Cruelty or Humanity. Rees, Stuart
abiding poverty, it may be unconscious. Subsequent analysis in Chapter 4 addresses this continuum, from direct to indirect, and from conscious to possibly unconscious acts. Along that continuum persist cruel policies which may be deliberate, or conducted by enabling the acts of others. Cruel policies may be carried out by deception, or could involve collusion with cruel allies.
Cruel acts and policies are worldwide, though the United Nations has set prohibitions on cruelty which represent global standards. Article 5 of the 1948 UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights says, ‘No-one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.’
Article 3 of the 1953 European Convention on Human Rights prohibits ‘inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’. The European Court of Human Rights holds that this provision forbids the extradition of a person to a foreign state if they are likely to be subjected to torture, which has been interpreted as referring to the death penalty.
In the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 1966, Article Seven says, ‘No-one shall be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In particular, no-one shall be subjected without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation.’ Article Eight says, ‘No-one shall be held in slavery; slavery and the slave trade in all their forms shall be prohibited.’
The UN’s Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment was passed by the General Assembly in December 1984 and came into force in June 1987.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child was ratified by the UN General Assembly on 20 November 1989. Article Three of that Convention states, ‘In all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law or legislative bodies, the best interest of the child shall be a primary consideration.’ Article Six says, ‘States Parties recognize that every child has the inherent right to life.’
These charters, covenants and conventions have provided standards of human decency to which most of the world’s nations said they would adhere. Through the machinations of politics, by badly crafted, thoughtless policies, or in atrocities committed by those who oppose states and their institutions, these significant UN aspirations and rules are being derided, or ignored. Like a malignant disease, cruelties persist, even though anyone with a belief in the importance of human rights and the rule of law could recognize and oppose them.
I scanned records of familiar cruelties, of discriminatory and brutal responses to Indigenous people, asylum seekers and refugees. I felt confronted by the inhumanities, swamped by records of human rights abuses from several continents, by news of the latest ethnic cleansing, of torture and killings so routinely explained and so automatically justified.
My research addressed questions, how to gain insight into cruelties, how to portray human dimensions without departing from the formal responsibility to marshal and record diverse sources of information. Overwhelming evidence of atrocities to human beings, to animals, plus disregard for a precious environment, posed the conundrum: how to handle feelings of dismay and disbelief?
In response to that last question, poetry provides ideas and insights. Extracts from poems illuminate those insights which can remain elusive in prose. The English poet Shelley said that poets were the unacknowledged legislators of the world. He implied that lessons could be learned from poetry which unmasked the past, undressed the present and forecast a more socially just future. Images and messages in poetry contribute vision and understanding. Without the insights, irony and softness of poetry, accounts of cruelty could seem relentlessly macabre.
With the help of poets, this book appeals for truths to be told about governments’ oppressive ways to implement domestic and foreign policies, and extremist groups’ ways to wreak vengeance on people they deride or hate.
The cruelty as policy question began with random examples of cruelty practised by any state, any group or individual. Learning came with exploration which revealed ideas about the motives for cruelty, the political, cultural and psychological forces which influenced those motives. As that delving came to an end, though such head-scratching reflections never really end, clarity emerged, but with a caution: don’t expect a psychological treatise. The psychological dimension exists, but is wrapped in the contexts of other forces. Addressing the causes question coincided with clues as to the ways in which foreign and domestic policies have been formed and fuelled by cruelty. Advocating humanitarian alternatives is a work in progress for every writer and reader, for every social scientist and journalist, every student, bureaucrat and politician. That part of this book was the easiest to write because it was moved by an educational, political and moral imperative: without humanitarian alternatives, we are all lost.
The value of theory
Understanding cruelty can be made easier by theory about patterns which persist irrespective of differences between countries and cultures. Such theorizing confronts possible criticism of detail, ‘There are so many examples, we can’t distinguish one from another’, or, more specifically, ‘How is one individual incident of cruelty linked to extreme events such as state torture, murderous wars and genocide?’
A brief theoretical guide addresses those questions and begins by highlighting two concepts. The first concerns a state, its actions, responsibility and accountability. State includes government, whether democracy or dictatorship, elected coalition or one-party rule. It includes state organizations: religious agencies, educational institutions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), corporations subsidized by governments, militant groups which claim official authority, even individuals who wear uniforms, such as security personnel, or who may operate in plain clothes.
Reference to culture gives the second clue. An assembly of beliefs, rules about male/female conduct, plus time-honoured means of discrimination contribute to cultures. Beneath the visible, tourist-popular features of cultures lie values about order, normality, rewards, punishments and the exercise of power.
As insightful observers on the effects of cultures on life chances, poets have warned of harmful effects. Irish poet Louis MacNeice pleaded, ‘I am not yet born, O fill me with strength against those who would freeze my humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton’.3 The national poet of Palestine, Mahmoud Darwish, wrote, ‘We travel like other people, but we return to nowhere. As if travelling is the way of the clouds’.4 The English poet Housman protested the persecution of anyone who might be considered abnormal, ‘The laws of God, the laws of man, He may keep that will and can, Not I: let God and man decree Laws for themselves and not for me’.5
A first step in theorizing concerns the common ground between degrees of cruelty. A continuum stretches from modest cruelty (if that’s not an oxymoron) to what might be termed middle-range offensive acts, to easily recognized extreme cruelty. In spite of apparent differences, each act derives from values operating within a state. Here is the thin-end-of-the-wedge argument. Bullying by individuals at home, in a playground or workplace has ripple effects and reappears in national policies and in the conduct of international relations. In every context, cruel acts are influenced by a concern with order and control, with disparagement and punishment.
Another pattern emerges. Slides of cruelty examined through a microscope show signs of superiority and inferiority. A need to maintain the superiority of one group at the expense of another looks like the catalyst for cruelty. Embedded in state rules and cultural beliefs, assumptions about superiority give an entitlement to act against the supposed inferior beings, human or animal. The functionaries who represent states and cultures can assume permission to be cruel. The Myanmar military expel and murder the Rohingya. In response to a powerless woman’s alleged blasphemy, Pakistani mobs howl for blood. Indigenous people in the Americas and in Australia can be eliminated by supposed superior races.
Not just by murder and mayhem, dominant people have been desperate to assert their superiority. Aboriginal children removed from their parents, the babies of unmarried mothers transferred to adoptive parents, asylum seekers detained indefinitely irrespective of the rules of international law, fences and walls built and guards employed to maintain border controls and keep inferior people out.