Saturday, July 18, 2009

French human rights

France claims to be the originators of human rights with their Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen which was issued after the revolution in 1789.
The document is good but incomplete. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights as issued by the United Nations after second world war was more complete and covered more rights.
However that the French would claim being the center point of human rights is a bit odd. This is a country that is so anti-religion that muslims can't wear their head-scarves in school. Where the President gets critisized for having spoken to the Pope on his last visit to France (because he is mixing religion and government), where a politician gets heavily attacked in the media because he met with an actor who is also a Scientologist.
How can a government take a religion to court and try to disband it because someone claims there have been mistakes done?

Here is where the simple concept of human rights simply does not exist in that country. Freedom of thought, freedom of beliefs? Where did that go?

It seems some people think they respect human rights because they don't torture people and that's about it. Or that they respect human rights because they don't condone slavery. Ok, well let's pat them on the back for that. Now what about the rest of the points?

With the faith in communism and other "socialistic" systems fading more and more countries are electing more and more right wing governments. I am neither for nor against that, but if the people aren't well educated in human rights the chances are these governments will eliminate them.

The French method of taking it to the streets isn't the solution to everything. Education and integrity will help on the longer run.

My conclusion is that we need to educate ourselves, our children, our neighbours and with that education demand our governments stick to these rights. They can fool the ignorant but not those that know.

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