Paul Goble
Staunton,
December 17 – There is a dangerous trend at work in the world, the editors of “Nezavisimaya
gazeta” say, one that involves substituting concern about individual human
rights with an obsession about collective ones, a development that led to World
War II in Europe at the end of the 1930s and threatens to lead to “a war of
civilizations” now.
In
a lead article today, the editors say that those who do so, including both “the
diplomats of respectable governments” and representatives of “terrorist
formations,” increasingly are dividing the world into groups of “our own” and “the
alien others” (ng.ru/editorial/2015-12-17/2_red.html).
As
a result and all too often, the paper continues, “’the individual no longer
sounds as something to be proud of -- if he is not at one and the same time a
Christian, a Muslim or a Buddhist.”
The
editors point out that recently the Russian foreign ministry’s official responsible
for human rights met with the Vatican secretary of state to discuss cooperation
in the field of human rights, “but how did both sides understand the problem of
human rights?” Not as being a question of individuals but of the treatment of
whole groups.
Both
focused on the issue of the ways in which “whole communities” have suffered as
a result of ISIS actions, communities that have also suffered, the two
suggested from “the attempts of a number of Western countries to impose
neo-liberal conceptions and positions.” In the one case and the other, the
individual got lost and groups were elevated to first rank.
They
did not focus on the fact that “from the arbitrary actions of the militants
suffer not only Christians and Yezidis but also Muslims.” And that represents “the
main ‘achievement’ of the terrorists:” Syria’s population has been “transformed
from one of citizens with equal rights into groups on which are hung
ethno-confessional labels.”
“If
in the contemporary world someone makes friends with someone else, then it is required
that they be against a third,” the paper says. Thus, Patriarch Kirill calls for
cooperation with the Vatican against Islamist threats even though “the two
Churches formally call one another heretics.”
“Nezavismaya
gazeta” continues: “Unfortunately, the idaels of the civilized world are
reflected in the propaganda of the terrorists as in the devilish mirror of the evil
troll from the stories of [Hans Christian] Andersen.” Many young people go to fight for ISIS
because they believe that Sunni Muslims are being mistreated around the world.
And
they can find evidence of that. “According to the principles of Goebbels’
propaganda, in a big lie, there must be a drop of truth;” and it is easy “to
find in the police crudities of the authorities of Damascus and Baghdad and
other capitals as well” evidence for these recruits.
But
“what is still more dangerous,” the paper argues, “is that legitimate human
rights defenders are playing the same notes.
An entire group of people battling with Islamophobia has arisen.” And
there too there has been “a substitution.” Specific violations of human rights
are now discussed only in terms of communities rather than individuals.
This
means that “the individual is converted into a cog of the propaganda machine
and Islamophobia from a real problem into a scarecrow to frighten those in
politics.”
“Let
us remember,” “Nezavisimaya gazeta” says, “that the last world war was
initiated by the Munich accord, which occurred after the Hitlerite campaign in
defense of the Sudeten Germans. The Nazi approach to ‘the defense of human
rights’ led not to the restoration of justice toward the Germans who were
citizens of Czechoslovakia” but to the annexation of territory.
Today,
the world is at risk of crossing the same line “by giving priority to the rights
of communities over the rights of individuals,” an approach that divides
everyone into groups consisting of “us” and “them” and opens the way for
cooperation among groups which have little in common on the basis of opposition
to “the other.”
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