Home Deliberation Magna Carta: Just another moth-eaten artifact

Magna Carta: Just another moth-eaten artifact

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Since our first brush with Magna Carta in a history lesson, a term emblematic of democracy and freedom, the supposedly ‘first charter of human rights’ is still revered by many with a religious fervor. On its 800th anniversary, a study of our recent past will tell a tale of how its famous clauses, sealed centuries ago have been encumbered by political agendas and vested interests in a timeline known for its unreasonably loud advocacy of humanitarianism from possibly all quarters of the world. Strangely, it has ‘little legal’ weight in England itself, the place of its birth, and yet the commemoration was a celebratory affair.

The fact that all clauses, except three, have been ‘repealed’ came as a revelation. Equally surprising was a statement on the official website Magna Carta Today, ‘with a population of over 1.2 billion people, India is a powerful guarantor of Magna Carta principles’. ‘Guarantor’, a term so highly exaggerated, reminds me of the frequent communal ‘flare-ups’ abetted by and done in collusion with our supposed keepers of justice, matters ultimately landing up in a pile of unsolved cases in courts or consequent defeat all together due to lack of evidence. But it isn’t just India that has built an impenetrable fortress of denial over the years. Myanmar is known for its ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, and despite the UN’s awareness of the many human rights violations by the government, thousands still continue to be stranded on sea and in camps and while their Nobel Peace prize winner, Suu Kyi, travels around the globe with many more awards in her pocket, The Guardian criticizes her for her statement to a BBC journalist, Mishal Husain, that there was ‘no ethnic cleansing’- a bald-faced lie. Not to mention the president’s unfulfilled promises to Obama (to reform the chaos stricken state) including the establishment of a UN high commissioner for Human Rights Office in Burma. Let’s hold Obama’s Nobel Peace prize in abeyance for a while for there are many other countries with despotism of a unique character inevitably stemming from the basest of origins.

China maybe the largest country in size, but its narrow intolerance towards religious activities, more so its ban on ‘Ramadan fasting’ in the province of Xinjiang, makes it fall down the aisle of civilization right into a pit of ignorance. The ethnic cleansing in Palestine is another never-ending crime of Israel that very astutely circumvents the many never-imposed-penalties of violating human rights.

There’s France’s burqa ban ‘upheld by human rights court’ in the name of security and apparently applies not only to Muslim women but to anybody wearing a hood or helmet except on a motorcycle. Come to think of it, I haven’t really witnessed a sight of people walking on streets with their helmets on, and why is it even called a ‘burqa ban’ in the first place and not just a ‘no-covering law’? And despite their wan attempts to explain how the ban did not go against human rights, and how it was a ‘kindness’, an uninvited one imposed on women, French writer and Columnist Caroline Fourest tells us how banning everything in the name of women rights is not the solution to anything. But she happens to be one of those voices we, as most of the other freedom-lovers, do not like to hear of. And then there’s Erdogan, one of the very few, raising his voice against Sisi’s barbarism in Egypt for Morsi, speaking in favor of Palestine and the Syrian refugees and condemning the UN for turning a blind eye to most of the global crisis. It wasn’t surprising to see how half the world lambasted him for being a ‘terrorist supporter’ and meddling in Egypt’s ‘internal affairs’. That reminds me, isn’t the French burqa ban an internal affair too? But yet, more than half the world continues to rack its brain to explain to us how ‘kind’ the law is.BM4BMK_2937399b

China maybe the largest country in size, but its narrow intolerance towards religious activities, more so its ban on ‘Ramadan fasting’ in the province of Xinjiang, makes it fall down the aisle of civilization right into a pit of ignorance. The ethnic cleansing in Palestine is another never-ending crime of Israel that very astutely circumvents the many never-imposed-penalties of violating human rights. So why was Noam Chomsky, an American philosopher, barred from entering the West Bank? In his own answer to al-Jazeera, ‘the government of Israel doesn’t like the kind of things I say, which puts them into the same category as every other government in the world’. The 82 year old has not only been a strident critic of Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine, but also of Obama’s administration. In his article, ‘How the Magna Carta became a Minor Carta’ in The Guardian, he expresses his remorse on how ‘the Great charter is being shredded before our eyes’. To quote his words, ‘He (Obama) has, in fact, punished more whistleblowers than all previous presidents combined, a real achievement for an administration that came to office promising transparency’. He recalls how the Habeas Corpus was flouted in case of Canadian citizen Maher Arar ‘for imprisonment and torture, only later conceding that there was never any case against him’, the case of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, who was blown up by a ‘presidentially ordered assassination’ without a ‘fair trial’ and the very famous case of Osama bin Laden. He says,’ Whatever one thinks of him, he was a suspect and nothing more than that. Even the FBI agreed’, all of this to only embarrass ‘the Geneva conventions, the foundation of modern humanitarian law: they bar “the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized people” ‘. Not to forget the shutting down of Al-Barakaat, a charitable network that funds Somalia ‘ten times more than the foreign aid [Somalia] receives’, on grounds of terrorism, only to later ‘withdraw’ the accusations a year later, after having destroyed its economy.

While Tony Abbott, another name that often springs up in ‘crimes against humanity’, graced the commemoration of the Magna Carta with his flowery phrases, the event seemed like just any other shallow rhetorical affair. With the media and the people on the lookout for juicy stories, and liberty and freedom having been stripped off its true essence, the world has joined in on an international schadenfreude. We may be safe on the other side of injustice and human rights violation, but it is just a matter of time before it takes wing and engulfs us all, further reducing Magna Carta (and the like) to just another moth-eaten document of historical importance.

 

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