December 10, 2008 marked the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. 

This Declaration of Human Rights, followed the end of the Second World War, the defeat of the nazi fascist hordes of Germany, Italy and Japan at the hands of the Soviet Union and its allies, and at the hands of the peoples; the beginning of the decolonisation process in Asia and Africa as a result of the powerful upsurge of the anti colonial liberation struggles.

 That declaration was a formal recognition by the member states of the UN sixty years ago that there are certain rights that belong to all human beings, without exception. During this entire period, there has been a sharp struggle between the peoples who have been asserting their human rights, and various states that have refused to accept in practice that human rights are inviolable and must be guaranteed. World over, the imperialist capitalist states, like the US and India, have attacked the very concept of human rights by violating the right to conscience of various people. Till the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US declared all those opposed to it as communists, and followed it up with the declaration that communists do not have human rights. Today, the US and various reactionary states like India declare all those opposed to them as "terrorists", they vilify an entire religion as "terrorist" and justify the complete denial of right to conscience of the people of Muslim faith.

Thus we have the terrible spectacle of Guantanamo Bay, where people of the Muslim faith captured by US occupation forces in Afghanistan have been brutally tortured, their faith insulted deliberately, by the US and the same thing has been revealed in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Within US, it is known that people of the Muslim faith have been savagely persecuted.

In India, the right to conscience is being openly violated under any and every pretext. If you are a Muslim youth, the state security forces can do anything to you — arrest, humiliate, torture and kill you. This same holds true if you are a Kashmiri or a Manipuri or an Assamese or belong to any of the smaller nationalities of India. The same holds true for people like Dr Binayak Sen, who has been incarcerated in the dungeons of Chhattisgrh under fascist laws, for raising his voice against the Salwa Judum's atrocities on the tribal people. Fascist Laws like TADA and POTA, the Chhatisgarh Public Safety Act, the UAPA, and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act give the state forces unlimited license to violate human rights, including the license to eliminate people in fake encounters.

Human beings, in the course of their development, have constituted themselves into nations and countries. The right of nations and peoples to self detrmination, to determine the orientation of their economy and adopt a political system of their choice, is a human right. This right is being blatantly violated by the imperialist and reactionary states.

 The United States government acts as if it is the supreme authority that can decide which people and which state has the right to exist, and which does not. Concocting the lie that the state of Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, while itself being in possession of the world's largest arsenal of weaponsof mass destruction, the US gave itself the right to rain death and destruction on this ancient civilisation and sent its troops to occupy Iraq. It committed a similar crime against the people of Afghanistan. "We declare them to be rogue states, so they have no right to exist", is the underlying argument. Now they are saying, " Pakistan is a failed state which cannot control terrorists in its territory, so we can aggress upon Pakistan".

The Indian government also behaves in a similar fashion with respect to the national liberation movements within its territory, and with respect to the sovereignty of neighbouring states. The government says that the constituent peoples of India, like the Kashmiris, Manipuris, Nagas, Assamese etc. do not have any national rights — they do not have the right to determine their own destiny. India watched while Afghanistan and Iraq were raped and occupied and today it is threatening the sovereignty of Pakistan.

The very notion that some human beings, and entire nations of human beings, can have their rights taken away by some state authority goes against the definition of Human Rights. Human rights belong to all human beings, without exception. These include the right to conscience and life, to food and shelter, to work and to contribute to social production, to be educated and receive basic health care, etc. They include the right of nations to self-determination. Any state is duty bound to recognise these rights and protect them from being violated. 

Those whom the state declares to be 'terrorists' have no human rights – so say the champions of the 'war against terrorism'. This is nothing but an argument for fascism – the complete denial of rights to anyone who does not toe the line of the authority.

One of the biggest lies being spread by the ruling bourgeois class is that terrorists are able to get away because of the need to respect human rights. This is not the reason why those who perpetrate terrorist crimes go unpunished. The reason is that it is the capitalist imperialist states that organise terrorist crimes in the first place. Terrorism, both that which is carried out overtly by the state forces as well as that which is organised covertly by various other agencies, serves the agenda of the bourgeois class in power to justify crushing human rights. They use their power to see that the real culprits are not caught and punished for their crimes.

On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights, People's Voice salutes all those courageous people who are fighting in defence of human rights, against heavy odds. We salute the brave people of Manipur, Nagaland, Kashmir and other parts of India, the people of Baluchistan, Northwest Frontier Province and other parts of Pakistan, the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, and others who are facing the violence of imperialism and reactionary bourgeois states. We salute all those individuals in all countries who have openly taken an uncompromising stand in defence of human rights, in the face of fascistic violence and persecution.