the prisoners of conscience, political prisoners, and journalists who do not have any fault but that they did not glorify in their speeches, statements, or programs the royal-personality or the Saudi Kings, or that they had criticized a Saudi prince, even if he was from the princes of the sixth generation?!
Which Islam is the one that has no religious fortune but only when reciting the Athan and forcing people to close their shops and the places of work during the five prayer times?!
About which Islam the Saudi princes are speaking, while they are living in a state of opulence, extravagance, and wastefulness to the extent that the remnants of the Saudi princes tables is enough alone to solve the problem of famine in Somalia?!

Associated Press

SasagawaThe U.N. goodwill ambassador for eliminating leprosy has written to Pope Francis complaining about his recent comment that careerism among Catholic Church officials was “a leprosy.”
In a letter to Francis released Thursday, Ambassador Yohei Sasakawa wrote that such remarks can reinforce discrimination against leprosy patients and their families. He said he feared the Argentine-born pope’s comments could have a big impact in South America, “where there are many Catholics and still quite a few people affected by leprosy.”
Sasakawa asked for an audience with the pope to update him on the fight against the disease.
Speaking on June 6 to students of the Vatican’s diplomatic academy, Francis urged them not to become career-focused bureaucrats but to be missionary priests. He said: “Carreerism is a leprosy, a leprosy.”

Francis X. Rocca

Pope smiles as he greets crowd after praying rosary at Basilica of St. Mary Major in RomeUsing especially strong language on one of his favorite themes, Pope Francis decried a plague of careerism among priests and urged them to renounce their personal ambitions for service to the church — warning that failure to do so would make them look “ridiculous.”
Careerism is a leprosy, a leprosy,” the pope said June 6, in a speech to students from the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, the school for future Vatican diplomats. “Please, no careerism!”

Aljazeera

An Egyptian court has convicted 43 non-governmental organisation (NGO) workers, including at least 16 Americans, of illegally using foreign funds to foment unrest in the country, sentencing them to up to five years in jail.
The contentious bill, proposed by President Mohammed Morsi and currently under debate by the country’s interim legislature, would allow the state to control nonprofits’ activities as well as their domestic and international funding.

United Nations Committee against Torture

Concluding observations on the second periodic report of Japan, adopted by the Committee at its fiftieth session (6-31 May 2013)

The Committee reiterates its previous recommendations (para.15) that the State party should:

  1. Take legislative and other measures to ensure, in practice, separation between the functions of investigation and detention;
  2. Limit the maximum time detainees can be held in police custody;
  3. Guarantee all fundamental legal safeguards for all suspects in pre-trial detention, including the right of confidential access to a lawyer throughout the interrogation process, and to legal aid from the moment of arrest, and to all police records related to their case, as well as the right to receive independent medical assistance, and to contact relatives;
  4. Consider abolishing the Daiyo Kangoku system in order to bring the State party’s legislation and practices fully into line with international standards.

The Committee reiterates its previous recommendations (para.16) that the State party should take all necessary steps to in practice ensure inadmissibility in court of confessions obtained under torture and ill-treatment in all cases in line with article 38(2) of the Constitution, article 319(1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure as well as article 15 of the Convention by, inter alia,:

  1. Establishing rules concerning the length of interrogations, with appropriate sanctions for non-compliance;
  2. Improving criminal investigation methods to end practices whereby confession is relied on as the primary and central element of proof in criminal prosecution;
  3. Implementing safeguards such as electronic recordings of the entire interrogation process and ensuring that recordings are made available for use in trials;
  4. Informing the Committee of the number of confessions made under compulsion, torture or threat, or after prolonged arrest or detention, that were not admitted into evidence based on article 319(1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

中央日報

慰安婦に関する日本の一部のおおっぴらな歴史わい曲発言や侮辱的な言葉が、ついに国際社会の批判と介入を招いた。国連経済・社会・文化的権利委員会(CESCR・社会権規約委員会)は21日「日本は、憎悪発言(ヘイトスピーチ)と元慰安婦の女性らに汚名を着せるような行為を防ぐために国民に慰安婦の強制連行問題を教育するよう願う」と明らかにした。
国際機構が慰安婦問題についての日本社会の無理解を指摘して強力な対策を要求したことは、妄言とわい曲行為が度を超したと判断したためとしかみられない。今回CESCRは、3.1独立運動記念日の前日である2月28日に日本のある嫌韓派ロックバンドが元慰安婦の女性を侮辱する歌詞が入った曲をつくってそのCDを送った事件などをとり上げた。
日本政府は、国際機構が、最近妄言を吐き出した橋下徹大阪市長や西村真悟議員をとり上げていない段階で深刻な要求をしたという事実に注目すべきだ。慰安婦に関する人目もはばからない妄言やわい曲発言は、人類の普遍的価値である人権を踏みにじり人倫に対して深刻な罪を犯すものだということを国際社会が明確に指摘したからだ。一部政治家や極右者の妄言を放置して付和雷同したために今回の事態を招いたということだ。
21日には国際機構では初めて国連の拷問禁止委員会が橋下氏の発言をとり上げたという事実も注目しなければならない。日本政府がしっかりとした措置を行わない場合、数多くの国際機構で人権レベルでの慰安婦問題が相次いで公論化するという可能性を見せたためだ。

Stéphane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panné, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartosek, Jean-Louis Margolin

LivreNoireChine :

  • la famine sans précédent de 1959-1961, conséquence de l’échec du « Grand Bond en avant » ;
  • les laogais, camps de travail forcé, principalement de 1954 à 1978 ;
  • la « révolution culturelle », décrite comme étant une « guerre civile, ouverte ou larvée » ;
  • l’occupation du Tibet.

URSS

  • les goulags, camps de travail forcé, principalement de 1930 à 1953 ;
  • la grande famine de 1932-1933 ;
  • l’arrestation de communistes anti-staliniens (y compris non russes), l’assassinat de milliers d’entre eux à partir de 1934 (principalement en URSS mais aussi à l’étranger) ;
  • les « Grandes Purges » de 1936-1938 ;
  • l’invasion de la Pologne pendant l’application du pacte germano-soviétique 1939-1941 ;
  • les déplacements forcés de populations.

Magdalena Sepúlveda

magdalenaOn Monday, the Parliament passed an amendment to the Hungarian Fundamental Law that authorizes national and municipal legislation to outlaw sleeping in public spaces.
Through this amendment, the Hungarian Parliament institutionalizes the criminalization of homelessness and enshrines discrimination against and stigmatization of homeless persons in the Constitution.
Such legislation will have a disproportionate impact on persons living in poverty in general and on homeless persons in particular. This will not only impede the enjoyment of human rights of homeless persons, but will also promote prejudice towards people living in poverty and homeless persons for generations to come.

Amy DePaul

homeless3Laws allowing police to ticket and arrest homeless people for sleeping in a car, sitting on the sidewalk — or even leaving their bags on the sidewalk while they use a bathroom — are part of a larger strategy to criminalize homelessness and by extension, poverty, according to attorneys and advocates for homeless people at a conference at the UC Irvine School of Law.
“We’re good at hiding it and hiding it really well,” said Renato Izquieta, attorney at the Legal Aid Society of Orange County.
Homeless“You will find homeless in every park in this county, including San Clemente, Laguna Beach and more.”
When Izquieta began providing legal services to homeless people, he thought his work would focus on disability benefits and related services, he said. Instead, his homeless clients often face complex legal dilemmas related to family law, tax problems and for veterans, post traumatic stress disorder.
homeless8Izquita said that when police confiscate a homeless person’s possessions, they are not only destabilizing that person psychologically but also burdening him or her with significant expenses. For example, he said, replacing a permanent residency card can cost $400.

Ha-Joon Chang

Unlike what neo-liberals say, market and democracy clash at a fundamental level. Democracy runs on the principle of ‘one man (one person), one vote’. The market runs on the principle of ‘one dollar, one vote’. Naturally, the former gives equal weight to each person, regardless of the money she/he has. The latter give greater weight to richer people. Therefore, democratic decisions usually subvert the logic of market.

Dahr Jamail, Wijhat Nadhar

MalikisJail9MalikisJail2MalikisJail5MalikisJail1MalikisJail3MalikisJail6MalikisJailzMalikisJailcMalikiJaildMaliki’s Iraq:
Rape, executions and torture

Officers from the Ministries of Interior and Defense, the Office of the Chief of Command, and some partisan and criminal militia leaders visit these prisons, and choose some detainees to be tortured for hours and raping them for sectarian reasons.

Jeremy Keenan

ToufikGeneral Mohamed ‘Toufik’ Mediène, the director of Algeria’s Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS): ‘God of Algeria
Could the demise of the world’s longest serving ‘intelligence chief’ be imminent?
To serve as head of the intelligence and security service of one of the world’s most ruthlessly repressive and corrupt regimes for more than 20 years is an extraordinary achievement. Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Cheka and forerunner of the KGB, effectively ‘controlled’ the Soviet Union for nine years (1917-1926); Lavrenti Beria, head of the NKVD, terrorised it for 15 (1938-1953); Hitler’s chief of police, Heinrick Himmler committed suicide after 11 (1934-1945), while General Hendrik van den Bergh ran apartheid South Africa’s Bureau of State Security (BOSS) for 11 years (1969-1980). Mediène has surpassed them all.

Tim O’Reilly

OReilly-TimGovernment 2.0 is the use of technology—especially the collaborative technologies at the heart of Web 2.0—to better solve collective problems at a city, state, national, and international level.
The hope is that Internet technologies will allow us to rebuild the kind of participatory government envisioned by our nation’s founders, in which, as Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to Joseph Cabell, “every man…feels that he is a participator in the government of affairs, not merely at an election one day in the year, but every day.”
Allowing citizens to see and share in the deliberations of government and creating a “new level of transparency” are remarkable and ambitious goals, and would indeed “change the way business is conducted in Washington.”

佐伯啓思

  • 民主主義にはふたつの考え方があります。ひとつは議会制や政党政治そして官僚制などと調和しつつ政治をすすめるという間接的で抑制的な民主政治です。そしてもうひとつは、国民の意思をできるだけストレートに政治に反映させるという直接民主主義です。前者は、後者のあまりの過激さを避けるために、民主政治のなかにできるだけ民主的でない要素を持ち込んで「民意」の直接的な反映を抑制しているわけです。
  • さらに少し不穏当なことをいえば、そもそも多数決が正しいという確かな根拠はどこにもありません。
  • 分布でいえば国民の8割がまともで2割がヘンなのに、政治家は2割がまともで8割がヘンというわけではありません。もしも政治家の8割がヘンだとするなら、おおよそ国民も8割がヘンだとみておかねばなりません。
  • 「人の権利」ばかりに関心を向け、「人の格」にあまりに鈍感になったのではないでしょうか。「人権」栄えて「人格」滅ぶではどうしようもないではありませんか。
  • 東京裁判において、日本の行動が戦争放棄という国際法に違反したというのなら、どうしてそもそもその東京裁判が国際法違反の疑い濃厚である点を問題にしないのでしょうか。
  • 経済も人間がやることです。人間を動かすものは精神の働きです。それが空っぽになってゆけば、政治の力も文化の力も衰退します。政治も文化も三流で経済だけが世界に冠たる一流などということはありえません。

Elise Solé

swedish-manAn H&M clothing store in Sweden is being hailed by women around the world after a photo of two surprisingly curvy mannequins there were photographed and posted online.
Dressed in skimpy lingerie, the mannequins displayed softer stomachs, fuller thighs and generally more realistic proportions than the traditional department store models. For comparison, most mannequins in the U.S. are between a svelte size 4 or 6—a departure from the average American woman who is a size 14.

麻生太郎

  • Asoこの平等主義思想を作り出したもとは労働価値説だろう。マルクス経済学の中心となる考え方で、人間の労働が価値を生む、というものである ・・・
  • 同じ汗をかいても人気グループのコンサート券は高く売れ、麻生太郎が同じコンサートをやっても高く売れないではないか ・・・
  • ちょっと乱暴な議論だが、何しろ仏教やキリスト教ですら、この世での平等は唱えなかった。彼らが説いたのはあくまでも、あの世での平等 ・・・

白石理

Shiraishi幸せと感じるのは人それぞれであろう。あえて大まかに言えば、恐怖や欠乏を持たないで生きることができるとき、自分の望みが実現するとき、自分が大切にされているとき、自分の資質が生かされ、伸ばすことができるとき、生きがいを見つけたとき、そして本来の自分になれたと思うとき、など。しかし、人が幸せに生きるのは、それぞれの個人の課題であるとともに、社会の課題でもある。
個人の幸せは社会のあり方と切り離して考えることは出来ない。社会の在り方、社会が目指す方向を決めるのは政治である。市民一人一人が政治に関わり、自由に考え、意見を述べ、選択に責任を持つ。これは、民主主義の原則である。そこには、人を大切にする社会、言葉を変えて言えば、人権をまもり、尊重する社会を実現するために、市民一人ひとりがもつ力に対する期待がある。
少数であっても、ひるんだり、あきらめたりしないでもよい。沈黙してしまって、数を頼む人たちの思うままにならないように。人としての幸せも人権も、数の問題ではないのだから。

Kenneth Roth

Collier’s primary conclusion: democracy, in the superficial, election-focused form that tends to prevail in these countries, has increased political violence instead of reducing it. Without rules, traditions, and checks and balances to protect minorities, distribute resources fairly and subject officials to the law, these governments lack the accountability and legitimacy to discourage rebellion. The quest for power becomes a life-and-death struggle in which the contestants are driven to extremes.
Collier’s data show that before an election, warring parties may channel their antagonisms into politics, but that violence tends to flare up once the voting is over. What’s more, when elections are won by threats, bribery, fraud and bloodshed, such so-called democracies tend to promote bad governance, since the policies needed to retain power are quite different from those needed to serve the common good.
Collier is better at responding to the objection that he is advocating interference in other nations’ internal affairs. Many of the governments of the bottom billion, made sensitive by their colonial heritages, reject any international pressure as an affront to their sovereignty. But as Collier points out, these governments typically do not really have national sovereignty, since they have yet to develop a national identity or national institutions. They have only presidential sovereignty — hardly the same thing, and hardly worth defending.
These days no self-respecting government wants to present itself on the world stage without the legitimacy of a democratic mantle. Elections are now de rigueur, even if many a despot rejects the idea of actually abiding by voter preferences. The result is an embrace of “democracy” by such authoritarian leaders as Vladimir Putin of Russia, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, Umaru Yar’Adua of Nigeria and Mwai Kibaki of Kenya. They all have used some combination of violence, fraud and repression to ensure that elections do not threaten their grasp on power.

Paul Collier

  • WarsGunsVotesTo date, democracy in the societies of the bottom billion has increased political violence instead of reducing it.
  • Democracy had the opposite effect in poor countries to that in rich countries.
  • A high-income society that featured democracy was found to be safer, while a low-income society that featured democracy was found to be more “dangerous”, in this instance meaning more “assassinations, riots, political strikes, and guerrilla activity”, as well as the possibility of a full-fledged civil war.
  • Let me be clear: we cannot rescue them. The societies of the bottom billion can only be rescued from within. In every society of the bottom billion there are people working for change, but usually they are defeated by the powerful internal forces stacked against them.
  • bottombillionSuppose a country starts its independence with the three economic characteristics that globally make a country prone to civil war: low income, slow growth, and dependence upon primary commodity exports. It is playing Russian roulette. That is not just an idle metaphor: the risk that a country in the bottom billion falls into civil war in any five-year period is nearly one in six, the same risk facing a player of Russian roulette.
  • Persuading everyone to behave decently to each other because the society is so fragile is a worthy goal, but it may be more straightforward just to make the societies less fragile, which means developing their economies.

Luca Ferrini

A remarkable degree of concern has been expressed about levels of voter turnout in established democracies in recent decades.
We should not be alarmist and exaggerated in describing the general trend in declining turnout across established democracies. As has been noticed, historical and institutional factors partly influence voting behaviour, yet, political participation continues to evolve into new and more specific forms, and it is very unlikely that citizens will abandon their power to influence political outcomes. At the same time, the persistence of the phenomenon over time should not be underestimated, particularly if we consider that cultural and sociological behaviour tend to constantly change, only at a very slow rate. Though, declining turnout in the past forty years could be seen, pessimistically, as the beginning of a long-term deepening tendency.

Declining turnout in 19 old democracies.
(OECD)
Ferrini-A1-300x174

Pippa Norris

EEAfter World War II, post-industrial societies developed unprecedented levels of prosperity and economic security, with rising standards of living fuelled by steady economic growth, despite occasional cyclical downturns. Governments in these societies expanded the role of the welfare state to provide greater social protection for the worst-off citizens; more recently, contracting out services to the non-profit and private sectors, under state regulation. In conditions of greater security, Inglehart theorizes, public concern about the material issues of unemployment, healthcare, and housing no longer takes top priority. Instead in postindustrial societies the public has given increasingly high priority to quality of life issues, individual autonomy and self-expression, the need for environmental protection. Dalton theorizes that this process has given rise to a new form of citizen politics, making greater demands for direct participation in the policy-making process through activities such as petitions, protests and demonstrations.
Most importantly, the traditional party-voter loyalties, and the social identities upon which these are founded, can be expected to erode in postindustrial societies, to be replaced by more contingent patterns of party support based upon particular leaders, issues and events.

Colin Hay

HatePoliticsIf we understood politics rather better, we would expect less of it. Consequently, we would be surprised and dismayed rather less often by its repeated failures to live up to our over-inflated and unrealistic expectations. We would, in turn, be better placed to set for ourselves political ambitions that we had some chance of achieving. This may well be true, but such a rational recalibration of our expectations might also lead us to lose our sense of political ambition, animation and engagement. Indeed, does that not describe the contemporary political condition rather well?
If politics is not all what it was once cracked up to be, then we should not lose sight of the fact that for many it has never lived up to its billing and has always been rather less than it was cracked up to be. Indeed, as we shall see, a crucial factor in the development of contemporary political disaffection has been the growing political influence of those for whom politics is, at best, a necessary evil.

Press TV

SaudiWomenDemonstrationSaudi activists staged a rally to renew a call for the release of people held in prison without charges.
At least five people were reportedly arrested during the demonstration, which came amid tight security despite the monarchy’s strict ban on gatherings.
A similar protest was held by mainly the female relatives of the Saudi detainees in the city of Buraidah, north of Riyadh.
Many of the prisoners in Saudi jails are held without charges or trial for up to 15 years.
Since February 2011, protesters have held demonstrations on an almost regular basis in Saudi Arabia, mainly in the Qatif region and the town of Awamiyah in Eastern Province.
The demonstrations turned into protests against the Al Saud regime after November 2011, when Saudi security forces killed five protesters and injured many others in the province.

Navi Pillay

navi_pillayIt is a disturbing paradox that raising funds to respond to crisis situations is so much easier than raising funds to prevent crises from happening in the first place.
Imagine all the suffering, destruction and loss of life that could have been avoided if we were able to prevent or mitigate only some of the crises the world is witnessing today.

Mary Robinson

MaryRobinsonHaving been UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, I am all too familiar with the argument that human rights is a ‘Western’ concept. The uprisings that began to shake the Arab world almost two years ago, and the developments that have followed, are one great example of the fundamental flaw in this argument. In Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere we saw an unprecedented expression of the universal desire – long-repressed – for dignity and freedom.
As these tools become more accessible to people around the world – by 2020 there will be an estimated 5 billion people with access to the internet – civil society becomes better-equipped to engage in public life. Citizens have used mobile phones and internet platforms to record human rights abuses, pressure leaders to become more accountable, and connect and work together across borders. As one young Egyptian told us, “the only borders now are on maps.”
At the same time, our expectations are getting higher – and this is a good thing. When we are used to finding information freely available online, we expect to have the right to access that information without restriction. When we see various world leaders on Twitter, we expect to be able to contact our own leaders directly through such platforms. The more we grow accustomed to voicing our opinions online, the more we resist being silenced.
Only by protecting the internet as a space where respect for fundamental human rights prevails can we hope to see more Springs, more Awakenings and ever greater freedoms in years to come.

UN Watch

This is how the U.N. Human Rights Council undermines the very principles it was founded to uphold. Today the Communist government of Cuba, a key backer of the Syrian mass murderer Bashar al-Assad, presented a draft resolution on “The Right to Peace.”
Not surprisingly, the resolution promotes a text by the council’s Advisory Committee which recognizes a “right to resist and oppose oppressive colonial, foreign occupation or dictatorial domination.” Experts say this can be read as legitimizing terrorism.
China, the main co-sponsor of the resolution, voiced strong support for the text. Iran also expressed support for the Cuban initiative. Russia welcomed it.
The Netherlands said “not every laudable goal can be phrased in terms of human rights”, and gave the example of the right to happiness. We need to set priorities and work on identifiable and distinguishable rights; establishing the right to peace would “come in the way of the establishing of existing rights.”
The U.S. stressed the importance of a spirit of “openness and flexibility”; we are “moving towards a divisive text rather than one that can build bridges within the Council.”

United Nations Human Rights Council Advisory Committee on the Right of Peoples to Peace

RightToPeaceIndividuals and peoples have a right to peace.
The right to peace is universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated.

  • Everyone has the right to human security, which includes freedom from fear and from want, all constituting elements of positive peace.
  • All peoples and individuals have a right to live in a world free of weapons of mass destruction.
  • All peoples and individuals have a right to a comprehensive peace and human rights education.
  • Individuals have the right to conscientious objection and to be protected in the effective exercise of the right to conscientious objection to military service.
  • States shall refrain from outsourcing inherently State military and security functions to private contractors.
  • All peoples and individuals have the right to resist and oppose oppressive colonial, foreign occupation or dictatorial domination.
  • Every human person and all peoples are entitled to participate in, contribute to and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development.
  • Everyone has the right to a safe, clean and peaceful environment, including an atmosphere that is free from dangerous man-made interference.

Thanet Aphornsuvan

Thanet AphornsuvanThe Constitution of 1997, for the first time, stipulates that human dignity, not only the rights and liberties of an individual, must be protected. There are many new rights introduced in this Constitution. This is a reflection of changes in the political and social environment in the country following the rapid expansion and growth of the economy in the 1990s. It also demonstrates the response of Thai people towards global trends and developments. Chiefs among these rights are individual rights, community rights, rights of children, the elderly, handicapped people’s rights, and equality of the sexes. Freedoms of information, the right to public health and education and consumer rights are also recognized. In all, there are 40 rights compared to only nine rights in the Constitution of 1932.

Foreign Law Bureau, Office of the Council of State of Thailand

Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand

Chapter III – Rights and Liberties of Thai People
Part 1 – General Provisions
Part 2 – Equality
Part 3 – Rights and Liberties of an Individual
Part 4 – Rights in Judicial Process
Part 5 – Property Right
Part 6 – Rights and Liberties in Occupation
Part 7 – Freedom of Expression of Individual and the Press

Section 45. A person shall enjoy the liberty to express his opinion, make speech, write, print, publicise, and make expression by other means.

Part 8 – Rights and Liberties in Education
Part 9 – Rights to Public Health Services and Welfare
Part 10 – Rights to Information and Petition
Part 11 – Liberties to Assembly and Association
Part 12 – Community Rights
Part 13 – Right to Protect the Constitution

One World – Nations Online

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. (Article 19, Universal Declaration of Human Rights)
Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice. (Article 19, UN resolution: International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; March 1976)
This right is heavily violated in many countries, through censorship and suppression of information, by oppression and persecution of journalists and the media. State control of domestic media, and internet control are their favored means.

Somyot Pruksakasemsuk *

sometThe editor and prominent activist Somyot Pruksakasemsuk was convicted of lese-majesty offences for publishing two articles, which were considered as critical of the Monarchy, in his Voice of Takshin magazine. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison for the breach of Article 112 of the Criminal Code, which states that “whoever, defames, insults or threatens the King, the Queen, the Heir-apparent or the Regent, shall be punished with imprisonment of three to fifteen years.”

hinode11

民主主義とは、民衆が国家を支配する統治体制を言います。世界で最初に君主による統治体制を暴力的に倒して民衆による統治体制を誕生させた国はフランスです。
民衆支配の体制は、衆愚政治に陥る致命的欠点があります。
民主主義とは、英語の democracy の和訳です。ラテン語の demos (民衆) + cracy (支配・統治) に由来する単語です。従って、democracy の和訳は、民衆支配あるいは民衆統治が正しいのです。それなのに、なぜか、democracy を最初に和訳した人は、民衆支配としないで民主主義と訳しました。自由主義が federalism であり、共産主義が communism ならば、民主主義は demosism (demos+ism) のはずです。
私は単純ミスによる誤訳とは思いません。翻訳した人は、democracy に潜む革命思想から、天皇と皇室を敬愛する日本国民の注意を逸らすために、意図的に民主主義と翻訳したのです。
民主主義体制下では、国民が権力者であり国民が支配者であり、同時に国民が被支配者です。国民の自己責任で政治を行います。その結果が良くても悪くてもすべて国民に跳ね返って来ます。また、国と国民を相対的に捉えるのは誤りです。国民の集合体が国なのです。

浦部法穂

英語のrightという言葉には、「権利」のほか、「正しい」、「右」などの意味がある。もともとの意味は「正しい」。だから、日本語では「権利」と表現されるものも、英語では「正しい」という意味を含んでいるのである。
これに対し、日本語の「権利」には「正しい」という意味はまったく含まれていない。むしろ、「権」という語は、権力、権威、権勢、権限など、「力」という意味合いを含む語である。そのため、「権利」という言葉は、自分の利益を力ずくで押し通す、といったニュアンスをもって受け止められることとなる。つまり、rightに「権利」という訳語をあてたことによって、rightに含まれる「正しさ」という意味合いが失われ、逆にrightにはそもそも含まれていない「力」という意味合いが与えられることとなってしまったのである。いわゆる「人権」も、もともとの意味は”Human Right”つまり「人間として正しいこと」ということであるはずのものが、「人権」という言葉で表されることによって「正しさ」の意味合いが抜け落ち「力」の意味合いをもたされることになり、そのために、人々は、「人権」という言葉に身構えてしまうのではないかと思われるのである。

Robert Legvold

9780300095456_p0_v1_s260x420Faking democracy is not as good as practicing it, but it is still better than destroying it. Putin calls it “directed democracy,” meant to advance the purposes of a state that knows best. More accurately, it is democracy deployed to help those in power stay in power, with “virtual politics” as its agent. By fair means or foul (mostly foul), regimes throughout the post-Soviet region have mastered the art of simulated democratic politics, replete with fake political parties, spectral politicians, illusory competition, and manipulated outcomes. … Can it last? Yes, he says, as long as the elite monopolizes politics, the public remains passive, information can be controlled, and the outside world does not care. Remove some or all of these conditions, and “orange revolutions” happen.

Paul Ehrlich, Anne Ehrlich, John Holdren

Individual rights must be balanced against the power of the government to control human reproduction. Some people have viewed the right to have children as a fundamental and inalienable right. Yet neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution mentions a right to reproduce. Nor does the UN Charter describe such a right, although a resolution of the United Nations affirms the right responsibly to choose the number and spacing of children.
It is often argued that the right to have children is so personal that the government should not regulate it. In an ideal society, no doubt the state should leave family size and composition solely to the desires of the parents. In today’s world, however, the number of children in a family is a matter of profound public concern. The law regulates other highly personal matters. For example, no one may lawfully have more than one spouse at a time. Why should the law not be able to prevent a person from having more than two children?

高山正之

ミャンマーことビルマは、もともとは仏教を信ずるビルマ人の国だった。
十九世紀、この国を征服した英国はすぐに大量のインド人と華僑を入れて金融と商売をやらせた。さらにモン、カチンなど周辺の山岳民族を山から下ろしてキリスト教に改宗させ、彼らに警察と軍隊を構成させた。単一民族、単一宗教のビルマはこれによって多民族、多宗教国家に改造され、この国の主たったビルマ人は農奴に落とされてしまった。
第二次大戦後、ビルマの歴史はビルマ人が再び国を取り戻すための涙ぐましい努力で彩られている。ネ・ウィンは鎖国を命じたために経済は停滞してビルマは最貧国に落ちた。彼はまたデノミと徳政令を何度もやった。貿易をとめられたうえに徳政令では経済と金融を握っていた華僑やインド人には何のうまみもなくなって、ビルマから出て行った。残るは警察と軍隊を握る山岳民族だが、ビルマ人は山に帰れとは言わず、共存を訴えた。
その証としてビルマ人の国を意味する「ビルマ」をミャンマーに変えた。植民地支配の残した負の遺産をだれのせいにするでなし、国名も変え、貧しさに耐えつつ平和的に解決した例を他に知らない。
そういうビルマ人の努力をすべてぶち壊しているのが性悪のアウンサン・スーチーだ。彼女は植民地時代の支配階級だった山岳民族やビルマ人不満分子を糾合し、政権奪取を狙う。彼女の後ろで英国が舌なめずりしているのを彼女自身も知らない。

Chie Witt

Despite the growing number of “career women” in Japan, traditional values still hold strong. I went to one of the nation’s best single sex schools in Tokyo, and always felt that we were ready to stand up to boys in the society. But I have seen my friend become a stay-at-home mom after completing her studies at medical school because it was assumed by her family that the mother should stay home and take care of the child. (And some older and more conservative people may assume that the husband doesn’t make enough money to support his family if the wife works outside of home.) Another friend of mine had a hard time getting married to the man she chose, because of the families’ class distinctions.
We Japanese are still struggling to balance old customs, traditions and values with human rights and new responsibilities. It’s clear that Ms. Gordon’s effort and contribution became the basis for the laws for women’s equal rights that were later written. I truly appreciate her passion, and respect her as a visionary leader.

Beate Sirota Gordon

20100507_Beate_Gordon_1940sBeate Sirota Gordon grew up in Tokyo, the daughter of a Ukrainian expatriate teacher. She observed the period in Japan when wives walked behind their husbands. When she became the only woman (at age 22) assigned to work on the post-World War II Japanese Constitution on General MacArthur’s committee, she saw an opportunity to make a difference.
Knowing the traditional family values and women’s point of view of Japan, as well as the struggles that Western women had been facing for the previous few decades, Beate used her influence to write portions of articles into the Constitution in order to secure Japanese women’s rights and equality.
Beate died on Dec. 30, 2012, of pancreatic cancer at her home in New York. She was 89.

Jimmy Carter

Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated abroad, including American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nation’s violation of human rights has extended. This development began after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has been sanctioned and escalated by bipartisan executive and legislative actions, without dissent from the general public. As a result, our country can no longer speak with moral authority on these critical issues.
While the country has made mistakes in the past, the widespread abuse of human rights over the last decade has been a dramatic change from the past. With leadership from the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948 as “the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” This was a bold and clear commitment that power would no longer serve as a cover to oppress or injure people, and it established equal rights of all people to life, liberty, security of person, equal protection of the law and freedom from torture, arbitrary detention or forced exile.

OHCHR

Human Rights Issues

  • Adequate Housing
  • Business and Human Rights
  • Children
  • Civil and Political Rights
  • Climate change
  • Cultural rights
  • Democracy
  • Detention
  • Development (Good Governance and Debt)
  • Disability and Human Rights
  • Disappearances
  • Discrimination
  • Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
  • Education
  • Environment
  • Executions
  • Food

  • Freedom of Opinion and Expression
  • Freedom of peaceful assembly and of association
  • Freedom of Religion and Belief
  • Gender
  • Globalization (Business, Trade and Investment)
  • Business and human rights
  • Globalization – Trade and investment
  • Health
  • HIV/AIDS
  • Human Rights Defenders
  • Human rights education and training
  • Human Rights Indicators
  • Impunity
  • Independence of Judiciary

  • Indigenous Peoples
  • Internal Displacement
  • International Order
  • International Solidarity
  • Mercenaries
  • Migration
  • Millenium Development Goals and Human Rights
  • Minorities
  • Older persons
  • Poverty
  • Racism
  • Rule of Law
  • Situations
  • Slavery
  • Terrorism
  • Torture
  • Trafficking in Persons
  • Transitional Justice
  • Transnational Corporations
  • Water and sanitation
  • Women

Clap 36

Clap 36 (http://www.clap36.net/) est une association régie par la loi du 1er juillet 1901, qui a pour but de promouvoir le cinéma documentaire sous toutes ses formes et de toutes origines. Outre nos adhérents, nous comptons parmi nous des membres d’honneur, des personnalités et des professionnels du Cinéma.
Nous nous inscrivons dans la lutte contre toute forme de racisme et de discrimination, matérielle, morale et intellectuelle en accord avec la Convention Européenne de sauvegarde des Droits de l’Homme et des Libertés Fondamentales.

Joseph Stiglitz

How, in a democracy supposedly based on one person one vote, could the 1 percent could have been so victorious in shaping policies in its interests? It is part of a process of disempowerment, disillusionment, and disenfranchisement that produces low voter turnout, a system in which electoral success requires heavy investments, and in which those with money have made political investments that have reaped large rewards — often greater than the returns they have reaped on their other investments.
There is another way for moneyed interests to get what they want out of government: convince the 99 percent that they have shared interests. This strategy requires an impressive sleight of hand; in many respects the interests of the 1 percent and the 99 percent differ markedly.
The fact that the 1 percent has so successfully shaped public perception testifies to the malleability of beliefs. When others engage in it, we call it “brainwashing” and “propaganda.”

Неизвестный

Ничего не может быть страшнее, чем безразличие людей.

Ничего не может быть Страшнее, как потерять зрение: Это невыразимая обида, она Отнимает у человека девять Десятых мира.
~ М. Горький

日本工業規格

  • 人権は,人であるが故に全ての人に属するという点で,固有なものである。
  • 人権は,人々がそれを放棄することには同意できず,政府であっても他の機関であってもそれを人々から剝奪することはできないという点で,絶対的なものである。
  • 人権は,地位にかかわらず全ての人に適用されるという点で,普遍的なものである。
  • 人権は,選択的に無視することができないという点で,不可分なものである。
  • 人権は,一つの人権を実現することが他の人権の実現に貢献するという点で,相互依存的なものである。

社会的責任の中核主題

  • 組織統治
  • 人権
  • 労働慣行
  • 環境
  • 公正な事業慣行
  • 消費者課題
  • コミュニティへの参画及びコミュニティの発展

白石理

国内法令に対する人権の優位性の根拠は、世界人権宣言第1条、「すべての人間は、生れながらにして自由であり、かつ、尊厳と権利とについて平等である」という人権の基本原則に求めることができる。人権は、それぞれの国の憲法や法令によって初めて人に付与されるものではない。むしろ国家は、国内法により、また司法による法適用によって、国際的に認められた人権を守る義務があるとされるのである。これは、国際連合「保護、尊重及び救済」枠組の第一の要素、「国家の人権保護義務」である。

ISO

ISO 26000 – Social responsibility
Business and organizations do not operate in a vacuum. Their relationship to the society and environment in which they operate is a critical factor in their ability to continue to operate effectively. It is also increasingly being used as a measure of their overall performance.
ISO 26000 provides guidance on how businesses and organizations can operate in a socially responsible way. This means acting in an ethical and transparent way that contributes to the health and welfare of society.

Juan E. Méndez

The death penalty has so far been treated under the exception to the right to life provided for by international law. A “new approach” that puts the death penalty in the context of the prohibition of torture is required.
States need to re-examine their procedures under international law because the ability of States to impose and carry out the death penalty is diminishing as these practices are increasingly viewed to constitute torture.

МИР24

Публичные казни происходят не только в Афганистане, где они не имеют законной силы и по сути являются проявлением самосуда. Так, в Иране за измену мужу женщину положено забивать камнями. Иногда способ приведения приговора в исполнение могут заменить повешением. В Саудовской Аравии суд может отправить человека на плаху по обвинению, например, в общении со злыми духами.

池田大作

言論の自由が、幾多、先人の流血の戦いによって勝ち取られたものであり … これを侵すことは民衆の権利への侵害であることを明確に再確認し、言論の自由を守り抜くことを私どもの総意として確認したいと思いますがいかがでしょうか。
第33回本部総会(1970年5月3日)


悪質な人権侵害を繰り返す『週刊新潮』等のデマ雑誌には、声を大にして「買うな」と叫ぶことが正しい非暴力闘争だ。まさにデマ雑誌こそ、社会の根本を狂わせる一凶だ。ゆえに皆で「買うな!」「読むな!」「店に置くな!」「広告を出させるな!」と、猛然たる世論を興隆させるべきだ。
聖教新聞(2003年5月31日)

Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, State Department, USA

The leading human rights problems in Japan included the lack of due process for pretrial detainees; the exploitation of children; and societal discrimination against women in employment, children born out of wedlock, ethnic minority group members, persons with disabilities, and foreigners, including permanent residents.
Other human rights problems included prison and detention center conditions, prosecutorial misconduct, journalistic self-censorship*, domestic violence and sexual harassment against women, corruption, trafficking in persons, and the exploitation of foreign trainee workers.
___
* Press clubs continued to encourage noncritical and similar news coverage by fostering close relationships among media personnel, officials, and politicians that in turn led journalists to practice self-censorship in exchange for access.

Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, Department of State, USA

Japan is a destination, source, and transit country for men and women subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking, and for children subjected to sex trafficking. Male and female migrant workers from China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and other Asian countries are sometimes subject to conditions of forced labor. Some women and children from East Asia, Southeast Asia, South America, and, in previous years, Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central America who travel to Japan for employment or fraudulent marriage are forced into prostitution. During the reporting period, Japanese nationals, particularly teenage girls and foreign-born children of Japanese citizens who acquired nationality, were also subjected to sex trafficking. In addition, traffickers continued to use fraudulent marriages between foreign women and Japanese men to facilitate the entry of these women into Japan for forced prostitution. Japanese organized crime syndicates (the Yakuza) are responsible for some trafficking in Japan, both directly and indirectly. Traffickers strictly control the movements of victims, using debt bondage, threats of violence or deportation, blackmail, and other coercive psychological methods to control victims. Victims of forced prostitution sometimes face debts upon commencement of their contracts and most are required to pay employers additional fees for living expenses, medical care, and other necessities, leaving them predisposed to debt bondage. “Fines” for misbehavior are added to victims’original debt, and the process that brothel operators use to calculate these debts was not transparent. Japan is also a transit country for persons in trafficking situations traveling from East Asia to North America. Japanese men continue to be a significant source of demand for child sex tourism in Southeast Asia, and, to a lesser extent, Mongolia.

Garin K. Hovannisian

Genocide denial might be a tumor on truth, memory, or even human dignity, but it’s not even a pimple on the freedom of expression. It’s an exercise – however false or disgusting – of that freedom …
A government that has the power to punish lies also has the power to punish truth (consider Turkey’s law that punishes those who denigrate “Turkishness”) and, really, to punish anything it pleases.
This was the terrible lesson of the 20th century, fleshed out in millions upon millions of carcasses across Joseph Stalin’s gulags, Adolf Hitler’s concentration camps, Pol Pot’s killing fields, and Mao Zedong’s torture chambers. …
That’s the key clause: right or wrong. Genocide deniers insult us. Yet in any decent society, their rights are the most vital, precisely because they are the most difficult to respect. Here’s the test of true democracy: Do we tolerate another’s view when it is thoroughly repulsive?
It is easier to shut deniers up than to make them stop believing. In a perilous reversal of its intended effect, this law would give to deniers two advantages they crave: exemption from the debate and the position of the oppressed. …
Censorship has long been the tool of people who are threatened by the facts – who can’t win a debate on equal terms.
Censors have sought to gain through power what they lack in argument: the truth.
… We should long for a society where those who deny documented crimes against humanity will not be fined or jailed, but worse, be exposed, humiliated, and condemned to oblivion.

Michael J. Bazyler

As a result of the enormous suffering inflicted upon the world by the Nazi regime, and especially Europe, a number of European countries have enacted laws criminalizing both the denial of the Holocaust and the promotion of Nazi ideology.
The aim of these laws is to prevent the resurrection of Nazism in Europe by stamping out at the earliest opportunity any public reemergence of Nazi views, whether through speech, symbols, or public association. …
… such laws and their strict enforcement is necessary to prevent the reemergence of Nazism, which, in a repeat of the events in pre-war Germany, is particularly attractive to individuals living in countries where unemployment and social dissatisfaction is high.
The anti-Nazi laws do not exist in every European country. Presently, the following European countries have some legislation criminalizing the Nazi message, including denial of the Holocaust: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and Switzerland. Holocaust denial is also illegal in Israel. …
A last set of countries put a higher value on free speech over suppression of neo-Nazism and freely allow promotion of the Nazi message. In these countries, freedom of the press and freedom of speech are vehemently upheld even to the detriment of other rights. These countries include the United Kingdom, Ireland and the Scandinavian nations.

白石理

橋下さんは「民意は私の側にある」と言いますが、まるで白紙委任状を持っているかのようですね。予算の配分は私がする。
私はなんでも決められる。
私は選ばれたんだ。選挙絶対主義、多数絶対主義。
これは、民主主義とはまったく違います。
民主主義の原則というのは、少数が無視されてはならないということです。そして、わかっていただきたいのは、人権に関することは、
多数・少数には関係ないということです。たとえ一人であっても、その人の人権が侵されるようなことを、政治が行ってはならない。
これが原則です。橋下さんは、そういうことをすべて無視している。
多数を標榜する人間が民主主義の手続きによって権力を握ったら、いったいどうなるのか。ナチスの例を出すまでもありません。
そういうことを心配しなければならない時代が、今、来ていると思います。

石原都知事の女性差別発言を許さず、公人による性差別発言をなくす会

人権侵害と言葉の暴力に満ちた「ハシモト」的政治手法が大阪を舞台にまかり通っています。無責任な市場原理主義者、新自由主義の代弁者であるのに、それを巧妙に隠して市民の味方のようにふるまってみせ、その一方で人々の不安と不信に乗じ、メディアを利用した差別的扇動によって人権と民主主義を一気に破壊していく危険な手法。なぜそれが人々に「歓迎」されるのでしょうか?

The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer

The pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untameable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past.

Laura Ingalls Wilder

Mrs. Scott said she hoped to goodness they would have no trouble with Indians. Mr. Scott had heard rumors of trouble. She said, ‘Land knows, they’d never do anything with this country themselves. All they do is roam around over it like wild animals. Treaties or no treaties, the land belongs to folks that’ll farm it. That’s only common sense and justice.’ She did not know why the government made treaties with Indians. The only good Indian was a dead Indian. The very thought of Indians made her blood run cold.

Daniel Bar-Tal

People are taught to stereotype other people. Stereotyping is a learned form of classifying and labeling others based on inaccurate information or assumption rather then on factual knowledge.It is not a new phenomenon. Individuals and societies,to assert their dominance over others, have been cruelly and crudely labeling others for thousands of years. It is a systematic imputation whereby the “self” or some particular group attests to it’s superiority over the “other. Stereotyping is a form of delegitimization, “beliefs that downgrade another group with extreme negative social catergories for the purpose of excluding it from human groups that are considered as acting within the limits of acceptable norms and/or values.”

Survival

Goldminers in Venezuela have carried out a ‘massacre’ of isolated Yanomami Indians, according to reports received by Survival International.
Witnesses of the aftermath described finding ‘burnt bodies and bones’ when they visited the community of Irotatheri in the country’s Momoi region, close to the border with Brazil.
Initial reports suggest up to 80 people have been killed, but these numbers are impossible to confirm. Only three survivors have been found.

William Kingdon Clifford

What is meant by scientific thought? For scientific thought does not mean thought about scientific subjects with long names. There are no scientific subjects. The subject of science is the human universe; that is to say, everything that is, or has been, or may be related to man. …
When, then, we say that the uniformity which we observe in the course of events is exact and universal, we mean no more than this: that we are able to state general rules which are far more exact than direct experiment, and which apply to all cases that we are at present likely to come across. It is important to notice, however, the effect of such exactness as we observe upon the nature of inference. …
It is possible that by-and-by, when psychology has made enormous advances and become an exact science, we may be able to give to testimony the sort of weight which we give to the inferences of physical science. It will then be possible to conceive a case which will show how completely the whole process of inference depends on our assumption of uniformity.

Robin West

These new rights — a right to lethal self defense and to own the means to carry it out, a right not to buy insurance where doing so would resolve a collective health care crisis and a right to “home school” free of all state regulation — collectively suggest the imagining of a new rights paradigm. They are not just liberal rights of self-expression. They are radically and, I believe, deeply tragic anti-collectivist rights to exit core parts of the civic compact, usually by inactivity — not buying insurance, not sending one’s children to school, not surrendering the means of one’s own self protection to a police force — that undermines, sometimes near fatally, the civic attempt to solve collective problems collectively through the project of government. The children in public schools suffer when the parents of over two million children claim a right to “homeschool,” thereby justifying diminished resources for education and sacrificing parental and communal good will. All of us, including the police, are endangered by the proliferation of weaponry among citizens when half the country is armed. And the insured, as well as uninsured, are impoverished by the refusal of the healthy to participate in an insurance mandate that would reduce costs for all.

Larry Diamond

Over the past three decades the world has been transformed. In 1974, nearly three-quarters of all countries were dictatorships; today, more than half are democracies. Yet recent efforts to promote democracy have stumbled, and many democratic governments are faltering. Why?

NHK

去年の暮れ、長崎の医師の問い合わせをきっかけに、被爆に関する「あるデータ」が突然公表された。原爆投下直後に降った放射性物質を含む雨「黒い雨」に、1万3千人もの人があったことを示す分布地図だ。どこでどれくらいの人が黒い雨にあったか、これまで「公式データ」はないとされてきただけに、広島・長崎は衝撃を受けた。データは、放射線の人体への影響を科学的に明らかにするためにアメリカの研究機関ABCCが集め、研究を引き継いだ放射線影響研究所(放影研)が保管していたものだった。多くの被爆者の協力のもと集められた“命の記録”。しかし今に至るまで、このデータを使って黒い雨の影響が研究されることはなかったという。なぜデータは、被爆から67年たつまで、その存在さえ明らかにされなかったのか。調査に協力した被爆者たちは、どんな思いを抱いてきたのか。被爆者追跡調査の歴史を丹念に追いながら、その実像に迫っていく。

Theodore M. Singelis, Harry C. Triandis, Dharm P. S. Bhawuk, Michele J. Gelfand

  • Vertical collectivism includes perceiving the self as a part (or an aspect) of a collective and accepting inequalities within the collective.
  • Horizontal collectivism includes perceiving the self as a part of the collective, but seeing all members of the collective as the same; thus equality is stressed.
  • Vertical individualism includes the conception of an autonomous individual and acceptance of inequality.
  • Horizontal individualism includes the conception of an autonomous individual and emphasis on equality.

United Nations General Assembly

… the existence of a pattern of serious violations of human rights, that is of a systemic nature, and includes intensified restrictions on the fundamental freedoms of association, assembly, opinion and expression, including with regard to the media, as well as allegations of torture and ill-treatment in custody, impunity of perpetrators of human rights violations and abuses, harassment of civil society organizations and human rights defenders, violations of due process and fair trial safeguards, and pressure on defence lawyers;
… to immediately and unconditionally release and rehabilitate all political prisoners, to address, through comprehensive, transparent and credible investigations, reports of torture and ill-treatment, to implement all other recommendations contained in the report of the High Commissioner, and to put an immediate end to arbitrary detention of human rights defenders, the increased use of short- term arbitrary detention and arbitrary travel bans aimed at intimidating representatives of the political opposition and the media, as well as human rights defenders and civil society; …

Choi You-sun

Kim Young-hwan, the North Korea human rights activist from South Korea, told local media that about two weeks after his March 29th arrest, Chinese authorities deprived him of sleep for seven straight days.
On the sixth day of sleep deprivation, Kim said he was electrically tortured for about five to eight hours, and slapped on the face until he was bruised.
He said it was only after he began to speak about his activities in China related to North Korean human rights, that the electric shocks and beatings ended.
Yet the authorities forced the activist to sleep while sitting on a chair for another two weeks.

James Q. Wilson, John J. DiIulio, Jr., Meena Bose

When circumstances do not permit majoritarian decision making, then some group of officials will have to act without knowing (and perhaps without caring) exactly what people want. Indeed, even on issues that do evoke a clear opinion from a majority of citizens, the shaping of the details of a policy will reflect the views of those who are sufficiently motivated to go to the trouble of becoming active participants in policymaking. These active participants usually will be a small, and probably an unrepresentative, minority. Thus the actual distribution of political power, even in a democracy, will depend importantly on the composition of the political elites who are actually involved in the struggles over policy. By elite we mean an identifiable group of persons who possess a disproportionate share of some valued resource—in this case, political power.

森政稔

かつて民主主義は、新しい社会の希望であり、人間の生き方を問う理想であったが、いまや、それも色あせ、陳腐なお題目と化している。しかしそれは、単に現実が堕落したためではない。その背後には、民主主義を支える思想が、社会の深層で大きく変化したという事情があるのだ。

宮台真司, 福山哲郎

じつは豊かな時代に民主主義は不要だった。日本の政治家は密室談合して地元に利益誘導すればよいだけだったからだ。しかし経済が収縮する時代は、民主主義が機能しないと、それはそのまま国土と人心の荒廃に直結する。

Wiktionary

List of forms of government
-cracy: rule – from the suffix -κρατία (kratia), from κράτος (kratos, “power, rule”)
-archy: form of government or rule
acracy, adhocracy, albocracy, anarchy, androcracy, anemocracy, angelocracy, antarchy, argentocracy, aristarchy, aristocracy, arithmocracy, autarchy, autocracy, barbarocracy, beerocracy, biarchy, binarchy, bureaucracy, cannonarchy, capelocracy, chiliarchy, chirocracy, chromatocracy, chrysoaristocracy, chrysocracy, corpocracy, cosmarchy, cottonocracy , cryptarchy, decadarchy, decarchy, demarchy, democracy, demonarchy, demonocracy, despotism, despotocracy, diabolocracy, diarchy, dictatorship, dinarchy, dodecarchy, doulocracy, duarchy, dulocracy, dyarchy, ecclesiarchy, endarchy, ergatocracy, ethnarchy, ethnocracy, exarchy, foolocracy, gerontocracy, gunarchy, gymnasiarchy, gynaecocracy, gynarchy, gynocracy, hagiarchy, hagiocracy, hamarchy, hecatarchy, hecatontarchy, hendecarchy, heptarchy, heroarchy, hetaerocracy, heterarchy, hierarchy, hierocracy, hipparchy, hoplarchy, hyperanarchy, hyperarchy, iatrarchy, infantocracy, isocracy, jesuitocracy, juntocracy, kakistocracy, kleptocracy, kritarchy, landocracy, logocracy, matriarchy, meritocracy, merocracy, mesocracy, metrocracy, millionocracy, millocracy, mobocracy, monarchy, moneyocracy, monocracy, myriarchy, navarchy, neocracy, nomocracy, ochlocracy, octarchy, oligarchy, paedarchy, paedocracy, panarchy, pantarchy, pantisocracy, paparchy, papyrocracy, parsonarchy, partocracy, patriarchy, pedantocracy, pentarchy, phallocracy, philosophocracy, phylarchy, physiocracy, pigmentocracy, plantocracy, plousiocracy, plutarchy, plutocracy, polarchy, policeocracy, pollarchy, polyarchy, polycracy, popocracy, pornocracy, prophetocracy, psephocracy, ptochocracy, punditocracy, quangocracy, rotocracy, septarchy, shopocracy, slavocracy, snobocracy, sociocracy, squarsonocracy, squatterarchy, squattocracy, squirearchy, squirocracy, statocracy, stratarchy, stratocracy, strumpetocracy, synarchy, technocracy, tetradarchy, tetrarchy, thalassiarchy, thalassocracy, thearchy, theatrocracy, theocracy, timarchy, timocracy, triarchy, tritarchy, tritheocracy, Whiggarchy, xenocracy

WikiPedia

  • Constitutional theory defines a timocracy as either: a state where only property owners may participate in government; or a government in which love of honor is the ruling principle.
  • Plutocracy is rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth.
  • Ochlocracy is democracy (“rule of the people”) spoiled by demagoguery, “tyranny of the majority” and the rule of passion over reason; ochlocracy is synonymous in meaning and usage to the modern, informal term “mobocracy,” which emerged from a much more recent colloquial etymology.
  • Oligocracy (“rule of a few”) is aristocracy (“rule of the best”) spoiled by corruption.