[hr-education] Re: Culture of human rights

[***Moderator's note: A summary with the main points and conclusions of
the discussion on "culture of human rights" will be posted on the List
later this week.***]

Dear colleagues,

I have been a "lurker" throughout this very interesting discussion but
Anna Pinto raises very valid points I have to agree with. I am a "human
rights activist" (feminist is a more familiar label to us though :-) and
have been with the Indigenous People's Rights Advocacy 1995, and Women's
Rights (Philippines)  since 1997.

The right to information has gained so much importance to us nowadays when
many cultures are under the grip of mass media.

In a country where our educational system has a continuing (ever present)
legacy of both our colonization experiences (Spain and US), difficulty of
exercising the "right to know" is made even more difficult (if not
impossible) by the non-availability of relevant information.

After all, what is the right to know if what is available are mere "mass
products" of so-called "choices." We know these aren't real choices.

For instance, in the Philippines the hostility of traditional religious
(Catholic) groups to women's rights advocacy stems from a view of feminism
as "Un-Filipino" and as "Western" liberalism.

Yet without saying that the "liberalism" of feminist movements abroad do
not have their own historical/social relevance in their own contexts, it
is hardly an accurate accusation when "Filipino" Catholicism is also a
very "Western" and in fact a product of our colonization.

In the heat of public discussions is the latest move of the Catholic
hierarchy (a slew of Filipino Bishops) to withdraw from registration,
contraceptive pill products which they now openly attack as
abortifacients.

Indeed one of the topics where the right of information has always been
under threat is the reproductive rights of women! How many societies place
such tremendous pressure (here its Catholic guilt) on women to deny
themselves knowledge about their own bodies.

While we always publicly express our support for the freedom of belief
(religion) to include and protect even the right of Catholics to believe
that contraception is abortion to a Catholic (even as majority of Filipino
catholics don't seem to think so), we never get the same courtesy from our
detractors in all of the public fora we have attended.

Here I think Anna's point about the "conflict of rights" arises. Where
does your right to believe in one way interfere with my own? Here we argue
for the separation of church and state (which is in our Constitution--a
product of our own struggle to break free from Spanish colonization).

Yet it has not proved enough. The line drawn by legal standards is never
enough. Culture is much more complicated. The Church has never really
backed out completely from playing politics.The right to know is
constantly threatened not only by the basic "lack" of accurate or variety
of information but likewise saddled with PSYCHOLOGICAL consequences for
the Filipino Catholic.

I remember having this discussion with an elder gentleman from an American
environmental organization way back in 1995 when I was starting out in
practice. He asked me what my work was and after I told him our NGO
represented various indigenous tribes in their advocacy against intrusion
into their ancestral domains, he asked me whether I was convinced I had
the right (any right) at all to deny these peoples development, the right
to live as I do (he pointed out to me--because I was obviously educated
and lived as most Western people did, that was his apparent view), and
WATCH TV?

I really felt harassed. I felt like I was being made to answer for the
legitimacy of my advocacy but I was young, very insecure but I also felt
righteous.

I suppose I didn't have all the answers then, and I don't have them now. I
just feel that if I met that man again I would probably have a lot more to
say to him, starting off with his Western chauvinist view of "human
development."


Romanlito Austria
Philippines
E-mail: austria@philonline.com



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