The new imperialism

I have been using Stephen Kinzer’s book “Overthrow” as an example of how evil can masquerade as good. That truth springs from the fact that nothing in this finite world can be completely good or completely bad.

This wide philosophical background helps us understand what is happening to the Philippines today and why Duterte is being besieged and singled out for overthrow using organizations defending human rights.

Let me explain.

Stephen Kinzer was part of the human rights movement so what he says comes from a long experience working in it and with it. He is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has covered more than 50 countries on five continents. His articles and books have led the Washington Post to place him “among the best in popular foreign policy storytelling.”

“For those of us who used to consider ourselves part of the human rights movement but have lost the faith, the most intriguing piece of news in 2010 was the appointment of an eminent foreign policy mandarin, James Hoge, as board chairman of Human Rights Watch.”

“Human Rights Watch and affiliated groups promote an absolutist view of human rights permeated by modern western ideas that westerners mistakenly call ‘universal.’ In some cases, their work, far from saving lives, actually causes more death, more repression, more brutality and an absolute weakening of human rights.”

Kinzer adds that the great a challenge is to remake the human rights movement itself. It may have been founded by idealists who wanted to make the world a better place, but it became the vanguard of a new form of imperialism.

“Want to depose the government of a poor country with resources? Want to bash Muslims? Want to build support for American military interventions around the world? Want to undermine governments that are raising their people up from poverty because they don’t conform to the tastes of upper west side intellectuals? Use human rights as your excuse. This has become the unspoken mantra of a movement that has lost its way.”

“Human Rights Watch is hardly the only offender. There are a host of others, ranging from Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders to the Carr Centre for Human Rights at Harvard and the pitifully misled ‘anti-genocide’ movement. All promote an absolutist view of human rights permeated by modern western ideas that westerners mistakenly call ‘universal.’ In some cases, their work, far from saving lives, actually causes more death, more repression, more brutality and an absolute weakening of human rights.”

George Soros’ gift of $100 million went a long way for making Human Rights Watch the global standard.

This is how it happened: “In its early days, emerging from the human rights clauses in the 1975 Helsinki Accords, it was the receptacle of the world’s innocent but urgent goal of basic rights for all. Just as Human Rights Watch led the human rights community as it arose, it is now the poster child for a movement that has become a spear-carrier for the “exceptionalist” belief that the west has a providential right to intervene wherever in the world it wishes.”

“For many years as a foreign correspondent, I not only worked alongside human rights advocates, but considered myself one of them. To defend the rights of those who have none was the reason I became a journalist in the first place. Now, I see the human rights movement as opposing human rights.

The problem is its narrow, egocentric definition of what human rights are.

He cites what happened to Rwanda. “By my standards, this authoritarian regime is the best thing that has happened to Rwanda since colonialists arrived a century ago. My own experience tells me that people in Rwanda are happy with it, thrilled at their future prospects, and not angry that there is not a wide enough range of newspapers or political parties. Human Rights Watch, however, portrays the Rwandan regime as brutally oppressive. Giving people jobs, electricity, and above all security is not considered a human rights achievement; limiting political speech and arresting violators is considered unpardonable.

This is why the appointment of James Hoge, who took office in October, is so potentially important. The human rights movement lost its way by considering human rights in a vacuum, as if there are absolutes everywhere and white people in New York are best-equipped to decide what they are.

Hoge for decades was editor of Foreign Affairs magazine. He sees the world from a broad perspective, while the movement of which he is now a leader sees it narrowly.

Human rights need to be considered in a political context. The question should not be whether a particular leader or regime violates western-conceived standards of human rights. Instead, it should be whether a leader or regime, in totality, is making life better or worse for ordinary people.

When the global human rights movement emerged nearly half a century ago, no one could have imagined that it would one day be scorned as an enemy of human rights. Today, this movement desperately needs a period of reflection, deep self-examination and renewal. The ever-insightful historian Barbara Tuchman had it exactly right when she wrote a sentence that could be the motto of a chastened and reformed Human Rights Watch:

Humanity may have common ground, but needs and aspirations vary according to circumstances.”