Human Rights Abuses Quotes

The concept that all men are created equal was a key to European Enlightenment philosophy. But the interpretation of "all men" has hovered over the Declaration of Independence since its creation. ~ Oscar Auliq-Ice

The communications revolution has given millions of people both a wider and more detailed understanding of the world. Because of technology, ordinary citizens enjoy access to information that formerly was available only to elites and nation-states. One consequence of this change is that citizens have become acutely conscious of environmental destruction, entrenched poverty, health catastrophes, human rights abuses, failing education systems, and escalating violence. Another consequence is that people possess powerful communication tools to coordinate efforts to attack those problems. ~ David Bornstein

If we are at all serious about ending factory farming, then the absolute least we can do is stop sending checks to the absolute worst abusers. For some, the decision to eschew factory-farmed products will be easy. For others, the decision will be a hard one. To those for whom it sounds like a hard decision (I would have counted myself in this group), the ultimate question is whether it is worth the inconvenience. We know, at least, that this decision will help prevent deforestation, curb global warming, reduce pollution, save oil reserves, lessen the burden on rural America, decrease human rights abuses, improve public health, and help eliminate the most systematic animal abuse in world history. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

There is no western concern for issues of aggression, atrocities, human rights abuses and so on if there's a profit to be made from them ~ Noam Chomsky

If Bradley Manning was the person who copied the secret US diplomatic cables to WikilLeaks, he is a hero for exposing human rights abuses. ~ Peter Tatchell

The idea of 'Voice of Witness' is to let survivors and witnesses of human-rights abuses tell their story at length. It started with a course that I co-taught at U.C. Berkeley journalism school back in 2003. ~ Dave Eggers

One should never send soldiers on a mission based on just good will and good intent. Unfortunately, that can mean one has to stand by and watch human rights abuses take place. ~ Thomas De Maiziere

Terrorism doesn't just blow up buildings; it blasts every other issue off the political map. The spectre of terrorism - real and exaggerated - has become a shield of impunity, protecting governments around the world from scrutiny for their human rights abuses. ~ Naomi Klein

No country is 100 percent free of human rights abuses. ~ Raul Castro

Violence against women continues to persist as one of the most heinous, systematic and prevalent human rights abuses in the world. It is a threat to all women, and an obstacle to all our efforts for development, peace, and gender equality in all societies. Violence against women is always a violation of human rights; it is always a crime; and it is always unacceptable. Let us take this issue with the deadly seriousness that it deserves. ~ Ban Ki-moon

Since 2001, the U.S. government has abandoned its role as a champion of human rights and has perpetrated terrible and illegal abuses in prisons in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, sent prisoners secretly to other nations to be tortured, denied the applicability of the Geneva Convention restraints, and severely restricted time-honored civil liberties within our own country. Certain political leaders of other nations, who are inclined to perpetrate human rights abuses to quiet dissenting voices and were previously restrained by positive influence from Washington, now feel free to emulate or exceed the abuses approved by American leaders. ~ Jimmy Carter

I do not think that war is always wrong: sometimes it is necessary to stop a dictator, prevent massive human-rights abuses, or expel an invader. But I have also seen that in the modern world, civil wars are the greatest threat to humanitarian security. ~ Jonathan Powell

In its report issued that year, 1991, Amnesty International recorded protests against human rights abuses in over fifty countries, the protest to thirteen countries making specific reference to torture. These are the kinds of thing many of us have a vague background awareness of, without there being much publicity unless the perpetrators are some currently loathed regime, or unless some highly visible Westerner is among the victims. ~ Jonathan Glover

Over the past year, several cases of human rights abuses, specifically sexual exploitation and abuse, by individuals involved in U.N. peacekeeping operations have raised the suspicions of many Members of Congress and members of the International Relations Committee. ~ Michael McCaul

For me, campaigning and good business is also about putting forward solutions, not just opposing destructive practices or human rights abuses. ~ Anita Roddick

I worry that I upset people without meaning to. I worry that I don't check my privilege enough. I worry about people being imprisoned for crimes they didn't do. I worry about human rights abuses. I worry about prejudice and politics and pollution and the world my children, and their entire generation, are inheriting from us. I worry about all of the species going extinct because of humans. I worry about my carbon footprint. I worry about all of the pain in the world that I am not actively able to stop. I worry about how much I'm wrapped up in myself, which makes me even more wrapped up in myself. ~ Matt Haig

Since January 2002, when the United States began detaining at Guantanamo Bay enemy combatants captured in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other fronts in the war on terror, critics have complained of human rights abuses. ~ Linda Chavez

There is no question that a belief system can have positive, transformative effects on people's lives. Many current and former Scientologists have attested to the value of their training and the insight they derived from their study of the religion. They have the right to believe whatever they choose. But it is a different matter to use the protections afforded a religion by the First Amendment to falsify history, to propagate forgeries, and to cover up human-rights abuses. ~ Lawrence Wright

The growth of entrepreneurial classes throughout the world is an asset in the promotion of human rights and individual liberty, and it should be understood and used as such. Yet peace is the first and most important condition for continued prosperity and freedom. America's military power must be secure because the United States is the only guarantor of global peace and stability. The current neglect of America's armed forces threatens its ability to maintain peace. ~ Condoleezza Rice

Let the world feel your compassion: Help save kidnapped Yazidi females! ~ Widad Akreyi

Additionally, any Human Rights Council reform that allows countries with despicable human rights records to remain as members, such as China and Saudi Arabia, is not real reform. ~ Michael McCaul

The world must know that America holds to the highest standards of military conduct and human rights protections. Anything less is unacceptable. ~ Barbara Mikulski

Human rights can only be assured among a virtuous people. The general government ... can never be in danger of degenerating into a monarchy, an oligarchy, an aristocracy, or any despotic or oppresive form so long as there is any virtue in the body of the people. ~ George Washington

The situation of the Salvadorian people is terrible; all their rights are violated. There is a direct violation against the human person, a violation of rights that is endemic in society. ~ Maria Julia Hernandez

There is no doubt that the United States has much to atone for, both domestically and abroad ... To produce this horrible confection at home, start with our genocidal treatment of the Native Americans, add a couple hundred years of slavery, along with our denial of entry to Jewish refugees fleeing the death camps of the Third Reich, stir in our collusion with a long list of modern despots and our subsequent disregard for their appalling human rights records, add our bombing of Cambodia and the Pentagon Papers to taste, and then top with our recent refusals to sign the Kyoto protocol for greenhouse emissions, to support any ban on land mines, and to submit ourselves to the rulings of the International Criminal Court. The result should smell of death, hypocrisy, and fresh brimstone. ~ Sam Harris

Extensive violations of human rights (torture, forced reduction of living standards for much of the population, police-sponsored death squads, destruction of representative institutions or of independent unions, etc.) are directly correlated with US government support. The linkage is not accidental; rather it is systematic. The reason is obvious enough. Client fascism often improves the business climate for American corporations, quite generally the guiding factor in foreign policy. ~ Noam Chomsky

The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens. As Americans, we are blessed with circumstances that protect our human rights and our religious freedom, but for many people around the world, deprivation and persecution have become a way of life. ~ Jimmy Carter

Your worst enemy is not the person in opposition to you. It is the person occupying the spot you would be fighting from and doing nothing. ~ Heather Marsh

Malcolm spent much of May speaking to large crowds at church meetings and Sunday rallies, repeatedly emphasizing that the Muslims were not at war with the police, but rather that the police were at war with the Black community as a whole. ~ Mike Davis, John Wiener

Your gender may not help to make me feel comfortable; but I will absolutely defend your right to live in a way that doesn't require you to make me feel comfortable. Your skin colour may not be my skin colour; but I will absolutely defend your right to live in your own skin just as much as I live in mine. Your religion or absence of any religion may not align with my own beliefs; but I will absolutely defend your right to believe in anything or nothing at all. Since I'm a human too, I will defend your birthright to be the kind of human that you are. ~ C. JoyBell C.

The Nuremberg Trial of the German war criminals was tacitly based on the recognition of the principle: criminal actions cannot be excused if committed on government orders; conscience supersedes the authority of the law of the state. ~ Albert Einstein

Because we don't have a Fairness Doctrine, and because we have further media consolidation, and because we have a craptastic corporate media, WE DON'T HAVE NEWS! We don't have an informed populous and we don't have a democracy ... Everyone in the world knows that America, (in its current state, because of right-wingers) that the right wing arm of this country (that speaks for this country unfortunately) has no credibility when it comes to human rights or independent media. ~ Janeane Garofalo

The error I found in the philosophy of Henry George was its cocksureness, its simplicity, and the small value that it placed upon the selfish motives of men. The doctrine was a hang-over from the seventeenth century in France, when the philosophers had given up the idea of God, but still thought that there must be some immovable basis for man's conduct and ideals. In this dilemma they evolved the theory of natural rights. If 'natural rights' means anything it means that the individual rights are to be determined by the conduct of Nature. But Nature knows nothing about rights in the sense of human conception. ~ Clarence Darrow

And Eleanor's husband was the man who did the interning. And I think they - Governor Warren, who was later to become such an impassioned Chief Justice on all sorts of human rights issues, was very big in the internment process. And I think that we simply sometimes tend not to understand or remember how people felt. ~ William A. Rusher

Let those flatter, who fear; it is not an American art.61 To give praise which is not due might be well from the venal, but would ill beseem those who are asserting the rights of human nature. ... Open your breast, sire, to liberal and expanded thought. Let not the name of George the third be a blot in the page of history. ... The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail. No longer persevere in sacrificing the rights of one part of the empire to the inordinate desires of another; but deal out to all equal and impartial right. ... This is the important post in which fortune has placed you, holding the balance of a great, if a well poised empire. ~ Jon Meacham

Can we disregard the growing phenomenon of "environmental refugees", people who are forced by the degradation of their natural habitat to forsake it - and often their possessions as well - in order to face the dangers and uncertainties of forced displacement? Can we remain impassive in the face of actual and potential conflicts involving access to natural resources? All these are issues with a profound impact on the exercise of human rights, such as the right to life, food, health and development. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

If it's okay to enrich ourselves by denying foreigners the right to earn a living, why shouldn't we enrich ourselves by invading peaceful countries and seizing their assets? Most of us don't think that's a good idea, and not just because it might backfire. We don't think it's a good idea because we believe human beings have human rights, whatever their colour and wherever they live. Stealing assets is wrong, and so is stealing the right to earn a living, no matter where the victim was born. ~ Steven E. Landsburg

[Israel's military occupation is] in gross violation of international law and has been from the outset. And that much, at least, is fully recognized, even by the United States, which has overwhelming and, as I said, unilateral responsibility for these crimes. So George Bush No. 1, when he was the U.N. ambassador, back in 1971, he officially reiterated Washington's condemnation of Israel's actions in the occupied territories. He happened to be referring specifically to occupied Jerusalem. In his words, actions in violation of the provisions of international law governing the obligations of an occupying power, namely Israel. He criticized Israel's failure "to acknowledge its obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention as well as its actions which are contrary to the letter and spirit of this Convention." [...] However, by that time, late 1971, a divergence was developing, between official policy and practice. The fact of the matter is that by then, by late 1971, the United States was already providing the means to implement the violations that Ambassador Bush deplored. [...] on December 5th [2001], there had been an important international conference, called in Switzerland, on the 4th Geneva Convention. Switzerland is the state that's responsible for monitoring and controlling the implementation of them. The European Union all attended, even Britain, which is virtually a U.S. attack dog these days. They attended. A hundred and fourteen countries all together, the parties to ~ Noam Chomsky

Families who lovingly accept the difficult trial of a child with special needs are greatly to be admired. They render the Church and society an invaluable witness of faithfulness to the gift of life. In these situations, the family can discover, together with the Christian community, new approaches, new ways of acting, a different way of understanding and identifying with others, by welcoming and caring for the mystery of the frailty of human life. People with disabilities are a gift for the family and an opportunity to grow in love, mutual aid and unity ... If the family, in the light of the faith, accepts the presence of persons with special needs, they will be able to recognize and ensure the quality and value of every human life, with its proper needs, rights and opportunities. ~ Pope Francis

Human rights are not a privilege granted by the few, they are a liberty entitled to all, and human rights, by definition, include the rights of all humans, those in the dawn of life, the dusk of life, or the shadows of life. ~ Kay Granger

Human beings are not property. On the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, let us reaffirm the inherent dignity of all men, women and children. And let us redouble our efforts so that the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - 'no one shall be held in slavery or servitude' - ring true. ~ Kofi Annan

It's that I no longer know where I am. I seem to move around perfectly easily among people, to have perfectly normal relations with them. Is it possible, I ask myself, that all of them are participants in a crime of stupefying proportions? Am I fantasizing it all? I must be mad! Yet every day I see the evidences. The very people I suspect produce the evidence, exhibit it, offer it to me. Corpses. Fragments of corpses that they have bought for money.

It is as if I were to visit friends, and to make some polite remark about the lamp in their living room, and they were to say, "Yes, it's nice, isn't it? Polish-Jewish skin it's made of, we find that's best, the skins of young Polish-Jewish virgins." And then I go to the bathroom and the soap wrapper says, "Treblinka – 100% human stereate." Am I dreaming, I say to myself? What kind of house is this?

Yet I'm not dreaming. I look into your eyes, into Norma's, into the children's, and I see only kindness, human kindness. Calm down, I tell myself, you are making a mountain out of a molehill. This is life. Everyone else comes to terms with it, why can't you? Why can't you? ~ J.M. Coetzee

It would have eased her mind if I thanked her for wanting to buy me away from Madam. I tried to be grateful but could not. A body does not like being bought and sold like a basket of eggs, even if the person who cracks the shells is kind. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

For far too long, there has been a racial divide that has plagued our country. The egregious acts of discrimination and prejudices will no longer be tolerated. ~ Asa Don Brown

People use democracy as a free-floating abstraction disconnected from reality. Democracy in and of itself is not necessarily good. Gang rape, after all, is democracy in action.
All men have the right to live their own life. Democracy must be rooted in a rational philosophy that first and foremost recognizes the right of an individual. A few million Imperial Order men screaming for the lives of a much smaller number of people in the New World may win a democratic vote, but it does not give them the right to those lives, or make their calls for such killing right.
Democracy is not a synonym for justice or for freedom. Democracy is not a sacred right sanctifying mob rule. Democracy is a principle that is subordinate to the inalienable rights of the individual. ~ Terry Goodkind

To Bruce Lee, philosophy was not the professional playground of academics, but every human being's gateway to the greatest adventure of the human spirit. It illuminated the frontiers of human possibility and obliterated the shadows of doubt and insecurity. Unlike others, content to follow, Bruce Lee insisted upon charting his own course toward truth, and he encouraged those who wished to share his insights to do likewise. While Lee was a champion of individual rights and individual development, both of which stress the sovereignty of the individual as an end in himself, he also spoke to something deeper - the commonality of all human beings and the removal of such artificial barriers to true brotherhood as nationality, ethnicity, and class structure, so that human beings could live together peaceably as independent equals. Bruce Lee rejected blind obedience to ~ Bruce Lee

But Hamilton lost the day, Jefferson won, and we have a Bill of Rights built into our Constitution that, as Hamilton feared, has increasingly been used to limit, rather than expand, the range of human rights American citizens can claim. And because it's in our Constitution, the only way other than a Supreme Court decision to make explicit "new" rights (such as a right to health care) is through the process of amending that document. ~ Thom Hartmann

We don't know yet how to build a society which is environmentally sustainable, which is shareable with everybody on the planet, which promotes stability and democracy and human rights, and which is achievable in the time-frame necessary to make it through the challenges we face. ~ Alex Steffen

Under the Iranian code, the worth of a woman's life equals half of a man's, a point that often leads to grotesque legal judgments that effectively punish the victims. In this instance, the judge ruled that the 'blood money' for the two men was worth more than the life of the murdered nine-year-old girl, and he demanded that her family come up with thousands of dollars to finance their executions. ~ Shirin Ebadi

I was raised in a family where we were taught that the best thing you could do with your life was to really kind of push the cause of progress and justice and human rights forward. ~ Benjamin Jealous

We have an abundance of rape and violence against women in this country and on this Earth, though it's almost never treated as a civil rights or human rights issue, or a crisis, or even a pattern. Violence doesn't have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender. ~ Rebecca Solnit

We hear from time to time about horrible human rights atrocities happening around the globe. Our government claims that it stands in favor of human rights, and our leaders are in the news demanding consequences for other countries that are abusing their populations. But there is a huge denial about how widespread and common these kinds of atrocities are in the United States, and that we are not nearly as different from other countries as we would like to believe we are. ~ Lundy Bancroft

In a world of increasing inequality, the legitimacy of institutions that give precedence to the property rights of 'the Haves' over the human rights of 'the Have Nots' is inevitably called into serious question. ~ David Korten

Ivy just had to look at him to know that Dean Bennet would never look at her. He was the kind of guy who dated flamenco dancers or famous actresses or multi-lingual international human rights lawyers. Not sheltered little daddy's girls who could barely look at him without turning red. ~ Amy Andrews

Fallujah was a Guernica with no Picasso. A city of 300,000 was deprived of water, electricity, and food, emptied of most of its inhabitants who ended up parked in camps. Then came the methodical bombing and recapture of the city block by block. When soldiers occupied the hospital, The New York Times managed to justify this act on grounds that the hospital served as an enemy propaganda center by exaggerating the number of casualties. And by the way, just how many casualties were there? Nobody knows, there is no body count for Iraqis. When estimates are published, even by reputable scientific reviews, they are denounced as exaggerated. Finally, the inhabitants were allowed to return to their devastated city, by way of military checkpoints, and start to sift through the rubble, under the watchful eye of soldiers and biometric controls. ~ Jean Bricmont

Our country is the world, our countrymen are all mankind. We love the land of our nativity, only as we love all other lands. The interests, rights, and liberties of American citizens are no more dear to us than are those of the whole human race. Hence we can allow no appeal to patriotism, to revenge any national insult or injury.
(Declaration of Sentiments, Boston Peace Conference (28 September 1838)) ~ William Lloyd Garrison

I know of no civilization that tolerates or justifies violence, terrorism, or injustice. There is no civilization that justifies the killing of innocent people. Those who are invoking cultural relativism are really using that as an excuse for violating human rights and to put a cultural mask on the face of what they're doing. ~ Shirin Ebadi

Are you going to cater to the whims and prejudices of people who have no intelligent knowledge of what they condemn? ~ Susan B. Anthony Collection

One thing I began to realize in my travels was that everyone I met who was truly successful - whether in business, in philanthropic work, in human rights, in government, or in raising a family - shared one common trait: they were fanatically passionate about the work they did. ~ Wes Moore

Animals (human and nonhuman) feel pain, can suffer, and ought to be treated accordingly – pain and suffering are always of moral concern. ~ Lisa Kemmerer

To deny people of their human rights is to challenge their very humanity. To impose on them a wretched life of huger and deprivation is to dehumanize them. But such has been the terrible fate of all black persons in our country under the system of apartheid. ~ Nelson Mandela

I am a technological activist. I have a political agenda. I am in favor of basic human rights: to free speech, to use any information and technology, to purchase and use recreational drugs, to enjoy and purchase so-called 'vices', to be free of intruders, and to privacy. ~ Bram Cohen

But *why* do clean torture and democracy appear to go hand in hand? This is an important puzzle (though by no means the only one suggested by the data). My explanation for this pattern generally is this: Public monitoring leads institutions that favor painful coercion to use and combine clean torture techniques to evade detection, and, to the extent that public monitoring is not only greater in democracies, but that public monitoring of human rights is a core value in modern democracies, it is the case that where we find democracies torturing today we will also be more likely to find stealthy torture. ~ Darius M. Rejali

The United States' administrations ... must recognize that Iran is a big power. Having said that, we consider ourselves to be a human force and a cultural power and hence a friend of other nations. We have never sought to dominate others or to violate the rights of any other country. ~ Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Those religions that are oppressive to women are also against democracy, human rights, and freedom of expression. ~ Taslima Nasrin

To hold sovereign and exclusive ownership of one's own conscious mind, to explore freely and without boundary, is surely the most fundamental of human rights. Third party intrusion into this wholly personal territory is a grievous breach of this inalienable freedom. ~ Dominic Milton Trott

From the very beginning, the American dream meant proving to all mankind that freedom, justice, human rights and democracy were no utopia but were rather the most realistic policy there is and the most likely to improve the fate of each and every person. ~ Nicolas Sarkozy