Human rights are universal: Dr Fai

washington—The Executive Director of Kashmiri American Council (KAC), Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai, has said that the human rights are universal and everyone who participates in raising the issues of civil and political rights does yeoman’s service on behalf of the oppressed. Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai said this in a statement issued in Washington on the eve of the 105th session of the United Nations, Human Rights Committee, which will be meeting in Geneva between July 9 – 27, 2012. He said, “No human rights are self-executing. Thus, everyone who participates in raising the issues of civil and political rights does yeoman’s service on behalf of the oppressed. What is even more impressive is the willingness to invite risks to life, liberty, and property by those who would speak in the name of civil and political rights against autocratic or cruel regimes. How many unknown champions lie unremembered and unheralded in graves?”.

The Human Rights Committee is the body of internationally known 18 independent experts who are elected for a term of four years. Currently, Dr Zonke Zanele Majodina of South Africa is the Chairman of the Committee. The Committee monitors implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights all over the world. Dr Fai emphasized that human rights were no longer accepted as within the exclusive domestic jurisdictions of individual nations. “The winds of international law are thus blowing against absolute defense shields for egregious human rights violations. That trend seems to me sound, at least with respect to torture and summary executions. And virtually all civilized mankind concur in categorically condemning the two crimes as morally reprehensible in all circumstances period, with no commas, semi-colons, or question marks,” he said.

The KAC Executive Director stated, “The good news is that the globalization of news and broadcasting has brought human rights violations into the living rooms of more and more people, and most are horrified by the pictures. Only a handful of the inveterately cruel celebrate over human rights violations. There would have been no intervention in Kosovo, East Timor or Southern Sudan without television, and ditto for United States mediation in Northern Ireland. That is why many countries fiercely resist broadcast transparency in their domain. Indian occupied Kashmir is the prime example of that. Sunshine is the best disinfectant for human rights violations.”

Dr Fai warned that, “Kashmir is an inferno for fundamental human rights celebrated in both the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The scale of the human rights atrocities in Kashmir dwarf those in Kosovo, Bosnia, Sierra Leone, East Timor and Southern Sudan which have triggered international interventions. But the United States and the United Nations have remained silent, not even employing moral suasion against India’s shocking indiscriminate violence in Kashmir. Is it because they feel less pain, shed fewer tears, or enjoy fewer intimacies? No, it is because the big powers care more about India’s military and nuclear profile and a potential economic market than the human rights of 17 million Kashmiris.”

—Kashmir Times