Last Saturday, Amnesty International, of which I am an active member, held a human rights card signing for prisoners of conscience all around the world, at St Martins Church in Birmingham's Bull Ring Centre and, as always, attracted a lot of people into the church annexe to sign the cards. Maybe they will forget all about it later but it pricks a conscience every year and maybe some of those people will do more than walk by and sign cards. Maybe some will become involved.
Later that evening another Birmingham Amnesty group sponsored a music and poetry evening at Birmingham's Library Theatre for a group of people called 'Writers without borders' - a group of talented people from all over the world who have settled here, many of whom are victims of oppression in their original homelands. The talent was considerable but the sincerity of purpose was even more impressive and I left feeling uplifted.
Even walking nearly 5 miles to my home on icy pavements, thanks to the city being gridlocked by late night shoppers and not a bus in sight, failed to dampen my good spirits.
What did - and what should dampen yours if you are British - is to look at the commitment to human rights by our two main political parties. Although the Conservative Party -as one would expect - is the most shamelessly hostile to being 'hostage' to all the provisions of the human rights declaration, the Labour government is not much better, with its attitude of 'we're all in favour of human rights provided they don't inconvenience us too much'
The Tories have blatantly threatened to repeal the Human Rights Act if - God forbid - they get into power at the next election. The Labour Party - which passed the Human Rights Act in 1988 - has since pathetically, shamefully backed off it and has derogated from the European Convention on Human Rights, claiming -as do all pathetic governments when doing squalid deeds like this - 'national emergency' and 'threats to national security'. Well apart from the fact that such threats have been invited by the hideous, foul decision to back Bush and make war on Iraq, there is no excuse for any government to tear up a basic fundamental right of any human being, regardless of the extra effort to pursue the truth. Yes people who were party to acts of aggression against the UK have to be arrested and tried. But they MUST be given full legal representation and they MUST be treated with humanity, regardless of what they are suspected of. You do not prove your human rights credentials by sinking into the same tactics as the people you accuse. Sometimes it is hard work and a government faces criticism for a 'soft approach'. But such criticism HAS to be overcome.
A person's human rights are not negotiable by governments on the basis of necessary expediency. And where those rights are trampled on, governments should be held to account either in the appropriate European or International Courts of justice. And that holds true for the Americans in particular whose shameful refusal to recognise or endorse an International Criminal Court has been another stain on the Bush administration. Their reluctance, of course, following the invasion of Iraq is understandable and self preserving - but shameful, nonetheless.
Barack Obama has claimed that he will 're-visit' the issue of American participation without actually promising 100% support for the Court but I am hopeful, in the light of his other commitments, that he will add this to his list of moves to turn America around to being the moral force it ought to be. The world will be a better place when all the major powers realise that they have an obligation to practice what they preach.
Human rights is not something you can sweep under the carpet if it doesn't happen to suit your agenda. If December 10th does nothing else it should remind us all of that.
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