Comment on the Standards of Human Rights

In the international field of human rights, there exist international standards of human rights adopted through UN’s activities for human rights instruments after World War II.

A reflection of the actual situation of the international community, where different ideologies and systems exist, these standards specify the general standards and goals which every nation should achieve in the field of human rights.

By setting such standards and applying them in practice, the international community has made a great stride in protecting and promoting human rights.

These days, however, contradiction and conflict have come to the fore over these standards and their application, emerging as a serious political and legal issue in the international area.

The most important reason is the offensive the US and other Western countries commit on the excuse of universal character of the human rights standards.

As they did in the past, the US and other Western countries, misusing the universal value of the human rights standards set by the international human rights instruments, are tenacious in their attempt to force their own standards on other countries.

They claim that theirs are fair and key standards for dealing with any problems arising in the human rights field.

Is there anyone who is bold enough to say that the standards much touted by them are universal standards?

Let us take as an example the successive killing of black persons in the US, where extreme racial discrimination is rampant. The white policemen who shot the young black persons have gone scot-free. On the contrary, the people held demonstrations against racial discrimination were showered with tear gas.

It is self-evident that the US, the main culprit of human rights violation, and the Western countries that follow it blindly cannot insist that theirs are the only human rights standards.

Their standards embody an imperialistic way of thinking, view on values and lifestyle that slight others, oppress them and try to dominate them.

No one in the international community has authorized them to set global human rights standards.

This notwithstanding, these self-appointed incarnations of human rights are brazen enough to insist that theirs are human rights standards of universal value.

For example, the US works out and makes public every year the so-called Human Rights Report, in which it picks a quarrel without any reason with the human rights situation in Russia, China, Cuba, Iran and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The US and other Western countries, proceeding from their unilateral interests irrelevant with human rights, label these countries, which maintain the system and political mode of their own style, as “human rights violators” and are bringing political pressure to bear upon them.

If politicization, selectivity and double standards advocated by them, which are not qualified to speak about genuine human rights, are allowed in the human rights field, such an act as picking a quarrel with some countries over a political motive will cut a wide swath in the international area.

The acts of the US and other Western countries of taking issue with the human rights situation in other countries and speaking ill of them simply because they are not their allies or partners must never be tolerated.

There cannot be any human rights standards applicable to all countries. International human rights standards have been set in reflection of the ennobling ideal of humanity to protect the rights of man and their sense of justice, and it never disregards the demands and interests of each nation. These standards are not a copy of the “standards” of some particular countries, and they do not demand that each nation apply these “standards” in a unified way.

As human rights are guaranteed in concrete with a nation-state as a unit, the actual situation and demands of these states should be taken into account in appraising and applying the standards stipulated in the international human rights instruments. This shows that human rights standards should be set in line with the actual situation and demands of nation-states, and every state can set its own standards and apply them.

There are many states in the world, and they differ not only in the political system but also in history, customs, the level of economic and cultural development and lifestyle.

In this situation human rights standards of each country should be set, to all intents and purposes, in line with the demands of its people.

Those which are favoured by the masses of the people are fair human rights standards.

In every country those who demand and achieve human rights are the masses themselves, and it is none other than they who judge and appraise the human rights situation. The standards that reflect and satisty their demands and aspirations are the human rights standards, and those favoured by them are fair and genuine human rights standards.

It is a matter of course that when it is going to set human rights standards in line with the demands of its people, each state must respect the standards set by the international human rights instruments and take them into consideration. This is because the principles and standards clarified by these instruments reflect the noble aspirations and wish of mankind for the development of relations among countries based on independence and for the building of a new society where genuine human rights are guaranteed. Setting human rights standards in line with the demands of its people and its actual situation, while respecting the standards stipulated in the international human rights instruments, and applying them is a matter that falls within the sovereignty of each state.

Human rights can be guaranteed and defended only be means of fair, ennobling and principled standards that respect international law and the demands of the people of each country, not by means of the arbitrary “standards” that pursue narrow-minded, selfish and mean objectives.