© Heike Winnig Timol, September 27, 2011
In theory, human rights should be a simple concept, but the reality of human rights laws is a sphere of complexity. Adding to that particular realm representing humanity is the fact that not everything is simply black and white.
Though it should be exactly that simple.
Because as human beings our human rights are inalienable.
However, the truth is, this is just not so. As recent as the twentieth century right here in Virginia, the infamous Dr. Walter Ashby Plecker, a small-town doctor who was registrar of the state’s Bureau of Vital Statistics from 1912 to 1946, worked very hard to refute the existence of the indigenous peoples in Virginia. To accomplish this feat, Dr. Plecker made it his life’s priority to help pass the 1924 Racial Integrity Act, “An Act to Preserve Racial Integrity”.
Denouncing the existence of a people, not only by means of robbing them of their homeland and dumping them into Bantustans, but performing ethical genocide, as well as literal, of their identity, their history and traditions is nothing short of the worst of crimes against humanity and human rights.
In 2010, the ACLU posted about the atrocity taking place in Virginia concerning the plight of three women, who were brought here under false pretenses and forced to work against their will in the home of a military attaché to the Embassy of Kuwait, where they were subjected to physical and psychological abuse. Eventually, these women fled and filed suit against their abusers. It comes as no surprise that due to “diplomatic immunity”, their suit was dismissed.
It cannot be denied that if the “Land of Liberty and Justice”, the greatest nation in the world, does not uphold and implement human rights laws, the rest of the world will follow in those footsteps only too readily.
The struggle for human rights is a ruthless, as well as never-ending, world war for humankind, and no matter the United Nations’ “Covenant on Civil and Political Rights” of nations and individuals, or the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, agreements and laws written to insure the execution of human rights for all humans, these agreements and laws are only as good as those willing to enforce them.
