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Vardan Harutyunyan

Human rights advocacy is not politics

One of the biggest achievements of our times is the acknowledgement and the implementation of human rights-- the recognition by society of the right of an individual to hold and to express his or her distinctive opinion. This is a principle that can become the basis for the development of a true civil society. If there is no right of an individual to freely express himself, there is no civil society-- a society that consists of people thinking freely, expressing themselves freely, a society that mankind has dreamed of for centuries.

This principle is not a new phenomenon. Progressive philosophical and social theories have always been directed at producing freethinking, creative individuals. That society has not been prepared to tolerate people who think freely, create freely, and express themselves freely is another matter. Centuries had to go by, and mankind had to pass through the peripeteia of wars and continued defeats in order to mature enough to proclaim and to recognize the individual man as the supreme value.

Different nations of the world have passed through this maturing process in different ways and at different speeds. Some of them (Western Europe, the United States, Canada) had, by the 20th century, taken as the point of departure of their world view the principle that "the individual is the supreme value", and it is no wonder that they have made great progress. They are today the most powerful, the most stable, the most organized and the freest counties in the world, and what is most important - they are safe. They co-exist peacefully with one another and their power does not constitute a threat to other nations and states. Today, in the 21st century, new horizons in the field of human rights have opened up in these countries. But many countries and nations, including Armenia, are just taking the first weak steps in the area of human rights.

Our country has not historically had the traditions that have been characteristic of Europe-- the traditions and the appropriate environment in which society, in the course of time, would inevitably arrive at the respect for human rights. In this context the only asset we have had and still have is Christianity -- a religion, a doctrine, a faith, a concise philosophical theory, which in its entire essence and tremendous potential is aimed at the person taken individually. Like other world religions, Christianity has from the beginning not aimed at creating or destroying states, or educating and revolutionizing entire societies. It has aimed at the individual, and has come to revolutionize each person. And those societies where such a perception of Christianity has to a certain degree existed must sooner or later arrive at the notion that "the individual is the supreme value". This is something that has occurred in Europe with difficulty, and as a result of serious and long-standing struggle.

Historically in our country, an environment has developed such that Christianity here has been preached by the Armenian Apostolic Church alone. We have never had any heretics or freethinkers.

The Church, which was supposed to convey to our people the universal values of Christianity, has in reality, in the absence of statehood, been more occupied with the work of preserving the nation; it has replaced the state, ascribing to itself almost all the functions of the state.

This, of course, was dictated by history, and we are not appraising the role of the Church here; what we are saying is that under the combination of circumstances we have been devoid of certain traditions, which today could have undoubtedly helped us to more broadly apprehend those European values that we are preparing to follow, but have not yet succeeded in so doing.

In Soviet times, the lack of these traditions did not prevent Armenia from becoming one of the leaders in the USSR in the matter of human rights protection. In the 1970s, human rights advocacy organizations operated mainly in Moscow, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and the Baltic republics. It is clear that the appearance of human rights advocates in Armenia was not the result of a society developed in this field, but of the political maturity of individuals.

After the declaration of the independence of Armenia, human rights advocacy entered into our reality as a social phenomenon, and today the number of people engaged in it is large and continues to grow. Of course, this is an occurrence to be rejoiced, but a situation is taking shape that is a result of the lack of the traditions we have mentioned above. Human rights advocacy organizations and human rights activists, in defending one individual or another (if he or she is a political or public figure), are guided not by the interests of those they protect, but by political expediency.

During the course of their work, many human rights advocates are guided not by the interests of the individual when examining cases of multifaceted violations of the law but, say, by the interests of the state or the society, forgetting that it is exactly from the state and the society that the individual needs protection.

Let us cite as an example the case of the Jehovah's Witnesses religious organization. All the members of the President's Human Rights Commission, except for three who themselves were chairpersons of human rights advocacy groups, have denied the organization its right to be registered. Some of them have argued that Jehovah's Witnesses would not serve in the army, others that the organization was set up by the special services of foreign states, and the rest that the organization was acting against our Church, forgetting that there are entities dealing with these issues - the military registration and enlistment office, the counter-intelligence department, and the Church -- and that they are merely human rights advocates and should address these issues as human rights activists, not as intelligence officers or clergymen.

Our society is rich in blatantly fabricated cases that resound publicly, which serve as a litmus test showing the actual state of affairs in the field of the human rights. Thus, for example, many human rights advocates defend Mushegh Saghatelyan only timorously, and many others not only do not defend him, but also through their statements contribute to illegal actions against him, their main argument being that Mushegh Saghatelyan is a former prison chief, so he, too, in his time used coercion against prisoners. They do not understand that the human rights advocate deals with the specific situation and it is of no importance what the person whose rights are being violated at this moment was doing yesterday or ten years ago.

It is absolutely unnecessary to be guided by one's political considerations, forgetting that human rights advocacy is an apolitical phenomenon.

The state is an oppressive machine that permanently violates or limits the rights of an individual, and the greater the role of the state in the life of society, the greater are the limitations of rights, and vice versa. In such a situation the human right advocate can not be, as it is fashionable to say today, pro-state, for he or she will become an attachment of the state and will cease playing a role.

The situation that exists in the field of human rights advocacy, as we have already said, comes from our history. Due to the lack of appropriate traditions we are forced to employ outside experience, but this is not so easy and it conflicts with our mentality. Over the years we were taught that public interest and majority opinion were indisputable. The role of the individual in society was non-existent and the individual himself was nothing. With such a legacy (not only of the last seventy years, but coming from a long time ago) it would hardly have been possible over the ten years of independence to register any achievement.

Today's Armenia has only one significant achievement - freedom of speech, which is put on trial with every passing day and threatened at every moment. But freedom of speech becomes meaningless if it does not have a concrete objective.

The task of human rights advocacy organizations must be to choose this purpose wisely, and to serve it in its essence. In this case the state machine will be forced to listen to free speech.

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