Human rights and racism

Social sciences

History

Grade 9

Human rights during the second world war

Module 1

Human rights and racism:a universal blot on humanity

Learning activity 1:

Human rights and racism: a universal blot on humanity

SOURCE A

Racism is a shameful blot on the human race that has tainted every country on the Earth – it is the repulsive habit of many people to use the colour of a person’s skin as a measure for rating his or her value as a human being.

Up to a million people, mostly Tutsis, were exterminated in Rwanda in 1994 on account of their ethnic origin. Ethnic cleansing also was a common factor in the large number of wars fought during the last decade in what used to be Yugoslavia and has now been subdivided to form the regions of Serbia, Kosovo, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro and Macedo

nia. Mass rape was a general occurrence in the Balkans and still is in the Congo (Kinshasa).

The crudest levels of racism are revealed through slavery and during wartime. In this regard we may think of extremes ranging from the eradication of six million Jews during the Second World war on the orders of Adolf Hitler to the hardly discernible ways of practising it at the workplace and elsewhere.

In South Africa, in the post-apartheid era, there is hardly a shortage of white, coloured and black racists from all levels of society. Such people often justify their adherence to their inclination by some motivation based in the past, referring to a past war or the political situation that prevailed over the past four centuries.

In Zimbabwe, white farmers are driven off the land by means of thuggery because President Robert Mugabe neglected to address the issue of land reform during his twenty years in govern

ment, to the detriment of all of Southern Africa.

Equal numbers of black and white people are murdered in the United States, but 80% of exe

cutions following court cases since 1977 have resulted from the murder of whites.

In India, the police and the judicial system are implicated in the caste system, which is referred to as “concealed apartheid”. More than 160 million Dalits are regularly exposed to a range of human rights abuses that are not investigated. At a conference on human rights, a Dalit man last year told of how his wife, daughter and two sons were burnt alive when mem

bers of a higher Hindu caste set fire to three huts. His oldest son, the first person from their village to obtain a university degree, had also been mur

dered by Hindus two years previously.

In Turkey, 13 million Kurds go un

recognized and any reference to them is punishable with a jail term. Gypsies are regarded as inferior and as criminals and they are subject to assault all over Europe.

Twenty-five indigenous community leaders in Honduras, in Central Ame

rica, were killed over the last number of years because of their campaign for the protection of their rights. In Guate

mala, indigenous groups who, during the war of the seventies and eighties, suffered mass rape, amongst other indignities, are still struggling for recognition. They are not permitted to use their mother tongue during court proceedings.