Ongoing Affront To Human Rights And Dignity

A dmirers of the United Nations, which celebrated the 50th anniversary of its founding on June 26, like to view it as the great Parliament of Humanity. Such a characterization would be appropriate only if you have a rather low estimate of humanity.

Actually, it would be more plausible to think of the U.N. as the great House of Hypocrisy.

Nor is this a matter of an institution that has failed to live up to its glorious origins. For whatever else the U.N. has achieved - or more often, failed to achieve - during its existence, it has served as a living monument to hypocrisy right from the start.

The U.N. Charter begins by asserting, among other things, “We the peoples of the United Nations (are) determined to … reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights (and) in the dignity and worth of the human person.” That charter was signed by the United States and many other nations that might have been somewhat embarrassed to do so. For example, racial segregation was still widely enforced in many parts of our country. But let that pass. We are necessarily dealing with imperfect human societies, and compared to most nations, the United States - with all its defects - was even then a paragon of human rights.

But the charter was also signed by the Soviet Union, whose communist regime - especially under then-ruler Josef Stalin - was one of the most heinous in recorded history (on a par with Hitler’s when it came to imprisoning and exterminating innocent people). That was already known at the time of the U.N.’s founding conference in San Francisco. And yet, the blatant contrast between the charter’s noble sentiments and the Soviet Union’s vile deeds passed without notice or objection, at least in public, by the distinguished hypocrites assembled for the historic occasion.

Now, on to 1971, when the U.N. decided to take away China’s seat in the organization from Taiwan and grant it to the communist regime on the mainland headed by Mao Tse-tung, who was responsible for killing as many of his own people as Stalin and Hitler put together!

Now, I am realistic enough to understand that even evil regimes, if they are as big and powerful as the ones then ruling in Moscow and Beijing, may need to be brought within the U.N. system. But if so, that is a sad necessity, which ought to be accepted with some regret.

That is why I can still remember the revulsion that came over me at the ugly sight of U.N. delegates, primarily those from Third World countries, leaping to their feet and roaring with delight after the vote admitting Red China - a revealing indication of what they really thought about the charter’s stirring sentiments concerning “fundamental human rights.”

Two more decades have passed and the hypocrisy continues unabated. U.N. officials recently ordered the deletion of several passages in a book they commissioned to commemorate the organization’s 50th anniversary. One of these passages consisted of two sentences from a speech given by the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet, on the occasion of a 1993 human rights conference sponsored by the U.N. The offending words:

“It is the inherent nature of human beings to yearn for freedom, equality and dignity and they have an equal right to achieve that. Brute force, no matter how strongly applied, can never subdue the basic desire for freedom and dignity.”

Not exactly an example of hate speech, is it? Nevertheless, it might offend Communist China, which has imposed an extraordinarily vicious form of tyranny on its tiny neighbor, Tibet. So Gillian Martin Sorensen, the U.N. official in charge of coordinating the 50th anniversary celebrations, wrote to Jonathan Power, the British writer who edited the book, and explained that it would be “unacceptable” to include the Dalai Lama’s remarks.

Again, a realist would concede that finding it necessary on occasion to bow to pressure from big, nasty regimes is one of those regrettable facts of international life. But what fascinated me was how Sorensen - evidently a true exemplar of all that the U.N. represents - could not resist adding hypocrisy to cowardice: She pointed out to Power that, instead of citing the Dalai Lama’s words, there were “many suitable quotations from other prominent individuals which could be used to express the same point.”

Translation: Talking about human rights is fine, provided that it doesn’t interfere with the U.N.’s ability to remain on good terms with regimes that don’t give a fig about human rights.

In a way, Sorensen’s stance might be appropriate: Perhaps a book commemorating the 50th anniversary of the U.N. ought to take the same hypocritical approach to human rights that was clearly visible at the founding conference in San Francisco.