This is twenty-first century, and here’s what the “fundamental human rights” has become, using my country as a case study.
There is a situation within my country’s senate that’s been getting the country, and even some parts of the world talking. It’s about a female rep who accused the country’s senate president of sexual harassment, and instead of the house giving her the voice to talk, hear her out, and conduct the proper investigation, they are trying to shut her up.
That is what the fundamental human rights of the freedom to be heard has resulted into. Many people are coming together to claim that the senator was not in her right senses, while some other self-righteous humans feel like she was rude to a “man”, and a country’s top man at that.
If the fundamental human rights is still very much active to achieve what it’s supposed to in the twenty-first century, the sanity in the atmosphere today would mean that the country would first, call for the suspension of the senate president, let him and the accuser go through fair hearing, and then judge as appropriate, but nope, the rights of the oppressor is much more important than that of the oppressed in this century.
Also, a young lady took to social media to talk about the state of the country about two weeks ago, and the next call she received was a threat from a government official to take down the video because she has “no right to talk to the president of the country that way”. This means that “freedom of speech” is already trampled badly.
The country is in a turmoil because of the incessant herdsmen, and bandit attacks, and killings, yet the president of my country, in fact, the people in power in my country chose to protect the lives of the killers over that of the victims. Oh, that brings me to the judgement of the supreme court who sentenced a farmer that defended himself against a herdsman that invaded his farm and tried to kill him to death. Even after the uproar across the country, the judgement still holds.
There was also a time when a top journalist who has refused to bend to their rules of controlled journalism was tagged “wanted” because he chose to do an exposé about the lots of dark happenings within the government. Freedom of speech is in the mud.
We are currently in trouble in my country, but a lot of people are scared to talk because the government has chosen to use the forces against the citizens. There are manhunts for citizens who air their opinions on the current situation of the country, and there are journalists who have disappeared because they wrote against the government.
So, most of us are just existing, and enduring the human wrongs going on in the country with only a few people talking about bringing back the human rights. And you see those people talking? They are either rich, wealthy, famous, or in the opposition parties. They have so much power that’s not far from those in the government and are rest-assured that nothing can be done to them.
Pexels
But, as for the rest of us, we watch our rights shredded to pieces without a voice of retaliation or questioning, maybe until everyone wakes up to push against the ethnic and religious bigotry that has invaded their spirits, maybe, just maybe we would have rights to fight for.
This is my entry to InLeo prompt for today. You can find the details here
Posted Using INLEO
When I was in primary school, we were so happy to chant the fundamental human rights. The teacher would ask us, “what are your fundamental human rights?”, and in response, we would scream, “right to life! Freedom of speech!’, among others. It was fun to recite. Little did we know that it was better kept as chants than expecting anything right in real life.