Human Rights Day 2004 Dr. Curtis FJ Doebbler (read at a mosque in Cairo, Egypt)
Fifty six years ago, after the Second World War, diplomats, mainly from western Christian states, put down on paper some promises to the people of the world in a document they called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
These leaders, speaking on behalf of some of the most powerful countries in the world, promised to respect the basic rights of every individual in the world.
They agreed to treat all people equal. They pledged not to attack people because they are considered enemies of a few militarily strong countries. They agreed that Afghans and Englishmen, Iraqis and Americans, Muslims and Christians, were all human beings who should not be discriminated against.
They agreed that everyone has the right to life. Nobody, they said, would be slaughtered arbitrarily like the Afghans and Iraqis have been by the invading American and allied forces.
Nobody would be treated inhumanely, they promised. They said that half the people in the world would not have to live in the abject poverty of less than two Euros a day, while being forced to pay five times as much for a glass of water as someone living in a rich country.
The representatives of America, Great Britain, France, Brazil, Russia (then the USSR), China, and many others, promised that they would not allow slavery. They would not allow a country to be occupied like the people of Iraq have been by a foreign power that forces Iraqis to work to complete their own captivity.
They promised everyone that they would be recognized before the law and have equal protection of the law; that every person who is arrested will be tried in accordance with law. They agreed to provide everyone, not just their friends, fair trials and effective remedies for the violations of their rights. They agreed that a fair trial would mean the right to legal representation, the right to an independent and impartial tribunal and the right to be presumed innocent.
They agreed to do these things, the same governments who today are holding thousands of people without trial, who refuse to give a fair trial to the former President of Iraq or many of the other people who they have arrested in Iraq after their illegal invasion of the country. They are the same people who refuse to try their own leaders who have committed crimes against peace and humanity, genocide and war crimes.
Fifty six years ago representatives of some of the most militarily powerful and richest countries in the world promised the least of us, that they would respect our right to privacy, to family life, to practice our religion, to marry who ever we want, to speak freely even if we criticize our government, and to assembly and associate with others. They promised that when one’s country did not allow one to exercise these rights all countries would protect those who flee from such oppression by granting them asylum. Today these same countries violate all of these rights. Moreover, they support other countries that violate these rights. And rather than protecting individuals who flee they send them back to the country from which they are fleeing, often to their deaths.
Wise men, and a few women, representing most of the countries in the world in 1948, said that everyone in the world would have a right to a nationality. Today their successors deny the very existence of countries who do not abide by their instructions.
They claimed that property would be respected, yet they rain down bombs to destroy property or prevent the poorest from acquiring value for their labour and their resources by exploiting them. They can do this because they protect their property, but not yours. By exploiting you they have acquired overwhelming wealth that they use against the poorest and most vulnerable.
They claimed you have the right to participate in your government, yet they have occupied your countries and denied you free and fair elections. They even interfere with elections in countries where they believe the leading candidates will not agree with them.
Our leaders promised you social security, health care, education and the right to work under fair conditions. Yet they have cut social security benefits in most countries. Even millions of Americans in the country that spends the most on health care remains denied access to the care that only the rich can afford. In African, education remains a lost hope for most whose schools are slowly crumbling under the pressures of globalization and whose brightest minds are drawn to higher wages in the richest countries.
Yes, they have provided you the right to work, but under their conditions. Under conditions of exploitation that help the richest western companies and their few owners to exploit the natural resources of most of the world at such a discount that it literally starves your children to death.
They promised you a minimum standard of living, but the poorest have become poorer and your children have lost tens of billions of life years each and every year to the richest countries in the world.
They promised you an international order in which all these rights could be achieved. Yet, today they violate their own laws whenever it is convenient to them.
Today, fifty six years after our leaders made these promises to you, I tell you they lied, they are lying, and they intend to keep lying to you.
You must hold them to their promises. You must ensure that the richest, the most powerful people in the world keep their promises to you. You and I must do this through all necessary means aimed at the United States, the British, at every country and every person who denies the basic constituents of human dignity to the least of our brothers and sisters.
We cannot allow the United States to hide behind a United Nations that is too cowardly to protect our rights.
The poorest and most vulnerable people in the world are the majority of the world.
The human rights which are promised to them in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are their rights more than anyone else’s. They are not optional. They are not rights that can be compromised for reasons of political expediency. They are your rights. You and I must fight for these rights and we must fight against those who deny these rights to any one.
Although I stand among you today, I am an American and Dutch citizen; the countries of which I hold nationality are your enemies. They are the countries where my family—who I love very much—lives. They are the countries in which I was raised and my childhood memories created. But I am telling you today, we have become too selfish, we have exploited you, we have lied to you, and we are killing your children. If you do not stop us we will continue to do so.
We will say we are not doing these things. We will say we do not mean to do these things. But we are too selfish—at least in America—to change. To change would mean to give up our wasteful consumption, to pay you a fair wage for your work and a fair price for your natural resources. We refuse to do these things. Only you can make us act more responsibly.
I am a pacifist and a lawyer and I use the full force of the law to combat injustice, but I also will not condemn those who use other necessary measures to fight for the lives of their children against those who are murdering their children with bombs and slowly torturing them by exploitation and forcing them to live in abject poverty continuously threatened by disease.
There may be differences between those of us fighting for social justice, but there are infinitely greater differences between us and them, the rich and powerful of world who are attacking you in so many ways.
It is the obligation of every Muslim to fight for social justice against any world government that inflicts injustice on the people for which it is responsible. My heart is with your struggle, Allah is your strength and Allah is great.
