Democracy, Human Rights, and COVID-19 Crisis

The COVID-19 crisis has affected almost every aspect of human life and society around the globe. While the economic costs are already felt, the impact in other areas will take months, perhaps years, to be felt and fully measured. It has, however, exposed many fault lines and generated intense debate on human rights and democracy.

Human rights originated in the Enlightenment era with philosophers like John Locke arguing individuals have inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property, which cannot be infringed by the state. Called initially natural rights, these rights formed a bedrock of modern states.
Advertisement

These ideas in the 21st century led to the envisioning of a world in which the security of individuals is prioritized over the security of borders and military powers. With its seven dimensions of interrelated security — economic security, food security, health security, environmental security, personal security, community security, and political security — human security heralded a period in which human rights and wellbeing of the individual were prioritized.

The United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goals aimed at promoting human rights and security throughout the world. However, the rise of civil wars or intrastate conflicts in the post-Cold War period and the rising assertiveness of authoritarian states, besides the issues of poverty and underdevelopment, undermined these goals.

There appeared a movement of contradictory forces — while the ideas of democracy, human rights, and human security were gaining ground and becoming popular, the rise of authoritarian states and illiberal democracies undermined democratic ideals. This has become more apparent during the current crisis.

State actions to address coronavirus have undermined human rights and democracy. Emergency powers acquired by the states to provide security to the people have actually undermined the security of the very people. While measures like lockdown and social distancing have been used to address the pandemic, they have have become tools of repression by authoritarian states. The measures of lockdown, complete or partial, have sparked protests and criticism in democratic states like the United States.

This is, however, not happening globally. The democratic states are open to public scrutiny and accountability. The authoritarian states evade any such accountability. Instead, during this crisis, the authoritarian states and illiberal democracies have acquired unbridled powers. They have forcibly quarantined people and adopted coercive measures such as flogging and even given orders for shoot-at-sight for the violators. They have also largely failed in providing basic healthcare facilities or the necessities of life to the suffering people during this time.

However, there is no visible public unrest in these states. While democratic states fail, they fail in the public glare, and the leaders of these states, being accountable to citizens, may confront harsh criticism, the authoritarian states enjoy unbridled power and their leaders remain above public scrutiny. While leaders of the democracies are accountable and face regular elections, the authoritarian state leaders face no elections or face sham elections.

The crisis demands global cooperation. Instead of coordinating policies to address the crisis, some authoritarian states have actually distanced from any such ideas. China’s dismissal of any international investigation into the origin of the virus, which led to the loss of thousands of lives and put human security in jeopardy all over the world, is a reflection of this trend.

The social distancing needed to stop the spread of the virus has translated into the behavior of states and turned into noncooperation and political distancing. In fact, contrary trends have emerged. Some states have indulged in a misinformation campaign and tried to turn this global catastrophe as a political tool to their advantage. In the midst of this crisis, the South China Sea has seen increasing militarization.

While the post-Cold War globalized world brought us a promise of a better world as the ideological battle ended, the recent developments display pessimistic signs. Psychologist Steven Pinker’s optimism that a peaceful world is our 21st-century right is appearing distant.

The polarization among states has increased, and a new Cold War is often talked about. At a broader plane, to adapt the phrase of Samuel Huntington, the coming years may see a clash of ideas and practices of democracy and authoritarianism. In this clash, human rights and security will be the wagers.


This article was published in Orlando Sentinel on May 2, 2020. This is the link to the article in the newspaper:
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/guest-commentary/os-op-coronavirus-human-rights-20200502-w7myihslzjdvhebkr4eogq6rme-story.html

Long Walk to Freedom

Last month while travelling to Baku I finished reading Long Walk to Freedom, the autobiography of Nelson Mandela. Mandela’s life story is perhaps known to every person aware of freedom movements or about developments in the last decades of the 20th century. Though I do not remember everything that Mandela wrote in the 500 page book, I certainly remember certain messages that Mandela gave in the book, and which he perhaps wanted to impart to his readers and future generations. 

Every culture has its uniqueness, and its utility, for the people who practice it. Mandela was born into Xhoa tribe, one of the tribes among numerous tribes in Africa, and practiced its customs. For him the customs of his tribe were not hindrances rather they had values for his tribe and his society. For Mandela culture has two major purposes. First, it provides regulation for the conduct of social life of the people who adhere to it. While elaborating, particularly, the rituals including the circumcision ritual he argued he is not going to criticize such practices because for him it has a purpose for regulating life in his society. In another example, he says when he met his mother after a long gap he did not run to embrace his mother (as a person might do in some other cultures), but that did not imply that there was no love between mother and son. That was part of the culture. The same thing I have observed in India. Second, for Mandela culture too has implications for political life of the society as well. Culture determines the relations between old and young, between male and female, between village-elder with others. Its main location may be in society but its political role is obvious. As it, in case of the culture Mandela describes, tends to emphasize on a hierarchical society, it also puts premium on old age, which is akin to experience and wisdom. Hence, in this culture the elders have a dominant voice in public affairs.

For Mandela democracy is a not Western invention because he could witness the purest form of democracy in tribal meetings. Those meetings were purely indigenous in origin and conception as none of the participants were well versed with Western system of governance as many of them were illiterate. Mandela while staying in his guardian’s house after his father’s death used to listen to the debates in the tribal meetings. His guardian being a headman, it provided Mandela the opportunity to listen to the elders. He elaborated these meetings: that everybody in the meeting enjoyed freedom to raise his voice without obstacle or intimidation from the chair. He could speak at length without interpretation. The chair would listen to all the arguments, summarize them, and try to develop a consensus among the participants. He would never impose his views though he might put forward them during his speech. If no consensus was reached, the members might disperse and meet another day. The meetings were democratic and free, and the leaders would often draw from their experience and wisdom, from history and tradition. Madela’s argument that he witnessed pure democracy in tribal meetings may baffle some of his readers but not me. I could draw a parallel between those tribal meetings with the Indian Jana Sabhas or Gram Sabhas (meetings of people or village) in Vedic period in ancient India.

Mandela’s life history is life of tolerance and dignity. A Mandela would never compromise his dignity. Though he was humiliated umpteen times whether during his long time in jail or outside, Mandela would never stoop low for exacting a privilege. He was a mass leader and he always put the interests of the masses before him. His sense of African dignity was vivid when he expressed anger, in his book, against the assault on Chief Albert Luthuli, the leader of the African National Congress, by a security man. He wrote that this security man is not, in any measure, near the great African leader but it is the tragic system that leads to his assault. It needs mention that Luthuli was awarded Nobel Peace Prize in 1960. Mandela was a proud African and he admired African values. But at the same time he harbored no revenge, no hostility towards his colonizers. Even his method of underground warfare under the banner of Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), as detailed in the book, was to paralyze the administration so that a plural and non-racial administration comes to power. His strategy, as he argued, was not aimed at killing any person, whether civilian or armed government official, but to paralyze the administration in order to hasten the goal of freedom. 

I found in Mandela a great negotiator. During his last days at Robben Island and later during incarceration when he was shifted to the mainland, he pursued relentlessly various methods of negotiation with the administration which was not always friendly to him. He was the weaker party in the negotiation, at least from a government perspective which enjoyed absolute power though there were pressures from the United Nations and other countries to dismantle the apartheid regime. Mandela singlehandedly, even at times when his trusted friends disagreed with him, continued pursuing his negotiation tactics. He never gave up, even when his letters gone unanswered from the Botha regime, or even when his voice was not taken seriously by the regime. He was optimistic during his negotiations, and he followed a method of incrementalism, i.e. slowly moving towards the target. There were many occasions of uncertainty but Mandela in his purely Mandelasque fashion never gave up.

From another point of view, the book is a treatise on a freedom struggle, and also a treatise on life in a jail for about three decades. I am not elaborating those here. The tortuous life in jail, the exploitation of jail inmates, both general and political, the ingenuity of jail inmates the evade to notice of the authority while performing ‘illegal’ activities like reading newspapers, the perseverance of Mandela and his friends in continuing their mission provide insights into the freedom struggle and also into the life of Mandela and his friends in the struggle. I also found Mandela an emotional and caring person, who cared for his family and friends. His longing for his wife and children was vivid on many pages in the book. His narration how he missed his children and how he cherished the moments when he was with them displayed the emotional and loving side of this great and sturdy freedom fighter. There was also humor lurking throughout pages. His courting of his first wife before marriage or his comparison of his seafood with jail mates while working in the quarry with the royal marriage party or some of the tactics to evade jail wardens offer rich mine of humor in the book. They also bring out the lighter side of Mandela, one of the great figures of our time.