Sanctions: Are they a human right tool or a human rights violation ?

 By:  Bassem Eid 

Sanctions could be considered of the most severe and dangerous punishments that a country may face, specially that such a measure is always taken against either a poor or a developing country. And the question that we may ask is: Who decides these sanctions? Is it the international community, or the legal organizations, or the UN, or a superpower like the USA, for example.

After the human rights subject has become the issue of the present time, our world today is trying to politicize this subject and divert it to serve its needs, wishes and interests. The Un today represents governments not peoples or human rights organizations, this fact in turn make us suspect the UN’s credibility and its protection of human rights. Instead of maintaining and conserving the human rights of the peoples, they have become like hostages for the policy of oppression of the UN that became a tool to practice pressure instead of providing assistance to nations that face racial expurgation, or compulsory deportation.

 Calling for imposing sanctions differs in its content according to the party suggesting that; there is a great difference between a legal rights organization who seeks to limit and fight injustice and aggression against humanity, and what they call “countries that sponsor peace”, those states that pretend they want to stop bloodshed, violence and wars, by spreading terror and fear against poor countries and degrading them, without paying any notice to decisions of the UN, and referring to the right of Veto when things don’t go in step with their interests or policies.

The Question to be asked: When to call for sanctions? And what is the background that deserves such a severe measure? Are those sanctions meeting a genuine international demand, or do they fulfill indirect objectives?

 The crisis of Iraq and what the people of Iraq are facing is an obvious evidence on the partiality of the UN, and its absolute silence and ignorance of the American aggression that is not justified. Did the imposing of sanctions against Iraq come because of the dictatorship of the regime or because the Iraqi opposition is being suppressed and have no refuge inside Iraq?

Did they impose the sanctions because of the suppression and complete darkness inside Iraq, or because of the corruption and bad performance of the regime?

Was it because Iraq occupied Kuwait, or because Iraq withdrew from Kuwait?

Or was it because Iraq possessed modern technology that threatened the regional stability?

Of course, such standards do not apply for Israel, that has the same powers and abilities, and even more, and we hear nothing against it, not even a condemnation…it is a clear double standard policy!

When a long war broke our between Iraq and Iran, and lasted for seven years, we didn’t see any superpower then calling for the “protection of rights”, not even from the UN. Hundreds of thousands, including thousands of children died, with no sanctions imposed against any party, and no assistance given either.

 The American Secretary of State then, Henri Kessinger, said: “Let the children play with guns!” … I personally see sanctions as a tool for human rights if the background was that human rights were violated, otherwise they could be considered a human rights violation.

 I myself called for this measure, sanctions, to be taken against the Palestinian Authority in July 1994, when they closed an-Nahar newspaper at that time. This request was considered very serious by the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian people who reacted very violently against me neglecting the fact that I am a human being who has the right to express his opinion. They attacked me with all kind of charges like saying I was a collaborator and a traitor who worked for enemy countries. But when I repeated this request in following years on various occasions, I didn’t face the same reactions.

Yet, we should differentiate here between such a request coming from a legal rights organization, and the request that came out from the American Congress calling for sanctions to be taken against the Palestinian Authority because it was abusing human rights, simply because this call wasn’t really intended to preserve the rights of the Palestinians, but to make the Palestinian Authority submit to the Israeli and American dictations. And when was the American Congress interested in reserving the rights of the Palestinians who suffered from Israeli violations of demolishing houses, killing people, torture, brutality and aggression for more than 30 years without hearing a condemnation from the same Congress?!

No one should suspect in my calling for sanctions against the PA because I intended to protect the rights of the Palestinian people that were violated repeatedly by Israel in previous years.

 In the year 1993, Human Rights Watch organization issued a report covering the activities of the “under-cover special Israeli units” in the years 1988-1992, during the days of the Palestinian Uprising “Itifada”. A delegation from that organization met with the American President George Bush and presented the report to him and asked him to impose sanctions on Israel until it announces the stopping of activities of these special units, and consider them illegal, and punish those responsible for the killing of tens of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. But President Bush didn’t make a move, and neither did members of the Congress who probably didn’t have time to read the report.

 Imposing sanctions on countries may disturb some local legal rights organizations who may act to prevent that on the basis that this measure could harm the economy of that country whose people would suffer as victims of these sanctions that are seen as an international collective punishment. What happened recently in Indonesia, is an example of this, where the local Indonesian human rights organizations demanded a delay in imposing sanctions. This claim could be true if the reasons for sanctions were pure political, otherwise sanctions that are imposed are mostly against countries with corrupted regimes whose leaders try their best to capture the abilities and fortunes of its people, and such a measure when taken doesn’t really affect all the classes of the people.

 Conclusion

The question that should always be asked: Who is calling for sanctions? And the reason for that; is it to enable forming a democratic system to replace dictatorship and oppression? Or is it because a certain party refused to apply some peace agreement that was achieved? Or is it to evacuate some occupying power from a country whose people long for independence and sovereignty? Or maybe to allow some individual governor to have power in order to control the fortunes of a nation?

These questions deserve discussion because they raise some important ideas, and such a discussion may make us look into the issue of sanctions from a different angle, this in turn may make us understand the suffering of the people some nations in the region who face the nightmare of what they call democracy and human rights, while in reality, it is a human rights violation.