Thread: Cultural Practice and Human Rights

Can one distinguish between cultural practices that need to be honored and those that are human rights violations? Any thoughts or opinions would be great.

Cheers!

If the "cultural practice" involves irreversibly cutting off any body part it is WRONG. But of course, not everyone would agree with this. For example, half of the babies in the USA have part of their penis (the foreskin) cut off at birth.

Death as a punishment for sexual misconduct (except perhaps for rape) is also wrong.

In several muslim countries, those that abandon Islam are stoned to death. It need not be mentioned that this too is wrong.

But the plain truth is that morality is actually subjective. Nearly all people in the world, however, can agree on some basic things. But what about when 99% of people in the world believe something is wrong, but it is commonly accepted within a certain isolated cultural group?


Strange Funeral Customs

In Japan, it was the custom to insist that twenty or thirty servants commit hara kiri (suicide) at the death of a nobleman. Usually these servants were cooerced.

In Fiji it was considered correct for the friends of the deceased as well as his wives and slaves to be strangled.

Prior to being outlawed by the British, a rite known as suttee was practiced among the Hindu higher castes in India. The wife of the deceased was expected to dress herself in her finest clothing and lie down by the side of her deceased husband on the funeral pyre to be cremated alive. The eldest son then lit the pyre. A widow who failed to fulfill her final duty brought shame to the family and would be a social outcast.

In Fiji a child's finger, usually a daughter, was cut off as a sign of affection for a dead father.

start there.

An' Granny says `sides dat dey need be sendin' her dat 2nd stimulus check...

10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free
Every year, the State Department issues reports on individual rights in other countries, monitoring the passage of restrictive laws and regulations around the world. Iran, for example, has been criticized for denying fair public trials and limiting privacy, while Russia has been taken to task for undermining due process. Other countries have been condemned for the use of secret evidence and torture.

Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any definition of a free nation must include their own — the land of free. Yet, the laws and practices of the land should shake that confidence. In the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 31, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens. At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves?

While each new national security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don’t operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet, objectively, we may be only half right. Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of “free,” but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit.

These countries also have constitutions that purport to guarantee freedoms and rights. But their governments have broad discretion in denying those rights and few real avenues for challenges by citizens — precisely the problem with the new laws in this country. The list of powers acquired by the U.S. government since 9/11 puts us in rather troubling company.

Assassination of U.S. citizens

President Obama has claimed, as President George W. Bush did before him, the right to order the killing of any citizen considered a terrorist or an abettor of terrorism. Last year, he approved the killing of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaqi and another citizen under this claimed inherent authority. Last month, administration officials affirmed that power, stating that the president can order the assassination of any citizen whom he considers allied with terrorists. (Nations such as Nigeria, Iran and Syria have been routinely criticized for extrajudicial killings of enemies of the state.)

Indefinite detention

Originally Posted by fearedtalent

Can one distinguish between cultural practices that need to be honored and those that are human rights violations? Any thoughts or opinions would be great.

Cheers!

Only under the culture in which you are looking. What is culturally wrong here isn't in other countries and we have no business sticking our hearts and minds into their culture. Now if they try to make us follow suit, that is a horse of a different color.

Syria may soon not be able to rely on Russia...

Russia signals possible shift on Syria
Feb. 13 (UPI) -- Russia, which has vetoed previous U.N. resolutions condemning violence in Syria, signaled Monday it may shift its stand amid fresh violence.

Russia is prepared to promote dialogue and a "regional security agreement" between gulf countries and permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said. But CNN reported it remained uncertain whether Lavrov 's comment indicated Russia would support the resolution Monday. The comment came after Lavrov met with the United Arab Emirates' foreign minister, who had attended an Arab League meeting Sunday in Cairo. The league is calling for a joint peacekeeping mission with the United Nations to oversee a cease-fire and has urged member states to cut ties to Syria and give political and financial support to the opposition in the country.

Syrian Ambassador to the Arab League Yousef Ahmad said his regime was "not interested" in any league resolution decided in its absence. The league suspended Syria's membership in November. Meanwhile, CNN reported renewed violence in Syria, where the Local Coordinating Committees, a network of opposition activists, reported more than 680 people died last week and more than 7,000 since the uprising against the regime of President Bashar Assad began 11 months ago. CNN reported Monday the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition activist group, said tanks, armed personnel carriers and military trucks entered Idlib in northwest Syria, where four people were reported killed by gunfire from Syrian security forces.

In the restive city of Homs, two civilians were killed in shelling, and three soldiers were killed elsewhere in the Homs province after a failed army attempt to storm the town, the Observatory said. Arab League ministers discussed a U.N.-Arab force of 3,000 observers, pan-Arab TV network al-Jazeera reported -- far larger than 200 or so observers in the league mission that was suspended last month. The United Nations has historically deployed armed peacekeepers only with the host country's consent and when it believes there is peace to keep, al-Jazeera and The New York Times said.

Mohammed Ahmed al-Dabi, the controversial Sudanese general who led the earlier league mission, resigned from that post Sunday, contending he performed his role "with full integrity and transparency" but alleging the situation was skewed. He was accused by opposition activists of bias toward the regime. League Secretary-General Nabil al-Araby recommended appointing former Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdul Ilah Khatib, who was named U.N. special envoy to Libya last year, as Dabi's replacement.

MORE

I am perfectly cool with any attempt to end such practices as slavery and ritual mutilations. I think, too, that the Taliban should be shunned for their ghastly treatment of women. That isn't even good Islam, if you understand the Qur'an.

Not much we can do about most of the really hideous practices other than to support political activist who try to abolish the practices or in some way ameliorate the problems. There has to be a movement within the subject cultures to do any good. (Well, aside from sending Predator drones and SEAL teams to blow away slave-raiding parties.)

There is a strong feminist movement rising in some parts of Africa (surprisingly enough, most noticeably in predominantly Muslim countries.) Give them such support as we can and leave it at that.

Originally Posted by fearedtalent

Can one distinguish between cultural practices that need to be honored and those that are human rights violations? Any thoughts or opinions would be great.

Cheers!

I suppose you could use the UN Declaration on Human Rights and check off various cultural practices against the list there.

Or you could take a perspective - say utilitarian or any other that you prefer - and use that or those perspectives instead.

Even leaving out the question of the rights of children (which I'm going to do because it's just not an argument I feel like tackling today) there is a problem with honoring culture-based human rights violations. The problem is laws that make emigrating to somewhere with a different culture expensive, difficult, time-consuming, or outright impossible. Which means individuals who would prefer not to be subject to a certain culture often have no choice but to endure it.

Again leaving out the matter of children, one solution for those who would like to see people as free as possible to preserve any aspect of their culture is to stop putting up barriers to travel and residence outside the country of one's birth. We are not a feudal global society and yet in some ways we are. People are tied to specific areas and the cultures within those areas and need permission from some authority or other to live elsewhere.