PHA-Exch> Food for a thought to keep an eye on: HRR 178 (5) [re:AGENTS OF ACCOUNTABILITY].

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: George Kent kent at hawaii.edu (1)
re: Leslie London's comment:

I don't think Schuftan or Jonsson ever said or suggested that human rights
involved ONLY legal claims on duty bearers. They know that human rights
requires political, educational and other kinds of work, and not only legal
work. No one has suggested "confining human rights to a juridical model". I
fully agree that there are layers of accountability.


 From George Kent <kent at hawaii.edu> (2)


> Zelda earlier asked, "is it not the general public whose rights are
> violated
> daily, who is most in need of such informed discussions and
> debates . . . ?" In my case, as a resident and a teacher in a
> "developed" country, the answer to that question is no. My students
> are not oppressed, and in fact are more likely to join the category
> of oppressors. It was on the basis of this observation that many
> years ago I wrote an essay on "Pedagogy of the Middle Class". It was
> a reflection on the relevance of Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the
> Oppressed for people in circumstances like mine.
>
> Certainly we need wider public debate on human rights. But I think
> the pedagogical strategy needs to be different according to whether
> we are talking mainly with those whose rights are being violated or
> those who are closer to the violators. Maybe the blank looks from
> academics everywhere comes from their being in the latter category.
>
> What exactly would motivate people in the latter category to be
> interested in human rights? Some people say we should show how their
> rights and interests also are violated under current systems.
> Frankly, to me that approach does not seem very effective.



Claudio re: Pedagogy of the middle class

George's comment above reminded me of a clipping by Chris Hedges I had been
storing for a future HRR. It says:


Those who recognize the injustice of HR violations, who concede that these
violations do violate international law, but do nothing, have forfeited
their rights as citizens.  By allowing the status quo to go unchallenged,
they become agents of injustice.  To do nothing is to do
something.  They practice a faux morality.  They vent against these
violations on the Internet or among themselves, but do not really
'resist'.  They take refuge in the conception of themselves as
moderates.  They stand on what they insist is the middle ground without
realizing that the middle ground has shifted under us, that the old paradigm
of left and right, liberal and conservative, is meaningless in a world
where, to quote Immanuel Kant, those in power have embraced "a radical
evil."

"I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely
disappointed with the white moderate," M. L. King wrote from another era as
he sat inside a Birmingham jail.  "I have almost reached the regrettable
conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his
stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen Ku  Klux Klanner, but the
white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers
a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which
is the presence of justice; who constantly says:  'I agree with you in the
goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action'; who
paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's
freedom; who lives
by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait
for a 'more convenient season.'  Shallow understanding from people of good
will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill
will.  Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright
rejection."



These are all the "good" people, the ones who never make a fuss, who fill
their lives with mostly empty pursuits, who never take a stand for anything,
never risk anything, who just go along.  They probably never look too hard
at their lives, never want to really look.



Lukewarm acceptance/failure to act, is a form of moral cowardice. Acts of
resistance are moral acts.  They begin, because people of conscience can no
longer tolerate abuse and despotism.  They are carried out not because they
are effective, but because they are right.
Those who begin these acts are few in number and are dismissed by the cynics
who hide their fear behind their worldliness.  Resistance is about affirming
life. Refusing to actively resist injustice and flagrant  violations of
international law, refusing to attempt to turn back the
tide of tyranny, is surrender.  It is the death of hope. (Adapted from C.
Hedges)
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