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member, Human Development and Harmony Cluster, Pamayanang SanibLakas ng Pilipinas
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1. Total Human Development and Harmony Through Synergism 2. Holistic Health Care and Medicine 3. Deep Ecology and Harmony with Nature 4. Sense of History and Sense of Mission 5. Civics and Democratic Governance 6. Culture as Community Creativity 7. Light-Seeking and Light-Sharing Education 8. Gender Sensitivity, Equality & Harmony 9. Reconstructive/Restor-ative Justice 10. Associative Economics, Social Capital and Sustainable Development 11. Synergetic Leadership and Organizations 12. Appropriate/Adaptive Technology 13. Mutual Enrichment of Families and Friendships 14. Human Dignity and Human Harmony: Human Rights and Peace 15. Aesthetics Without Boundaries: 'Art from the Heart' . |
Peace and Human Rights: By Ed Aurelio C. Reyes President, SanibLakas Foundation Immediate-Past Board Chairperson, PhilRights This is excerpted from the article written by Reyes, who was the immediate-past Board of Trustees chairperson of the Philippine Human Rights Information Center (PhilRights). The article was carried in the July-December 2001 issue of Human Rights Forum a semestral publication of PhilRights. This came out in the wake of the plane-bombings in New York and Washington D.C., which has triggered a chain of tension-filled events and elicited war-hawkish and peace-loving pronouncements from all over the world.] WAR! WAR! We must prepare for war! No, that would not be enough, we must wage war! Now! Death to all terrorists and their supporters!” This is the sense of the consensus being formed by war hawks on both sides of the adversarial divide, with U.S. President George W. Bush leading his NATO allies and other forces against the terrorism blamed largely on Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and all others who, in the words of the White House, “aid and harbor the terrorists.” Many groups and prominent individuals around the world are not buying this warhawkish line and are speaking out, marching, and praying for peace. But a disturbing mass of otherwise sober and intelligent people are. We have already stated in a Broad View article of this publication that “War Kills Human Rights!” and we believe no human rights advocate can be a war-freak and still be a human rights advocate, however high the moral ground one side or the other is supposed to be standing on. Indeed, war, the extreme lack or opposite of human harmony, is irreconcilable with human rights. At the same time, human rights violations are intimately linked to war, both as cause and as effect. Human harmony can only be attained by universally and consistently upholding human dignity, which is what recognition and advocacy of human rights is all about. The imperative of founding the United Nations in 1945 and of the latter’s promulgation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights three years later, were both underscored by the horrors of the Second World War. It would surprise no one, therefore, that this intimate link between human rights advocacy and the peace-seeking efforts of the UN is enshrined in these passages of the UDHR Preamble:
Real Human Development Sustainable Human Development is a catchphrase we have been hearing from the United Nations Development Programme, but human development has been a very slippery term to contend with, especially in the context of expanding our serious concern for human rights that cover both the civil and political rights and the economic, social and cultural rights. In contrast to the term “sustainable development,” which was documented in the proceedings and directions of the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 to mean “providing for the needs of the present generation without compromising the needs of future ones,” sustainable human development does appear at first glance to cover the more expansive grounds of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. But real human development, something we all ought to seek to attain and to sustain, goes well beyond all this for real human also implies the “triune dynamics” of body, mind and spirit, with the last item – spirit – taking the lead. Humans are described to have three components of identity: we are mammals, that is to say we have warm bodies with instinct and senses; we are homo sapiens, although we often collectively behave quite stupidly in acquiescing to systems that run counter to our best collective interests, and we generally believe in being embodied spirits, having been created in the image and likeness of a Creator whom we call by various names and seek to comprehend, or at least intellectualize enough, in theology and other mythologies. As mammals, we carry the lineage of the predators like carnivorous mammals, reptiles and even the tradition of the terrifying tyrannosaurus rex, and this line of heredity manifests in aggressive behavior, according to recently departed astrophysicist Carl Sagan, and “dog-eat-dog” competition (with this writer’s due apologies to all those canines). The term sapiens in our Lynnaean binomial nomenclature as a species implies that we are capable, and perhaps even predisposed, to “uphold the force of logic over the logic of force,” as the renowned human rights lawyer and press freedom advocate Atty. Ricardo C. Valmonte Jr. once put it. Our minds have crafted logical systems of justice that would have put the world to better shape if only such logical systems were fully enforced. Our transcendence of mind to the realm of the spiritual enables us to be forgiving and compassionate, and to go beyond our formal duties and extend help to those in need. This is, perhaps, due to the intuition that whenever we help others we are also helping ourselves because we are interlinked and are actually one, that widely varying as we have always been, we are, so to speak, “fingers of the same hand.” Threats or assaults against the dignity and rights of any human being anywhere are threats and assaults against the dignity and rights of all humans everywhere. If we are unable to hear an “inner voice” saying so, we are supposed to have at least the intellectual capability to reason out the unmistakable validity of this assertion.
The way men, women, and especially children live in large areas, that is in abject poverty, nay destitution and starvation dehumanizes all humans, including the wasteful and uncaring in wealthy countries who are ignorant enough not to know better. In the same vein, torture in any form debases both the victim and the torturer, for they both are humans inevitably stamped with the collective underdevelopment of the human race from the aggressive ways of the animal predators and the powerlessness of the prey. The most modern and high-tech of machines developed by western countries would hardly be a reason for pride, as these are used mainly to kill with sophistication, hypnotize and control minds, create artificial needs, destroy the environment, and worsen the concentration of power and resources in the hands of a few. Far from being proofs of human development, these are but latter-day manifestations of our reptilian and Jurassic ancestry in the long path of Darwinian evolution. In short, they are primitive and even regressive, and therefore deserving of our collective derision. The Information and Communications Revolution holds the potential for humans to relegate memorization of information to the usefulness of computers interlinked worldwide, and afford us to have more quality time and attention to analyzing and appreciating which would make us all enjoy more our being human. Instead of that, however, we have been made to worship information and flaunt it, and make money on it, and therefore have less time and opportunity to be more human than mere attachments to computer systems, encoding at its keyboards and programming its software, and worshipping these new Golden Calves of the present world. The monetization of our minds has caused us all to look for monetary value figures in everything we are trying to “develop,” such that a virgin forest is considered “undeveloped” while a barren land or an equally unproductive golf course, covered by some property title that has much monetary value, is considered “developed.” The fact that these patterns of “development” are not getting the degree and breadth of derision, nay condemnation, that they deserve to get, at least in the eyes of the intelligentsia of various countries, including victim countries like the Philippines, is a statement on the level of intelligence we have all developed as the members of this supposed-sapiens species. Poor human race! Attachment to money and all it can buy has clouded our brains and numbed our hearts and pushed us all into a path of high-tech regression. It is a challenge to grasp the intertwined and interdependent ideals of actualized human dignity and human harmony. Like a pair of feet that can march forward in baby steps (or be tied up together in captivity, real human development can only proceed fully under an atmosphere of human harmony; and human harmony can only thrive and last if there is enough human development away from overemphasis on distinctions and divisiveness and away from the primeval instincts that are predisposed to the use of brute force over reason and compassion.
Indigenous Wisdom on Human Integrity Ironically, it appears that the very people who have been habitually judged as “primitive” are actually the wisest among us. The indigenous peoples’ communities have remained in precarious existence. Their warm bodies and their land have been physically assaulted for “development” (read: money-generating) projects. Their collective soul, that has shone through for thousands of years in their harmonious and nature-loving culture and traditions, has been bombarded daily by insults and condescending “generosity” and by dazzling temptations to imitate the modern man, to be absorbed into the mainstream of society “dancing around the Golden Calf,” to be shorn of their “primitive” culture except for their clothing and dances that can remain attractive to dollar-bearing tourists. Human rights organizations, environmentalists and similar groups of advocates of indigenous peoples’ rights are trying to help protect them against all these assaults. But many do so in the spirit of earnest altruism, not knowing that indigenous wisdom, or whatever of it has survived all the assaults, is directly valuable to all of us. It is the single ray of hope for real human development to get back on track and continue progressing. After all, these people are the living relics, nay libraries, of the pre-monetary societies that knew and lived the real meaning of human dignity intertwined with human harmony. Even in circumstances where they resorted to tribal wars, they had mutually-respected mechanisms and processes for preventing, containing, and resolving various conflicts, leading to sustainable peace agreements. And, unfamiliar to the ways of the most “modern” of politicians, middle-men, con-men, PR people and lawyers, the indigenous tribes have given premium value to word of honor. For them integrity is the measure of the worth of every man and of every tribe. This is something that sorely needs to be rediscovered by our modern generations, schooled as we have been in the western ways of exploitation and adversarial competition. Along this theme, when Mahatma Gandhi was asked what he thought of western civilization, he is quoted to have said, “That would be a good idea!” Indigenous wisdom and expertise on nature conservation have been discovered by serious social scholars to be superior on many counts to the equivalent developed by the modern education and information systems. As Dr. Nicanor Perlas states in his article on Indigenous Knowledge Systems, published by the Center for Alternative Development Initiatives (CADI): “Recognizing (the indigenous peoples’) innate talents, development anthropologists in Latin America have started consulting with indigenous tribes as to the best ways to regenerate forest ecosystems. The indigenous people act as on-site ecologists, guiding development workers on the intricacies of ecosystems regeneration.” Human Dignity and Harmony Human dignity is the underpinning of all advocacy for human rights, and all human rights advocates deserving of this honorable title would see in this the very essence of human rights being inherent, inalienable, indivisible and universal.
According to one of the 15 empowering paradigms being developed by the Lambat-Liwanag Network of academe-based research centers, human dignity can only be upheld and exalted in the context of human harmony, and human harmony can only be fully attained in the context and on the basis of exalting and actualizing human dignity. Because of this complementarity, it would do well for human rights advocates and peace advocates to work very closely together.Why does the UDHR enshrine all these rights as inherent and inalienable? Because, as the late nationalist civil libertarian and former Sen. Jose Wright Diokno said, recognition of these rights is corollary to recognizing the very dignity of all humans. Diokno said: “Man’s second basic right — his right to human dignity is the source of our rights to recognition everywhere as a person…” And, if we may add, these apply to all humans throughout the world throughout the entire period of human existence. To violate these rights, therefore, by commission or by omission is to negate this dignity, and assault not only the direct victims but all of humanity. Equality and collectivity are inherent parts of human dignity, because, to borrow a cliché, the human is a social animal. It should therefore be deemed and felt dehumanizing for all humans that billions upon billions of people making up the majority of the world’s population live or half-live in conditions of systemic oppression, exploitation, deprivation and even destitution. It should also be deemed and felt dehumanizing for all humans that there are people who consistently behave like pigs, wolves, and snakes, with due apologies to these animals. Adherence to the universality of human rights requires that we fully recognize all humans to be of equal dignity. American human rights advocates must consider it equally abhorrent that civilians in two buildings and four commercial airplanes were killed by those who sought to deliver a sharp and symbolic message to the rest of the world and that their own government has been bombing millions of civilians around the world in these past decades. And Filipino human rights advocates are challenged to validate themselves by condemning equally strongly the violent dispersal of left-wing demonstrators at the U.S. embassy and the violent dispersal of pro-Estrada demonstrators in Mendiola, instead of harping on the latter’s supposedly being paid mercenaries or not being organized, anyway, in “genuine people’s organizations,” and are therefore not really part of the “masa.” The Church’s task force on detainees, not explicitly qualified as “political detainees,” and parallel organizations for them, would do well to speak out more effectively against the treatment of ordinary detained suspects in police precincts, for humane treatment is not to be demanded only for human detainees with a certain political orientation or organizational affiliation. What kind of message or “human rights education” are we giving to these impoverished victims of physical abuse at the hands of agents of the law if we exclude them from our priorities, let alone ignore them completely? This: that their human dignity is lower than that of our political allies and of the “organized basic forces.” This is not the kind of thinking, whether in their mind or in ours or in both, that dignifies our commitment to uphold the essence of human dignity, the very underpinning of human rights advocacy. No wonder Shakuntala Vaswani, Chairperson of the Hindu Temple in Manila, had reason to say when asked her thoughts about the human rights movement: “Human rights campaigns are self-serving. You complain when your rights are violated. You are defending only yourself. Unlike peace advocacy which serves all!” We do not have to agree with this to concede that she actually has a point. Human rights advocacy has to be a collective effort of all humans for all humans, with all defending all. Of course the human rights advocacy in this country and, more so, the world over have a very long way to go to reach this ideal. But at least we can expect more profound consistency among the individuals who are publicly advocating human rights, like all human rights activists are. The Bandung (Indonesia) Declaration of 1955, signed for the Philippines by the late Carlos P. Romulo and for China by Premier Chou En Lai, enumerated such principles as mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in one another’s internal affairs, and peaceful coexistence. By adherence to these principles, the signatory countries were not supposed to find themselves at war with any other signatory. Well and good. The aim has been to attain the absence of war or of tensions that can lead to it. But this is of course wanting in the context of innate human capability to unite dynamically and productively than merely co-existing and tolerating one another. Instead of creating a world atmosphere of mere polite tolerance, peace advocates can emphasize the themes of teamwork and harmony in our efforts to help build a culture of peace. Mutually-beneficial dynamic interactions, diversity appreciated as wealth instead of as obstacles to be surmounted or as liabilities to be suffered, indefatigable pursuit of earnest dialogues for win-win resolutions – these are all important components of a culture of peace that needs to built up in families, neighborhoods, formal and informal associations, local communities, nations and ultimately in the whole wide world. It’s fairly easy to rant against war or chant for peace. It is also somewhat easy to initiate and undertake dialogues to resolve disputes to prevent or to end wars. The hard part is building a deeply-rooted culture of peace within the heart and mind of every peace advocate. Prof. Rene Molina, chairman of the Yes2Peace! group, agreed that it would be good for the human rights and peace movements to team up for mutually-strengthening their respective advocacies. He, however, said that the peace movement is largely loose compared to the human rights alliances. There is need, he said, to work out the premises and steps for such partnership. Third-party facilitation of entities like the synergism-oriented SanibLakas Foundation, the entity that initiated the “empowering paradigms” network, would be available for such effort to forge the strongest links between the two. Fairness, Human Rights and Peace Fairness, manifesting in the obviously equal treatment of persons and their inherent rights, is a pillar of human harmony. Violations of the rule of law, manifesting in unequal treatment, are therefore inherently blocking or destroying whatever harmony has already been attained among our countrymen. Filipinos cannot easily boast to be much better in human rights and the culture of peace. The formidable power of the media, along with the power of those who control high-tech channels of communications, which we saw in the Bush administration’s warhawkish campaign to convincingly convict Osama bin Laden without any conclusive process, had earlier been employed in this country to unseat with haste the two-year administration of President Joseph Estrada. After the conflict was resolved outside the mandates of the Constitution on impeachment, presumption of innocence, presidential vacancies, suffrage and military loyalty to an incumbent commander-in-chief (the fundamental law was observed only in determining the identity of Estrada’s replacement), it was not at all surprising to witness after only a few months the enigmatic “Edsa Tres” and its violent dispersal at Mendiola. The more perceptive of social and political analysts have looked beyond the failure of that crude attempt at powergrab, and have viewed it as both a sign of deepening division among our people and as a cause for even worsening that social cleavage. The less perceptive are basking in the illusion that they can well forget all about the whole thing because it was a failure anyway and because the victims of police brutality (television cameras caught policemen whacking away at them while they were already handcuffed), were not part of the “progressive,” “advanced” and “organized” basic forces, anyway. Another cause for concern, on the long term, has been the historically documented act of mass disloyalty of the Philippine armed forces from their then incumbent commander-in-chief beginning the day before a new commander-in-chief was sworn in by the Supreme Court. Because this has resulted neither in an admission of a successful military rebellion nor any court martial proceeding, this has delivered a dangerous lesson to all soldiers and cadets in this country. Still another concern has been the Supreme Court itself, for making a clearly political decision on what would be the interest of the people (in applying the “supreme law” principle) and its consideration of a newspaper clipping on the diary of an executive secretary to establish that the President has in effect resigned. These decisions will be giving headaches to law professors in the years, even decades, to come. Challenges for Effectiveness and Survival This is a serious concern both for human rights organizations and activists who lost credibility when they looked the other way and therefore threw consistency out the window. This is a serious concern for peace advocates who seek to build a culture of peace that would embrace both the articulate but self-righteous middle class activists and the sensitive and silently-hurting members of the impoverished masses. The two movements have to contend with the continuing devaluation in the social prestige of due process, the rule of law, and consequential suffrage. Without these three stably institutionalized in the hearts and minds of the people, it would be impossible to achieve effective human rights advocacy and peace in this country. Without the atmosphere for human rights and peace movements to build a culture that upholds human dignity and harmony, we can only expect military might and blind rage of this or that antagonistic side, or of both, to rule over our lives in this country and in the world. About ready to mourn for peace, Jun Simbulan, a staunch peace activist said: “Peace without justice is not peace at all, as “peace” built on warfare creates future conditions for chronic violence to persist. When we know that the police and armed forces of the government have yet to be cleansed of its human rights violators and corrupt officers and men, will not a warpath create more human rights violations? If we are so easily swayed by war rhetoric on this planet earth, then we have given up our hopes for peace. In the name of anti-terrorism, we succumb to the terrorism of warfare, and to the social ills which feed it.” We actually know the answers to address Simbulan’s expressed concerns. Serious advocates of human rights and of peace are all challenged to consistently do their work, separately and in teamwork, upon the profound intertwining of human dignity and harmony. War itself, that glaring indicator of failure of human harmony, is a wholesale violation of the universal and comprehensive human rights, and that even if combatants were to observe fully the international covenants and rules on engagement the indivisible human rights and human development as a whole would automatically be the main victim. There are no real victors in a war. Immediately after the bombings, Amnesty International issued a statement to say: “The violent attacks suffered by the USA represent the gravest violation of the most basic of human rights. Perpetrators must be brought to justice. But in seeking justice for the victims of this terrible crime, the world must exercise the highest respect for the rights of all individuals. International solidarity with the victims is not about seeking revenge but about cooperating within the rule of law in bringing those responsible to justice. Scapegoating individuals or communities will achieve nothing.” Calling for calm in those tension-filled days and weeks, AI said, “it is important for us all to see that hatred does not become the order of the day; that fear does not become an excuse for the violation of rights and that we all remember our common humanity. We must be compassionate in our support for the victims, determined in our search for justice and vigilant about the rights of all people.” |
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