Suu Kyi, Omar Bakri and the Politics of Human Rights
Purely by the virtue of being a human being, it was wonderful to witness the recent release of Burmese pro-democracy leader Sung San Suu Kyi. This was not the case, though, for Omar Bakri Mohammad. Whereas Suu Kyi had been under house arrest for years, mainly due to her outspokenness and political activities challenging Burma’s military junta, Omar Bakri has just been arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment after being found guilty of “terrorism” offenses. They have also accused him of inciting violence committed by Sunnis during an attack on Lebanese Army soldiers prior to the 2007 Nahr al-Bared conflict.
Omar Bakri was also accused of undermining the authority of the Lebanese state and for inciting murder. Having been barred from the UK after a 20-year stay and speaking at his home in Tripoli, he believes he was guilty in Britain for being a Muslim and that he is now guilty in Lebanon for being a Muslim. Omar Bakri has yet to be arrested and maintains his innocence. He acknowledges that he has challenged man-made courts, but claims he has always rejected and denounced the use of violence. He thinks that those who welcome his arrest and imprisonment do not believe in human rights and freedom of speech.
Human rights are intimately intertwined with the development of modern democracies. A modern democracy is both the rule of the majority and the protection of individual rights. And yet, the protection of individual human rights might sometimes be at odds with an established democratic order that labels or deems some rights as a threat or a negation of duties. The great question for modern democracies, then, is if individual human rights are dependent on the political order, or if the political order is dependent on individual human rights.
On the one hand, individuals are naturally free, equal and independent, but human nature has made them harsh. Humans can only escape disorder if they agree on a social contract and give-up some of their rights to a state or sovereign power. On the other hand, some perceive humans with an idyllic nature. People establish governments to secure rights they enjoyed in nature, like life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. Only the rights and liberties that threaten the secured and peaceful social order or national interest should ever be sacrificed.
Rights have evolved to include freedom of speech, religion, petition, assemble, and a free press. While some democracies allow voting privileges, still others have added political and economic rights, such as social security, universal healthcare, housing, employment, and education. Some have emphasized emotional and psychological rights, like freedom from fear, from want, from disrespect, and from dehumanization. Still, some democracies have promoted social and cultural rights that are indispensable for the dignity and free development of ones own personality.
Most human rights activists work for a state based on majority rule through free elections, the rule of law, and constitutional protections for individual rights and liberties. However, this serves only as a framework for guaranteeing human rights. Sometimes, individuals in states that appear to be democratic can be socially engineered, mentally and emotionally manipulated, and controlled behaviorally. Without the ethical foundations of love, respect, understanding, empathy, and toleration; and without the mental capacities for intellectual curiosity, civic and mannerly dialogue, and cultural discovery and acceptance, one man’s democracy can easily become another man’s dictatorial regime.
Hopefully, such moral democracies-if there are any-establish a virtuous state that honors individual human rights, specifically as they foster trust, belonging, and faith in each other, which is needed for a peaceful and secure social contract and order. Military democracies are built on fear, suspicion, distrust, alienation, and propaganda. While persecuting and imprisoning dissenters, they redefine patriotism as a belief in an intolerant and extremely fanatical ideology. Whether through fear or by means of social control, true sovereignty is sacrificed, voting is a sham, and democracy becomes rotten to its core.
Addressing thousands of supporters, Suu Kyi proclaimed that the basis of democracy was freedom of speech and unity. She added that to get what one wants it must be done the right way. While claiming to hold no antagonism towards her captors, she encouraged people not to give up hope and that there was no reason to lose heart. How will Burma’s military junta respond to Suu Kyi and her moralistic-democratic leanings towards freedom of speech mixed with the rule of love, mercy, forgiveness, and patience?
One must also wonder how the Burmese regime will react to Suu Kyi’s and the Burmese peoples individual rights to hope, dream, and believe in a much better future. Meanwhile, Omar Bakri-who is in jail and facing a military tribunal-is questioning secular democracies and their imposed “separation of mosques and states.” It is clear both Suu Kyi and Omar Bakri will add to the debate over why some states perceive human rights and individual liberties as threats and dangers while others do not, or why some nation-states emphasize certain human rights at the expense of others.
Still, their words and actions should make one think about the productiveness and course of modern democracies, including those that are either corrupt, materialistic, socially and emotionally engineered, militant, pseudo, or intolerantly religious or secular (which begs the question if they are really democratic). And without the principles of toleration, mercy, patience, forgiveness, and the rule of love, disorder or suppression can collectively reign supreme, even in a democracy and among democracies. Thus, a person’s freedom ends where another’s begins, and one state’s human rights activist is another state’s terrorist.
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