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Magazine
COMMENT
Of public apathy
SHELLEY WALIA
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Against State repression, intellectuals must shape a response that does not allow an apolitical retreat into private life or apathy.
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WE have had a number of conventions in the last century: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Genocide Convention, the Convention on the elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination, Torture Convention, Convention on the Rights of the Child. We have also had Special International Courts to enforce the decisions of these conventions, such as the enforcement of the prohibition against war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The International Criminal Court in The Hague, the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia and Rwanda or the Human Rights Commission in Punjab have taken up many cases of infringement of human rights, but many perpetrators of torture and genocide are still at large. The U.S., supported by India, is now reluctant to offer its support for the International Criminal Court (ICC) for obvious reasons of human rights record in Punjab, Gujarat, Jammu and Kashmir, Afghanistan and Iraq.
We, therefore, see no security of life as yet. Politics has failed human rights. Leaders rank their own accumulation of power above the overall dignity and well-being of their constituents and build alliances with repressive regimes. State control is so fierce that independent voices are silenced while power and wealth remain concentrated in the hands of a few. In the face of such reckless doom, Hannah Arendt suggests three important steps: meet the threat abroad, preserve essential freedoms at home and be unafraid to explore the motives and aims of the enemy.
Lurking dangers
The public has to keep an eye open for the dangers of the State overreaching in the name of self-defence. It is well known that our liberal democracy gives security absolute priority over liberty, a value so central to the Constitution in various democracies. The Public must guard itself against a complete surrender to a new ideology of counter terrorism. The totalitarianism behind the Patriot Act or the rule of the police State is a "radical evil" behind which we must try to discover the hidden mechanics by which all traditional elements of our political and spiritual world are dissolved, leading to a situation unrecognisable by human comprehension. Targets of persecution are thus subtly removed from the realm of legal, national and ultimately moral obligation.
There is, therefore, a Cartesian underpinning of the intellectual's impulse towards the nonsystemic and highly relative and flexible character of everything in society from organisations to individuals. Governance is a communal activity not to be left in the hands of specialists, but, in the words of Rudolf Rocker, the anarcho-syndicalist writer, historian and prominent activist, it is "the free unhindered unfolding of all the individual and social forces of life". As Chomsky says, "I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom. That includes political power, ownership and management, relations among men and women, parents and children, our control over the fate of future generations... Naturally this means a challenge to the huge institutions of coercion and control; the State, the unaccountable private tyrannies that control most of the domestic and international economy, and so on... the burden of proof has to be placed on authority, and that it should be dismantled if that burden cannot be met."
Making a difference
In other words, intellectuals must always oppose a State which is no longer open and where all popular movements are put down. As Richard Rorty argues: "The only thing I can think of that might make a difference is a willingness to challenge the culture of government secrecy." This obsession with secrecy began after World War II when the pursuit of intelligence gathering and nuclear experimentation lead to clandestine activities amounting to internecine warfare. If we do not stand up to repression and secrecy, then, Rorty argues, "The saddest pages in our books are likely to be those in which we describe how the citizens of the democracies, by their craven acquiescence in governmental secrecy helped bringing disaster on themselves." To avoid this disaster, intellectuals must shape a response that does not allow an apolitical retreat into private life or apathy so as to promote a society in which free expression and political opposition are protected.
In our unstable world labouring under a rather misconceived and destructive American foreign policy and the war on terror gone haywire, normal rules have to be thrown to the winds and courage has to be inculcated in the citizenry to depart from established norms. A Bush or a Blair have to be stopped in their tracks and disabled from riding rough shod over the sovereignty of people who least want any interference from an alien State. A new form of radical alliance, including the Peace Movement, the Women's Movement, lesgay organisations, environmentalists and members of various ethnic groups and people involved with the media could develop a counter hegemony of revolutionary politics more meaningful than the State apparatus or the various institutions supposedly working in support of peace and human rights.
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