War on Terrorism
Human Rights and the Most of us can remember the day vividly when our nation became victim to an act of unspeakable terrorism. September 11, 2001, for our generation, will be our version of ?A date which will live in infamy.? (Franklin D. Roosevelt) As the years have passed and the war still continues over-seas, here in America, our lives were forever changed. From tightened security at all airports, to people arming themselves and blaming others for an event they had no control over and the rise of hate crimes. As our government tries to eradicate the war on terrorism, our human rights and civil liberties are being changed and, ?restricted in the name of security, justified by the administration as necessary to protect the American people, and the international community.? (Tabata, Alexis)
The United States has supported human rights and civil liberties only when it did not conflict with security concerns. For an example, the Bush administration was willing to undermine the rights of the people as part of the war on terrorism. On October 26, 2001, a bill was introduced as the USA Patriotic Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act) This allows the government and other such agencies to conduct searches and tap into things like phone calls, phone messages, and e-mails without a court order. This act also allows them to seize documents like financial records, medical records, business or any other documents if there is suspicion of terrorism or if they suspect a connection to terrorism. (The ?Global War? on Terror) Some individuals would view this as an invasion of privacy, not knowing that their phone conversations were being listened to by a third party, or having your financial statements closely looked at. On the other hand, this enables the government to closely monitor potential acts that could possibly lead to something similar to 9/11. Unless the government has a just cause or evidence, this ?invasion of privacy? is not a daily occurrence. On the contrary, this act directly interferes with Article 12 of the Declaration of Human Rights. Act 12 of this declaration is as follows:
?No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to their protection of the law against such interference or attacks.? (Declaration of Human Rights)
In 2012, two bills were passed by President Obama. The Enemy Expartriation Act, which further elongates the list of things that will enable the government to take away an American citizen?s citizenship and the National Defense Authorization Act that allows the United States Military to carry out domestic anti-terrorism operations on U.S. soil and enables them to detain or hold a United States citizen without a proper trial. This directly defies our human rights as shown in article 11 of the Declaration of Human Rights:
?Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.? (Declaration of Human Rights)
September 11th, 2001, is not the only example where human rights were affected. The rights were violated in World War II when Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Executive Order 9066. This order allowed the US to place anyone with Japanese heritage into internments camps that were set in California, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas. (Siasoco, Ricco Villanueva). These internment camps were a violation of the basic rights put forth by our American government in our constitution. The 8th Amendment of the American Constitution prohibits the use of cruel and unusual punishment. The conditions of the internment camps can be looked at as cruel and unusual punishment. They had no access to food, water, nowhere to sleep, over-crowded, and treated as criminals for the heritage they were born into. Just because they had the heritage, doesn?t mean they themselves condoned what happened and to put them into internment camps, being ripped away from their families and homes, it was a punishment that went against what was written in the American Constitution.
What happened then, is happening now after the 9/11 attacks. Anyone of Muslim or Islamic decent or even suspected as being from the Middle East is being portrayed as terrorists. It doesn?t matter whether or not they were born as American citizens or came to the US for their own freedom. They have been subjected to hate crimes and racial profiling that has demeaned them and has put fear into their everyday living in the United States; a nation where they came to escape the unjust in their own government. Although large internment camps are not being used today, our government is unjustly imprisoning people against the Geneva Convention. The Geneva Convention states that detainees were once considered prisoners of war. Now that we are changing even more due to recent occurrences, detainees are now being considered ?enemy combatants? which does not qualify them for protection under the prisoner of war law set forth by the convention. The US government has never used the term ?enemy combatants? before, especially on any race or affiliation. This is their way of racial profiling to get at the enemies.
The invasion of privacy, racial profiling, the bills put into act right after and years later of 9/11, is our governments way of trying to alleviate the fear set in themselves and our nation. Every attempt to protect ourselves from the unknown eventually leads to our human rights and civil liberties being taken away. As much as our government would like to believe that what they are changing will protect us, they are not realizing that with each new bill passed, our freedom and our human rights are slowly being stripped.
?Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.? (Declaration of Human Rights, Article 2)
