 "Human rights debacle in Britain: West must end double standard")
The anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim riots in the UK have severe and serious repercussions for the country’s minority communities in terms of their “life, liberty and property” — the norms often championed by the Western liberal democracies and applied only selectively to protect the interests of the White majority.
That “life, liberty and property” are only rhetoric to be used against countries unfriendly to the liberal West is vividly demonstrated by the US and its allies, particularly the United Kingdom, in their approach towards the Ukrainians and the Palestinians!
The mainstream media in the United Kingdom and other Western countries have also a subtle bias while reporting human rights violations in the Global South. When it comes to the question of human rights conditions in the Western countries, such media play a different tune. While defending the actions or inactions of their respective governments at the time of anti-minorities riots, very little is published on the sufferings of the victims of arson, murder, rape or other types of criminal activities. If some thing of similar kinds happens in the Global South, vivid details are printed, and government inabilities or complicity are emphasised. Content analysis of media reports can easily and clearly bring out this bias.
The United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and other Western countries monitor human rights in other parts of the world, some of them bring out annual reports and criticise violations of human rights in the global South, as per their norms and interests. The media in the Global South, however, rarely report human rights violations in Western countries. The governments of the Global South do defend against Western criticisms of human rights violations in their countries. For example, the Ministry of External Affairs of the Government of India promptly rejected the US State Department’s 2024 Human Rights report on India as biased and as not based on proper understanding of the country in April last. The Chinese Government also consistently comes heavily against the US State Department’s Human Rights reports in recent years.
In fact, the Chinese Government has begun to issue its own reports on violation of Human Rights in the United States. The latest report issued by the Chinese State Council Information Office has pointed out that the human rights violation in the United States continues “to deteriorate” and civil and political rights “are not effectively guaranteed because of political party strife, government dysfunction and governance failures. Mass shootings continue to occur at a high rate along with police abuse and violence in law enforcement, and the credibility of the government continues to decline.” Of course, the US government cares little about what the Communist Government of China says about human rights conditions in the United States.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsBut then, the American Civil Liberties Union and the UN Human Rights Commission have also damning reports on the human rights conditions under the Trump and the Biden Administrations. They have painted “violations of various human rights issues including Indigenous rights, voting rights, freedom of expression and assembly, gender equality and reproductive rights, criminal legal reform, immigrants’ rights, and more”. But the US Administrations do not care.
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) of the United Kingdom too publishes annual reports on Democracy and Human Rights. But the current riots in multiple cities across the United Kingdom and Northen Islands clearly demonstrate how the human rights of minority communities are protected.
According to reports, the US, UK, and Canada have announced more sanctions against Belarusian individuals due to human rights abuses in Belarus and its support for Russia in the war against Ukraine! Another report suggests how the US government will continue to give aid to certain Israeli battalions accused of severe abuse of human rights in Gaza!
In stark contrast to this, one may notice the 2024 Human rights Watch report that says that the UK government in 2023 “again failed to take meaningful steps to tackle institutional racism and address past wrongs, including to fairly compensate Black Britons whose rights were harmed by government policies in what was coined the ‘Windrush scandal’ and to remedy ongoing colonial crimes against the Chagossian people”. The Amnesty International Report, 2023-24, moreover, says: “The UK government continued to pursue a policy agenda that breached its international human rights commitments and curtailed human rights protections. People seeking asylum and other migrants were particularly targeted, along with protesters. New government legislation further eroded the freedom of assembly and expression. Police faced findings of institutional racism and other forms of discrimination.” But the UK government could not care less!
Similar situation with Canada — a country that preaches to the rest of the world the human rights norms. The 2024 Human Rights Watch report points out “wide-ranging abuses against Indigenous peoples and immigration detainees, including people with disabilities” and brings out Canada’s “failures to mitigate the impacts of climate change and provide adequate government support… leading to violations in Indigenous communities across the country while compounding risks for people with disabilities, children, and older people”. It says that the “Trudeau government has failed to address serious human rights concerns beyond Canada’s borders, including impunity for abuses by Canadian extractive and apparel companies overseas.”
All these reports regarding the human rights conditions in the UK, US, Canada are by international bodies, with one exception of the report by China. Yet, the Global South makes no noise on these reports. It is not that these Western governments will pay any attention to the complaints by the Global South. Yet taking up these issues more vocally can expose the double standard practiced by the Western governments on human rights. It is time for the Western liberal governments to at least shed their double standards in creating, propagating and implementing human rights.
The writer is Founder-Chairperson, Kalinga Institute of Indo-Pacific Studies, and formerly Professor at JNU. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
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