RIGHTS PROTEST: Iranian women brandish banners calling for the improvement of women's rights during a rights protest in Tehran on June 12, 2006. (Hassan Ammar/AFP/Getty Images)
It’s hard not to be swept up by the history of last week’s inauguration. Less than a lifetime ago, men and women like Obama were essentially barred from voting in the United States. Segregation laws were so strict that blacks couldn’t even drink from the same water fountains as whites.
Oh how far we’ve come.
But while the bigotry of the Jim Crow laws is no more, it’s easy to forget that blatant human rights violations can still be found in legal codes and constitutions around the world.
With the triumph of the Civil Rights Movement, we too often assume that today’s worst forms of discrimination are universally seen as unacceptable or against the norm, carried out by some devious figures and rarely officially sanctioned by government.
That simply isn’t the case, though. In far too many countries, hate is still the law of the land.
In Iran, for example, Article 102 of the constitution states that women who appear in public without a hijab can be sentenced to 74 lashes. The legal code bars women from certain professions without prior consent of their husbands and stipulates that any woman who accuses her husband of adultery will automatically be charged with making a false accusation, unless her claims can be supported by a male witness.
Much like the now-defunct U.S. law that once counted blacks as three-fifths of a person, testimony given in Iranian court by a woman is considered only half as good as testimony given by a man.
The result of all this is an unapologetically discriminatory state where the systematic trampling of human rights is encouraged and even practiced by the government.
In July, eight Iranian women were convicted of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning. One of the women insisted that she was forced into prostitution by her husband and another said she was raped. Neither of their claims were ever investigated.
Of course, Iran is not alone and women are not the only victims of egregious state-sanctioned human rights violations.
In Sierra Leone, Bangladesh and Barbados, simply being gay will land you a life sentence in prison. Gays in Malaysia are subject to whipping and those in Mozambique are sent to labor camps.
In fact, according to the International Lesbian and Gay Association, 85 UN member states still criminalize homosexuality—something stricken from most Western legal codes long ago.
Debates over what a country can deem legal and acceptable are often daunting, as they are always tied to a wide spectrum of moral and religious belief. But when it comes to blatant human rights abuses, justifications such as cultural relativism are increasingly hard to swallow.
That’s because we now have countless internationally recognized agreements, such as the UN Declaration on Human Rights, which clearly state that all people have certain basic freedoms. Countries that ignore these can be subject to sanctions, embargos and other diplomatic pressure.
Yet even with all these in place, such violations still occur so regularly and so openly. This troubling reality raises the question, why?
“We may aspire for human rights, but we are not willing to pay a price for them,” explains noted University of Toronto political science professor Aurel Braun. “We want oil from Iran, so we don’t want to annoy them too much.”
It’s a harsh yet accurate assessment. From the early days of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to Augusto Pinochet’s Chile, Western democracies have a disappointing track record of tolerating state-sponsored human rights abuses for their own political gain.
As Braun points out, not only is this a stain on the West’s image as a protector of fundamental rights, but it also has the potential to be a very real threat as well.
“Governments that abuse their own people are also very dangerous for other countries,” he says. “These are not far away places.”
Iran’s oil revenues, Braun explains, could one day fund nuclear warheads with the strength to reach Europe, while the propping up of dubious regimes in places such as Saudi Arabia continues to provide safe haven for the likes of Al Qaeda.
So while nations such as Canada, the United States and those in Europe may have their own flaws, they do indeed have a vested interest in ensuring other governments meet basic human rights standards and do not oppress their own people.
Otherwise, they are just as liable for the suffering of victims around the world. Expelling nameless human rights violators from the shadows of obscurity is one thing, but allowing governments to act so brazenly in the open is just inexcusable.
Barack Obama’s presidency may be a victory for progress, but there are many more battles to be won.
Chris Mallinos is a Toronto-based journalist whose work has appeared on six continents and in seven languages. You can reach him at www.chrismallinos.com.
