T OWARDS THE N EW M ILLENNIUM S ERIES
NO MORE
THE BATTLE AGAINST HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
NO MORE
THE BATTLE AGAINST HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
D AVID M ATAS
Copyright David Matas, 1994
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Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Matas, David
No more : the battle against human rights violations
(Towards the new millennium)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-55002-221-0
1. Crimes against humanity. 2. International offenses.
3. Human rights. I. Title. II. Series.
JX5418.M37 1994 341.481 C94-932663-1
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Contents
FOREWORD
by Laurie Wiseberg
T his book is a major and original contribution to international human rights literature. Much of its originality derives from the fact that David Matas draws extensively on his two and a half decades of experience as a human rights advocate and as a refugee lawyer.
Thus, for example, the chapters on Amnesty International offer a perspective and information that could only be provided by someone who has followed the movement closely, from the inside. Similarly, much of the material on the Helsinki process and Eastern Europe has clearly been shaped by David Matass leadership in the Canadian Helsinki Committee.
Another dimension of the originality of the book is the Canadian perspective that David Matas brings to bear on the norms and processes of international human rights protection. To date, few Canadian writers have addressed this question. The Canadian dimension emerges not only in , entitled Canada, but throughout the volume, for example, under State Remedies where David Matas looks at the question of Canadas policy on compensation to victims for human rights violations.
David Matass approach is extremely refreshing. He draws on his personal experience, including his extensive experience as a practising attorney. He often argues as if he were before the bench building his case step by step, using logic and empirical evidence.
The book is written well and clearly. It will be a welcome addition to the currently sparse literature on the role of nongovernmental organizations in the protection of human rights, and on the Canadian dimension of international human rights protection.
Laurie Wiseberg is executive director of Human Rights Internet, Ottawa.
INTRODUCTION
W hat leads to human rights violations? What can be done to stop them? What remedies are available for victims? No More attempts to answer these questions. Human rights has become the secular religion of our time. Its vocabulary is universally accepted. Its standards are in constitutions, in treaties, and international declarations.
Yet human rights violations continue to occur around the world, in a gross and flagrant manner. One day it is the Iraqi gassing of the Kurds. The next day it is death squads assassinating church workers in El Salvador. Tamil youths are tortured in Sri Lanka. Demonstrators for democracy are crushed by tanks in Beijings Tiananmen Square.
No More is both an attempt at explaining why human rights violations occur and a guide as to what nongovernmental organizations, governments, and the United Nations can do to counter violations.
One focus of the book is how regimes move from pervasive human rights violations to democracy and respect for human rights. Because the problems of transition are embedded in time and place, a number of chapters look at countries in the recent past, during a moment of human rights change.
, Root Causes, looks at ideological sources of human rights violations. Torture, disappearance, death-squad killings, and unfair trials are often manifestations of political ideas.
The book examines four ideologies as examples of root causes of human rights violations: the national security state, religion, communism, and apartheid.
The doctrine of national security is a theory that has developed in Latin America to combat communism. It contains such concepts as total war, dirty war, the primacy of security, and the leading role of the military. Each concept is examined to show how it involves a rejection of human rights values. The return to democracy in Latin America can be traced to a revulsion against the violations to which the national security doctrine has led.
The notion of communism as a root cause of human rights violations is approached both from a theoretical and a practical perspective. Theoretically, the beliefs in violent revolution, historical necessity, and the new socialist personality contain within themselves rejections of human rights values. on Eastern Europe looks at Yugoslavia, Poland, and the USSR, in particular, as they moved from communism to democracy.
The chapters on Yugoslavia, Poland, and the Soviet Union are general, surveying the human rights situation in these countries. They are snapshots of Eastern Europe: Yugoslavia in 1988, Poland in 1989, the Soviet Union in 1990. Together they demonstrate how the human rights picture has developed in Eastern Europe. The link is made between the more theoretical discussion and the evolving day-to-day reality.
closes with a chapter on the Helsinki process, the process of intergovernmental meetings generated by the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, signed in Helsinki in 1975. The process is described and its impact on respect for human rights in Eastern Europe is assessed.
Of all the contemporary ideological root causes of human rights violations, apartheid has been the most blatant, since it rejects human rights values the most explicitly. The first chapter in , Apartheid in South Africa, looks at that system as a concept, as a legal structure, and as a practical reality.
A second chapter looks at black-on-black violence in South Africa and past state complicity in the violence. The chapter attempts to explain why the state was involved on the side of Inkatha and why the state used Inkatha to do its dirty work.
