What is a right?
Aug. 13th, 2009 03:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sparkindarknessI’m driven to consider this because our dearly beloved intelligence agencies, seeing large amounts of shit being propelled towards fans, in addition to saying there’s no need for any inquiries into torture, also wish us to remember the CONTEXT of the times.
Because the CONTEXT is so very important. What that means is “there are scary terrorists and we have to torture them!”
Which also completely removes the point of having a right against torture in the first place.
See, a right is special. A right is something above a mere law. It is special and higher for one fundamental reason - we recognise that these should not be compromised. A right is something we have agreed is a baseline, the line we do not cross, a bare minimum for civilised conduct. A right is to be preserved, protected. An absolute right (life, no forced labour, no torture) should never ever be touched. Even a more qualified right (speech, assembly, privacy) should only be even slightly abridged only with the most severe of necessities and certainly never in a fashion that renders the right useless.
And this is what makes MI6’s comments so pointless and so worrying.
The right against torture doesn’t just exist to protect people we like, people like the dominant power. The average man on the street doesn’t actually need a right not to be tortured because the chances are no-one is ever going to WANT to torture him. We don’t think (or most of us anyway) that MI6 is merrily running around on torture picnics, picking victims at random because it’s their idea of a really fun hobby. No, we think MI6 is complicit in the torture of people it thinks are a threat, or know something or are otherwise problematic. We understand that. We understand the context.
But it doesn’t JUSTIFY it. Because people who are problematic, considered a threat or know something are the only people who the powers that be WANT TO TORTURE. What is the point of a right when you’re basically saying “you have a right not to be tortured unless we, uh, actually WANT to torture you.” What is the point of a right that you will accord only to those who never have any need of its protection?
There is no point in a right that you will keep to only when it is convenient to do so. There is no point in a right that protects only those whose rights you have no interest in violating. There is no point in a right you can set aside, ignore or flagrantly break.
The test for any right is on the edge. It is on the fringes. We do not need to test whether we have a right against torture by seeing if suburban house wives are having their finger nails plucked out. We don’t need a right to torture that applies only to those we have no desire to torture. We need to look at prisoners, suspected criminals, political dissidents and suspected terrorists. We don’t need to protect the freedom of speech of MPs or someone running around singing how wonderful things are. We have no need of a right to speech that only applies to people we have no wish to silence. We need to protect the speech of the protestors, the dissidents, the extremists and the fanatics. We don’t test the right to freedom of assembly by checking if boy scouts are allowed to have a parade. We test it by looking at protestors. We don’t test the right to religious belief by watching the mainstream Anglicans - we check the minority religions, the disenfranchised, the victimised.
If you want to protect a right, secure a right and even HAVE a right - you need to look at the vulnerable people. You have to look at the people whose rights the powers that be WANT to violate.
Because the CONTEXT is so very important. What that means is “there are scary terrorists and we have to torture them!”
Which also completely removes the point of having a right against torture in the first place.
See, a right is special. A right is something above a mere law. It is special and higher for one fundamental reason - we recognise that these should not be compromised. A right is something we have agreed is a baseline, the line we do not cross, a bare minimum for civilised conduct. A right is to be preserved, protected. An absolute right (life, no forced labour, no torture) should never ever be touched. Even a more qualified right (speech, assembly, privacy) should only be even slightly abridged only with the most severe of necessities and certainly never in a fashion that renders the right useless.
And this is what makes MI6’s comments so pointless and so worrying.
The right against torture doesn’t just exist to protect people we like, people like the dominant power. The average man on the street doesn’t actually need a right not to be tortured because the chances are no-one is ever going to WANT to torture him. We don’t think (or most of us anyway) that MI6 is merrily running around on torture picnics, picking victims at random because it’s their idea of a really fun hobby. No, we think MI6 is complicit in the torture of people it thinks are a threat, or know something or are otherwise problematic. We understand that. We understand the context.
But it doesn’t JUSTIFY it. Because people who are problematic, considered a threat or know something are the only people who the powers that be WANT TO TORTURE. What is the point of a right when you’re basically saying “you have a right not to be tortured unless we, uh, actually WANT to torture you.” What is the point of a right that you will accord only to those who never have any need of its protection?
There is no point in a right that you will keep to only when it is convenient to do so. There is no point in a right that protects only those whose rights you have no interest in violating. There is no point in a right you can set aside, ignore or flagrantly break.
The test for any right is on the edge. It is on the fringes. We do not need to test whether we have a right against torture by seeing if suburban house wives are having their finger nails plucked out. We don’t need a right to torture that applies only to those we have no desire to torture. We need to look at prisoners, suspected criminals, political dissidents and suspected terrorists. We don’t need to protect the freedom of speech of MPs or someone running around singing how wonderful things are. We have no need of a right to speech that only applies to people we have no wish to silence. We need to protect the speech of the protestors, the dissidents, the extremists and the fanatics. We don’t test the right to freedom of assembly by checking if boy scouts are allowed to have a parade. We test it by looking at protestors. We don’t test the right to religious belief by watching the mainstream Anglicans - we check the minority religions, the disenfranchised, the victimised.
If you want to protect a right, secure a right and even HAVE a right - you need to look at the vulnerable people. You have to look at the people whose rights the powers that be WANT to violate.