Inhuman Rights 
by Mumia Abu-Jamal 
December 8, 1997 

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.—Anatole France (1844-1924)  

If the nation's media are any guide, the newly renamed Congo is the latest aggressor in the field we have come to call 'human rights.'  

The concept was formalized in 1948, when the United Nations drew up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which included the right to life, liberty, religion, equality before the law and the like. Those provisions can be traced, in part, to the United States Constitution's Bill of Rights (1787) and the French National Assembly's Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1789).  

More recently, member states have signed human rights instruments such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ratified by the US, 1992) and the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (US ratification, 1994).  

One might infer from these lofty and noble pronouncements that 'human rights' is largely a Western concern, and that human rights are protected by these documents.  

Let us look to history.  

Among the articles of the French Declaration were, "Men are born, and always continue, free and equal…" (1st Art.), and the "natural" rights to "liberty" and the "resistance to oppression." Less than 15 years after these words were written, almost 30,000 French soldiers were on Haitian soil, fighting, not for "liberty", but for slavery and Napoleanic imperialism. Napoleon's brother-in- law, Capt.-General LeClerc, after losing over 20,000 of his 28,000-man army, wrote to the Emperor:  

Here is my opinion of this country. We must destroy all the negroes in the hills, men and women, sparing only children under twelve, destroy half of those living in the plains and leave behind not a single man of color who has worn a uniform—without this the colony will never have peace. (Sept. 16, 1802) 

For almost 200 years after the Bill of Rights, the US held Africans in bondage and a state of apartheid where, in the words of the US Supreme Court in Dred Scott v. Sanford, "a negro has no rights that a white man is bound to respect."  

As for the Congo (formerly Zaire) its history, and that of the so-called 'humane' under Belgian, French, or American control. Belgium King Leopold's taking of the "Congo Free State" wasn't for humanity, but for imperial profit, evidenced by this respect by a missionary: "It is bloodcurdling to see them returning with hands of the slain, and to find the hands of young children amongst the bigger ones…The rubber from this district has cost hundreds of lives…" Of the brutal violence unleashed on the Congolese, one scholar noted, "Of eight villages with a population of over 3,000, only ten persons were left…" Hands were cut off if workers did not move fast enough in giving Europeans stolen resources and wealth.  

Fifty years of colonial plunder was followed by almost 40 years of Neocolonial plunder behind the mask of Mobutu, who served foreign interests.  

At independence, in all of the Congo (1960) only 3 Congolese had college degrees. Three—out of tens of millions.  

What of the International Human Rights Instruments? It took almost thirty years for the US to sign and ratify the ICCPR and the ICERD, and even now, the International Commission of Jurists finds the US has not lived up to the treaties: "The international obligations undertaken by the United States upon ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) remain substantially unfulfilled" (ICJ Report, June 1996).  

To write a right is not to secure one.  

To talk about human rights is still just rap.  

© 1997 Mumia Abu-Jamal 
All Rights Reserved