Human Rights Safe Without Acts or Treaties

Labour's Shadow Justice Secretary Sadiq Khan wrote an opinion piece in yesterday's Evening Standard in which he reveals a curious understanding about the state of human rights in Britain today. It seems that Mr. Khan believes that human rights, which are in essence normative constructs and examples of current thinking of what it means to be human, will cease to exist in Britain should the Human Rights Act be repealed or should Britain leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Of course, he knows full well, for he is clearly an intelligent person, that in modern-day Britain human rights are as much protected by the deeply-held convictions of the British people and their elected representatives in Parliament as by acts of Parliament and international treaties.

What's more, Mr. Khan seems to contradict himself in his thoughts on the continued adherence by Britain to the ECHR. First he writes that Britain "As signatories to the ECHR, we cannot just walk away from it. But we can appeal against court rulings and propose reforms to its remit and operation." The latter part is ostensibly the case, except that to reform it would require the unanimous consent of all parties to the treaty, something Mr. Khan knows to be practicably impossible. And there is no appeal possible against the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. But where he contradicts himself is in the first clause of the above quote; he later writes, you see, "The [Human Rights] Act was designed deliberately to preserve the long-held doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty: Parliament alone can decide whether to repeal or amend legislation." If Parliament is sovereign, an opinion I share with Mr. Khan, then Parliament can most certainly decide to walk away from an international treaty. There is no force in the world that has legal right to prevent the actions of a sovereign body.

In fact, human rights would most likely be more strongly protected if they were repatriated. The ECHR and the Strasbourg Court have left the British public with the wretched feeling that human rights are not a product of the shared understanding by a society of what is right and what is wrong, but merely that of 47 men and women ensconced on a bench near the banks of the Rhine. To withdraw from the ECHR and abolishing the Human Rights Act that depends on it would not be the disaster Mr. Khan would like us to believe it would be, but rather gives the British people the chance to re-engage with human rights and to determine anew what they believe human rights to be. The ECHR is almost 60 years old and human rights, far from being eternal, are subject to change and so every once in a while a society needs to reflect on what those rights are.

Mr. Khan's insistence on the dire necessity of an international human rights treaty betrays a lack of faith in the goodness of the British people, who if given the choice, will not seek a return to stoning or witchburning, but will rather uphold those rights they believe every breathing human being possesses by virtue of his existence. They do not need an international treaty telling them what their rights are, they know that full well themselves. International treaties defending human rights are most necessary for people subject to tyranny and oppression - even though they are hardly effective in these cases - but a mature society like Britain has no need for them. On the long journey of human rights, Britain is in the vanguard and we should not let decades-old treaties hold back.

Cameron Should take a Stand for Freedom

China is acting like a bully in a playground. Ever since the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Liu Xiabao has the communist Middle Kingdom been telling off every human-rights-respecting country in the world for applauding - or at least not criticising - the decision. Some countries, like France, have decided to refrain from mentioning the award in their dealings with China and have been rewarded for their silence with lucrative commercial contracts. Fearful as they are of losing the friendship and goodwill of the economic Dragon of the Orient, these countries look the other way when it comes to upholding their own human-rights standards. They take at full face value the threat uttered by Cui Tiankai, a high ranking Chinese diplomat (quoted in the Telegraph):

“The choice before some European countries and others is clear and simple: do they want to be part of the political game to challenge China’s judicial system or do they want to develop a true friendly relationship with the Chinese government and people?” He added: “If they make the wrong choice, they will have to bear the consequences”.

With David Cameron about to head to China for talks with President Hu Jintao, it is now the turn of the United Kingdom to decide on the importance of human rights and liberty for its relation with other states. Will Britain speak up for the values it professes to hold dear, or will economic opportunity force its acquiescence to the unknown horrors of the jail cell, the anguished tears of the torture chamber and the terrible silence of the execution ground?

As far as I'm concerned Mr. Cameron has no choice but to take a stand for freedom and raise China's human rights record when he meets Mr Hu. I have little hope that it will have any effects on China's actions - I am realist enough for that - but at least it will show the Chinese leadership that there are limits to the reach of their economic power. It will show them that not every country will meekly submit to their coarse demands for silence. Mr Cameron now has the chance to show true leadership and raise the standard of liberty that West says it defends and upholds. He should not merely follow in the lock-stepped footfalls of all the Presidents and Prime Ministers who held their tongues in the hope of not offending the jailers that rule in Beijing.

PS. Just as I was about to post this I saw on the BBC News website that Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist responsible for the beautiful 100 Million Sunflower Seeds display in the Tate Modern, has been placed under house arrest for the simple act of wanting to celebrate the impending demolition of his Shanghai studio.