US Violates Human Rights

The United States violates human rights. So say the enemies of the U.S. and, among others, those who judge with haste the horrific death of the young American man Michael Brown, a student shot to death in Ferguson, Missouri by a police officer who shot him four times in the chest and twice in the head. The officer is accused of killing him when he was unarmed, and the police are accused of firing rubber bullets at protesters and even of having aimed at them with rifles.

The death of the young man is of itself very sad, and especially sad for Venezuelans is the one that took place in Missouri, where the town called Bolívar is located, the largest of the 40 towns in the U.S. that are adorned with such a distinguished name — according to the Bolivarian Mier Hoffman, by 1921, there were 15, with two in New York, and one each in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Port Bolivar in Galveston. It is one of many homages that Americans payed to Bolivar, themselves honored with the glory of being pioneers in the fight for freedom and unable therefore to be indifferent to the Liberator, who also dedicated huge praises to them and who also has been the only person in the history of the universe to declare wars in order to emancipate nations and not to plunder them. In 1963, the U.S. launched the most powerful nuclear submarine in the world and christened it with a name synonymous with greatness: Simon Bolivar.

The accusations against that police officer are very serious; it is certain that the young man was unarmed, and it seems un-necesary to have had such a lethal return of gunshots. The government is accused of human rights violations both toward the young man, as well as the protesters who were quashed, but the circumstances of this case must be analyzed very carefully before concluding something so grave and dangerous. President Obama condemned the “minority” saying that by protesting, they provoked violence since “it’s something that undermines justice instead of making it advance,”* and he assured that law and order must be maintained.

Obama is completely correct. Although it may be proven that the death of Mr. Brown was a criminal act, justice can’t be achieved through a series of crimes, but rather through legal channels in penal courts. In all civilized countries, there exists the right to protest, but that protest has limits and must be peaceful. There are no unlimited rights: not even the right to one’s life, for if one attacks another with a knife and the victim lays the agressor out with a gunshot, he didn’t commit any crime because he killed his attacker in legitimate self-defense; thus, in all parts of the world, no protest should be violent, and if it is, it must be contained by the respective governments in the defense of life and property of the citizenry, as well as other rights such free travel.

But, when some countries react against similar protests, certain national and international spokespersons come out in unison to denounce those governments for human rights violations, and thus, they end up supporting and inciting the criminal violence of which President Obama said “It’s something that undermines justice instead of making it advance.”* They even demand that those arrested in the protest be freed, although some may have killed people, and they declare that those “students” can’t be detained, as if those “students” had the right to be violent, commit crimes during such violence, and enjoy the most scandalous and total impunity …

The subject of human rights has been perversely twisted: They only raise the human rights issue, if it affects persons who suffer from state persecution. And the worst of all is that one never hears talk of the human rights of the victims of these delinquents. They even claim that human rights should only protect victims of arbitrary government. Similar criticism goes as aberrantly far as to assign the monopoly of human rights to just a few people in comparison to the much larger sector of victims of common crime. It is just as unjust as it is absurd to mutilate the whole of the citizen’s human rights. One must ask those who hold such obscure opinions if injustices can come only from the state, and if the state is the only one that can violate human rights, or can particular groups that are not state instigators also violate them?

If, for example, one of the attackers kills the father and mother of a little child, do they not violate the human rights of that victim, leaving her an orphan at such a tender age? And finally, why are they only interested in combating injustice committed by the state? The answer is that it’s in the interests of political purposes and to bring about the disregard of “Ius Puniendi” or the the states right to punish in order to bring an end to the state’s sovereignty and fertilize the terrain with organizations above sovereignty.

It is absurd that the indisputable legal-penal truths are only applied in some countries but not in others. It is unscientific that the ontological principles of the law are twisted to however they may suit someone …