“Human Rights” are not Tools for Pressurizing Other Countries

 2022.4.19.

http://www.mfa.gov.kp/view/article/15044

Recently, the Amnesty International, in its 2021-2022 report on the state of human rights across the world, revealed that the UK government is preparing to adopt inhumane bills that infringe upon human rights of the refugees as well as its citizens.

According to the report, the UK government is said to be in its bid to adopt the nationality and border bill that will tighten the control on illegal entry into the country and its border, and the policing of protests bill that will allow its police authority to crack down on peaceful demonstration by means of violence.

It also pointed out that the UK government is trying to cut its emergency welfare response to the pandemic of an extra £20 a week for those on universal credit, and it said that this will mercilessly violate the human rights of the UK citizens and refugees who live in abject poverty.

Head of the Amnesty International warned that the UK will never become a “champion of human rights” that it hopes for, unless it unravels this immediately.

The UK is notorious for its extremely harsh surveillance of its citizens’ daily life, having installed 4.2 million surveillance cameras across the country.

And recently many sorts of human rights violations, such as racial discrimination, maltreatment of immigrants, police violence and murders, are committed ceaselessly, much to the consternation.

Particularly, the UK soldiers, who committed horrible tortures and massacres against civilians in disputed areas, are strutting about the streets, unpunished.

Such a country is making a fuss in international arena, taking issue with other countries’ “human rights issues”. Then what is its ulterior motive?

It is to hide its own human rights plight. It is not because the UK has a special interest in human rights.

The UK took lead in deciding “diplomatic boycott” of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, picking on “human rights issue”, and it instigated other countries to break relations with Syria, under a groundless excuse that Syria “violated” international humanitarian law. Likewise, it pressurizes the countries of its dislike under the pretext of “human rights issue”.

The UK should no longer profess to be an “advanced nation of human rights”, seeing squarely how the world evaluates its human rights situation.

“Human rights” are not means of putting pressure on other countries.

 

Choe Hyon Do, Researcher of the Korea-Europe Association