Gestures without meaning
Gestures without meaning
By Luis V. Teodoro
BUSINESS WORLD
Tomorrow is Human Rights Day, and also the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The United Nations General Assembly adopted the UDHR on Dec. 10, 1948. It declares the rights to which every human being is entitled regardless of race, sex, religion, language, and political or other views. Those rights and freedoms, says the Declaration, are inherent in every person and cannot be denied anyone.
Forty-eight out of the then 58 member-states of the newly established UN voted in favor of the document, the Philippines among them. But the Philippines is nevertheless among those countries distinguished — to use that term ironically — by the most egregious violations of the UHDR and other international human rights protocols and agreements to which, since 1948, it has been a signatory.
Among those violations are the extrajudicial killing of suspected drug addicts and pushers and of government critics, human rights defenders, journalists, and social and political activists by security forces and other State actors; and the harassment and threats as well as the “red-tagging” of dissenting individuals and groups including independent journalists and media organizations.
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