Meryam Dabhoiwala

The most important element of human rights work is promoting the dignity of all people. The actions of human rights activists must revolve around this concept. However, in many cases, victims of rights abuses are denied the dignity by those people who claim to defend the rights of the victims. Rather than seeing them as victims of a specific violation, they are seen as victims in general, with all the negative connotations that are associated with the term "victim". This doubly victimises these individuals.

Human rights activists should be individuals promoting and protecting human rights. They are not just the defenders of particular "victims". 

To move beyond the violence and suppression that is taking hold in so many parts of the world, and to promote universal human dignity, it is essential for activists to articulate a culture of human rights that centres on the equality of all individuals. 

Pae Eun Shin, a South Korean mother who lost her son in the student democracy movement in Seoul in June 1987, is an advocate for such a cause. An uneducated woman who had never thought about democracy before her son's death, Pae sought to fight with others who had suffered similar losses as well as those who strived for more democracy in South Korea. 

"I wanted to know why my son joined the demonstration," Pae said in a testimony. "Whenever I visited his grave, I would meet people who would tell me that my son was great and his death was a very sad thing for all of us. These kinds of feelings and sentiments encouraged me to also fight for democracy. Whenever I attended demonstrations and I saw the way the police treated students like animals, I never thought that they were not my sons. They were also my sons. So I had to continue the fight. I used
to run after the police vans in which they took the students, and I would stand outside the police station and tell the police not to mistreat the students."

Pae will always grieve for the loss of her son. However, she has overcome her victimisation through her quest for democracy and in fighting for the dignity of other student protesters, who are also "her sons". In her quest she was helped and supported by other victims' family members, students and activists. Pae wants justice not only for her son, but for everyone. "As a person directly related to the victim, I feel so sad, especially during the season of May...However, there are still so many undemocratic practices and behaviour in Korea, so I know that this kind of work cannot be stopped."

While it is true that not all victims will choose Pae's path, most victims of human rights violations are in fact not weak, apathetic and in need of coddling. The abuse that they have suffered may leave them with specific needs (medical, legal or otherwise), but there are many whose experiences as victims of human rights violations will move them to fight for redress. In the case of Pae, no redress could bring her son back; she is fighting for her son's dignity in death and the cause of justice. Human rights activists need to support all victims not only to seek redress and thereby regain their dignity, but also to articulate their views of a society they wish to live in. Activists have a dual responsibility-to respond to the violation that has affected an individual, as well as to counter the systemic factors within society that allow the abuse to occur.

Know the Victims

To respond to the needs of a victim requires three things: to know the violation, to provide for the immediate needs of the victim and to document their stories. All three are interlinked. To know the violation, it is essential for activists to meet the victims themselves, rather than rely on second-hand reports. Knowing the violation also means understanding the needs of the victims. These needs, whether medical, legal or otherwise, must be seen as a priority, ensuring the wellbeing of the victims. In some cases, victims will need protection, which must also be provided. This protection is essential to their participation in fighting against rights abuses. Understanding both the violation and the needs of the victims makes the documenting of their stories much more effective and vivid.

Sometimes, the documentation takes a deliberately drastic form, aimed at shocking people and prompting them to action. This, however, comes at the price of a person's dignity, for example as Chris Cusano wrote in "Shock Value: A Human Rights Commentary"i n Burma Issues newsletter in May 1998:

"... the much-publicised photograph of a dead refugee woman. Burnt, swollen and disfigured, her anonymous body lays in the dust, her face has been burned off. Her corpse is naked, whatever clothes she might have been wearing as she attempted to flee the shelling of her camp scorched from her body....

"Although the fundamental motive for human rights work, including reporting of human rights abuse, is to promote and celebrate people's inherent dignity, there is no denying that this is one of the most graphically undignified images one could ever see. It is difficult to imagine that were she alive, Ma Pyne-the deceased womanwould ever consent to it, or that her close friends and relatives, if consulted, would either. If she were a sister, a friend or a colleague, would we choose the same image to represent her life to the world? If the answer is no, then we have to wonder at a human rights movement in which the average person is anything but a colleague....

"Assuming that she wished to retain her dignity in life, why then would a human rights movement choose to
disregard that wish in death? Perhaps the answer is that with too great an emphasis on exploiting the details of human rights abuse, the movement has ended up paying more attention to people in death than in life. Is it possible that the dignity of their lives is less interesting or less useful that the final indignities done to them in death?" 

Such a situation can be avoided if activists take the time to know the victims and their families, to support and work with them to seek redress. This will then reinforce human dignity, which in turn will ensure that any documentation of the victims' stories will carry the voice of the victims and effectively motivate other people to act against rights violations. 

People are the Core

To respond to systemic factors within society that allow the violations to occur requires the initiation of social or legal movements for change. Such movements, particularly if they are to create enough impact to be effective, need a coherent, organised civil society. Human rights activists must realise that victims themselves are a part of society and must be embraced within any such movement. In fact, the victims can be the strongest force leading a movement for change, as they are the ones mostly affected. 

In the cases of the 1980 Kwangju uprising and South Korea's struggle for democracy, activist Kim Yang Rae said that neither movement would have been successful or even possible without the voice of the victims and their families. Kim said at times when everyone else wanted to give up it was the families of victims who persisted. The courage and determination of the ordinary people- which is largely overlooked by many human rights groups-should be harnessed as the driving force of movements for change. The human rights movement sometimes strangely forgets that human rights are about people, and without the people, no fight or discourse has any concrete reality. 

"People", of course, do not mean only the victims of human rights violations, but in the sense of all ordinary folk. It is their involvement that will create a movement with enough impact for change. In speaking of organisations in Asia dealing with torture, Basil Fernando, executive director of the Asian Human Rights Commission, said: 

"There was an emotional alienation among those claiming to help torture victims... [P]artners in work to eliminate torture must be from social classes closer to the milieu to which the victims themselves belong. They would have to be persons who could understand the language and social circumstances of the victims. They would also have to be willing to give a considerable amount of time to the victims. They also had to be willing to provide food, shelter and solidarity to victims, particularly immediately after the experience of torture. And equally important, they had to create selfconfidence in the victims and their families, despite the many pressures and harassment directed towards them after they make their complaints about torture to the authorities. In short, the type of activists required were those willing to take over many of the burdens that the victims and their families would have had to bear on their own."

That applies to groups dealing not only with torture, but human rights in general. Victims of human rights violations are usually from the poor sector of society, to which few human rights groups belong. Consequently, the human rights movement is increasingly seen as a foreign and elitist movement, distanced from those it is seeking to protect. The ideological gap between the groups and the people in many instances results in human rights groups not being interested in dealing with ordinary people, including victims. Activists forget that the very nature of human rights work is to deal with all humans.

In not working with the victims whose rights they seek to defend, activists rely on representations of the victims. These representations are invariably distorted through individual circumstances and agendas. The representations further twist the aims of the movement-for example, for which aim was the photograph of Ma Pyne used? Certainly it had nothing to do with promoting human dignity. The victimisation of human rights abuse victims is a denial of the inherent dignity and equality of all peoples, and serves no purpose in improving the situation of human rights; in fact, it is dangerous and counterproductive to the essence of human rights work.

To bridge the gap between the movement and the people, to enable people to fight against human rights violations and seek justice, human rights activists must understand the people they wish to protect and work with them. A victim-oriented approach must be taken in addressing rights abuses, through which activists respond to the individual needs and circumstances of the victims. In this way the specific abuse suffered and the systemic factors that spawn the violation can both be tackled. Only in addressing both issues together with the victims, whose rights we are meant to be protecting, can we truly achieve our aim of celebrating and promoting human dignity.