Human rights judo.
My father decided the summer I became nine years old, that I needed to learn to defend myself and he enrolled me in a judo class. My father saw himself as a man’s man. He was old school even back then. He believed that a real man knew how to defend himself, and slapped his wife around when she needed “straightening out”. I remember vividly one time when the upstairs neighbors were having a row that sounded quite serious. My mother mused out loud whether it was necessary to call the police. My father’s reply was that there wasn’t anything to call the police about as the husband “was just showing how much he loved his wife”.
My judo teacher Mr. Nishimoto, told every new class of his about how when he had emigrated after World War II, he had been a semi-professional boxer. He described how he followed the tradition of going out into the boxing ring and shaking hands with the other boxer. He would walk back out to his corner of the ring and then come out again and try to shake his opponent’s hand again, while he held his left hand clenched behind his back. If the other boxer started to shake hands again, Mr. Nishimoto would pound him with a hard left hook. This strategy could of course have a deadly effect the first time, but if he ever met the other boxer again, chances would be pretty big that the boxer would remember the left hook.
Judo is mainly a defensive martial art; one that uses the opponent’s advantages against himself. Height and weight are in motion when the aggressor is moving towards you. It is a similar situation with regards to human rights. You have a two ton gorilla moving at you at speed; what do you do bucko? Well, most of us would move out of the way. But there is more than one way to avoid getting trampled and still stand up for what you believe. Human rights work is not particularly glamorous and few activists end up as martyrs. The truth of the matter is that most human rights work can be a bit of a slog, just like any other job. Most of the work is information collecting, monitoring and documentation. Disseminating that information is where most people, if they are going to run into difficulties, will experience problems. That is one reason why freedom of expression is so important.
Most people have taken civil and human rights largely for granted at home. The same governments that would deplore the human rights record of those regimes they had placed in power in the first place, would be largely punctilious at home. 9/11 has left a lot of governments rushing like lemming to be the first to dive over the cliff, by initiating draconian measures to combat terrorism. Much to do has even been made about the advantages of special terrorism legislation to combat the Mob and other forms of organized crime. Britain even used their terrorism legislation in connection with the recent bankruptcies in Iceland. My point of reference has always been that criminals should stand trial and be prosecuted, regardless what the motivations have been for what they have done. The United States traveled a bridge too far, when they started using methods that wouldn’t have been out of place in a 1970’s Latin American dictatorship, but then again who was it that taught those methods at the “School of the Americas” in the first place?
What has been more surprising has been the response of European countries. Attempts have been made to make agreements with countries that have deplorable human rights records, to accept the return of their nationals, on the condition that they solemnly promise they won’t be tortured. Some returnees have been accused, but never tried, for offenses related to terrorism, while others are refugees that have claimed asylum, but have not been considered bona fides refugees. This, despite that many of the refugees have sought asylum from threats of torture from the authorities of the country they originated from. European countries have also been almost as uncritical with regards to restrictions on civil liberties and the implementation of extraordinary monitoring of the general population and the use of agents provocateur.
Increased militarization of civil society provides concomitant increased potential for violations of human rights. This combined with less transparency, justified by increased needs for security, means that the job of human rights organizations has become more difficult. There is more need now than ever for some human rights judo. Organizations should be a lot more active in training members as well as non-members to gather information, process it and disseminate that information. Instead, I see many organizations crawling into their shells and concentrating on funding efforts to keep the organization afloat. That isn’t the way to go. Inspiration needs to be gathered from those human rights organizations in the developing world that are one or two people slogging away at an insurmountable task, risking everything to protect and defend their human rights.