tv Documentary RT June 2, 2013 10:29am-11:01am EDT
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to bring some countries into the european fold and to keep others out human rights of thought to be universally have their application is highly specific to the country's political social and economic circumstances is it time to redefine what is meant by human rights and should all countries be held to the same standards while to discuss that joined by thorburn the gaggle and secretary general of the council of europe mr you're going to be appreciate your being here and now i think what is manned usually manned by few men rights in the western political discourse our political rights rights having to do with political activity freedom of speech freedom of expression freedom to protest and i think some countries in particular russia and china argued that their ability to grant their citizens full political rights is conditioned on. the economy on their economic prosperity and i think for some time the sort of argument was. brushed off as authoritative ploy but
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i think now some of the european governments faced with this territory have some sympathy with this line of thinking what do you think how strong the thing is the link between the country's economy and its ability to expand its citizenry political full political rights both first of all i haven't heard the russian authorities are making this argument i should they have signed up to the european convention on human rights they've been also very often criticized and one of the responses that they give to the european criticism for not granting their citizens for political rights would be that at this point these riots run counter to the economic prosperity and our ability to build the economy and grant people works jobs first no i think it's the other way around. granting people basic human rights is a precondition for having
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a healthy economy you can of course be successful because you've got the economy in the short term medium term. with authority and system but in the long run it has been proven in his euro history during all times i would say that if you don't grant freedom of expression if you don't have freedom of media if you don't have a vibrant or. autonomous civil society you always get corruption you get mismanaged absolutely i agree with this this is undermining the economy in the long run but i think we are not talking here about authoritative systems i think both russia and china would claim that they are abiding democracy sis of course neither of them claims that there is but i think what they're arguing for is that sometimes political rights could be curtailed for the sake of security for the sake of economic prosperity as well as for other reasons well i. i do not want to compare
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rush of in china this two different systems russia has free elections have many political parties. civil organizations that can work freely there are discussions about that now but i never heard that russia wants to sort of say clamp down on the civil society oh you know you can both clamping down it's not black and white it is certain chains of grey and limiting some political groups right to protest in the center of the city when it encroaches on the rights of motorists to get access to their workplaces something like this would be often criticizing western governments as russia clamping down on democratic freedoms but of course i understand you worked in the u.k. and the government yourself and you had your critics and you would understand that when you are in a position of power you have a balancing interest of various groups and you cannot grant absolute rights to one
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group at the expense of another no this is of course. i mean you need to have regulations in any society so freedom over you don't. live in the freedom but you have basic rights which has to be granted look at for instance the situation invest in europe or in the in the european union countries. does anybody believe that the economic problems in greece or in spain or need totally can be solved by reducing. basic human rights i think you'd see all the way around but obviously european countries didn't arrive at that place overnight and it requires a certain transitional period for societies to adopt those values but i would like to go back to this initial point about that both russia and china are making
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sometimes about the hierarchy of human rights do you believe that certain rights are inherently more important than others yes absolutely for example the universal rights mentioned in the universal declaration of human rights these are rights actually. not coming from the law itself or from and the authority it is declared by the nations of the world that does rights calling from the pack that you are a human being but for example again china and russia to some extent would make an argument that economic security is more important than political rights simply because people exercise their economic rights their rights of social security their right employment on a daily basis whereas political activity is what we know from the polls that most people in most countries around the world people are involved in political activity
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on and of but this is not something that your that affects your life on a daily basis. i haven't heard that the russian authorities are making the point that they're living here as they say here that economic rights or social rights are equal to human rights which i agree on i think it is really a little you know mick and social rights are also part of your points are a council of europe we have the european. in convention on human rights and we have the social charter they are on an equal footing so there is no contradiction between this and rights but but my main point is that we cannot solve economic problems and you cannot base a sound economy in the long term. on restraining basic human rights it is the other way around it has been proven through history in particular here in russia europe here history but i am and i also i think is when
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you talk about china of course china is successful now but if this economic successes are not being followed up by political reforms i believe that. china has already reached its peak. i mean this is being also. said by the chinese leaders that they need to implement also political reforms in order to. along with you know that in the west in political discourse and media discourse do is countries like russia and china are still perceived as somewhat. underperforming when it comes to human rights as i think that's because in the west it is assumed that political rights a supposed to be a bit more privileged than economic rights and i think this is you may disagree with me but i think we are actually entering a very crucial period for the history of human rights in general because for the
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first time in many decades the countries particularly western countries that have been at the forefront of the human rights cause and to some of those the provision of some of those rights for granted and now will put in the situation when they themselves cannot provide those human rights to their citizenry and what i mean primarily here is the economic rights and the importance of economic rights and i want to quote here the universal declaration of human rights article twenty five which states that everyone has a right to a standard of living adequate for their health and well being of himself and his family so if you take that as in the alien of the human right and if you take for example the country like greece where ten percent of the population live in extreme poverty thirty percent of the population are unemployed then you could argue that greece is now a major across violator of basic human rights and saw is spain increasingly
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of great britain and france yeah but. quite particular if one is having such a discussion here in russia. what is the past here. you have this soviet system suppressing freedom of expression suppressing limiting or not suppressing limiting how well ok we can discuss our but there were no free trade unions there were no all free siebel the. organizations there were no free debate why did. the soviet system all of a sudden collapse i think because the list because there was no in the ration inauguration is dependent on free discussions on free i think the only creator i think that many people in the west believe that that's the main reason why the soviet can collapse was
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a political reason i tend to disagree with you and many people many historians here disagree with you and they believe that the main reason was financial economic economic crisis but why. because there was upon the mental technological revolution. in the world which the soviet society was not able to follow because there where nobody pre-science their been or free in a way schmall. their let's go this is resolved as if you know it's more current you have freedom of speech in greece now that pretty much anything the people that do there now is criticizing death or she is protesting against their third just so that political rights are uninhibited but if you if you take any single pol and if you check the level of satisfaction of people in greece or spain with bad governance with die a democratic system with that life i think they would fare much lower than people
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say in belarus and cousin stand those countries that were denied entry to the council of europe on human rights grounds yeah i see the point but i fail to see how the economic problems in greece can be sold by. putting a chilling effect on making over here says you're making excuses no more economic rights but you're not ready to make those excuses for political rights i mean one of the reasons why you have that situation in greece i can tell you. why because there was no transparency with regard to the huge debt they had in greece with regard to do takes away shoes and caresses no and this was a no you had on a problem all over europe you know if you're going to have a kingdom and france you know what are in our land or not the same problem but i would hear greed that the governments of spain and the governments of priests are now some of the major violators of basic human rights no no no no no no of the day
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you have thirty percent of your population if you denying the basic human right and if i can quote article twenty two of the universal convention on human rights their right to social security the economic right indispensable for dignity if you're denying that very basic right to thirty percent of your population i think that that that is a much bigger deal they're denying political rights to a small share of your population the impact the impact on people's lives is much larger yes i agree that this huge unemployment is a violation or basic human rights but. there is no contradiction between fulfilling the social rights and the order of human rights such as freedom of expression freedom of assembly and all this so this is
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a man destroyed are on an equal footing and in all over convention system in contra europe they are well they may be on an equal footing when it comes to their best to ration the value that we all aspire to them but they are not equal when it comes to their implication av we will come back to this fascinating discussion of human rights right after the break. they played in a family jazz bed together. play hijacked a plane together. lots of them from music to tara. twenty five years old questions still remain. as bad hijack. planes.
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will include in. science technology innovation all the latest developments from around russia we've got the future covered. the civilized world produces more food than it needs. while people die of hunger in other countries. millions of victims every. where in the bill is the most. blood or drink to blame. it was a bad year without a train and we couldn't find anything to. do with it all there was great hunger. it was a good help comes too late and with good intentions. charity diplomacy and business
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. we are discussing human rights restored when the secretary general of the council of europe mr glenn before we went to a break or are discussing difficulties with granting citizens around the world economic and political rights and i would like to bring another example of economy and poverty affecting society and affecting political rights to some extent i think it is the rise in hate attacks hate crimes all over europe something that your
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dw is ation is concerned about and it also comes hand in hand with the arise in neo nazi parties and in greece the country that we mentioned before such part of the golden dawn has already entered parliament and i would like to play one of the sound bites from the from from the chairman of that party. the time for fear has come for those super trade this homeland we are coming so the time for fear has come and i think new announces and not just coming they have already arrived in europe and york is ation again is very concerned about it would you be in favor of taking political steps to limit the spread of that ideology it depends on what you mean by political steps i. would be cautious on the banning of such parties. movements i understand that
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they have done it in germany for i mean everybody that has some empathy but history should recognize that absolutely but in general the political parties is. probably not the best way to combat this the best way to combat this is that the main stream politicians and political parties in europe take responsibility for your going to zation criticize russia for not allowing. groups. groups to host gay pride parades on the other hand he also criticized ukraine for allowing those parades to take place but not providing adequate security and it seems to me that no matter what the government in any given country does they're always in the wrong no i wouldn't say that but uses only as an example that we all should be
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cautious on what kind of birds we are using in particular against minorities this is an old problem on the european continent we saw it in norway the killing the crazy killing of this young people didn't. come of dog nothing it was i mean. the source of this hatred comes from. our society it's ours and words are being used in the society but when i hear my point is that when people are some are speaking or there are taking action and you can make the same argument for them that this hatred also is entitle to your freedom of speech and freedom of expression but i would like to stay on the l g b t rights and in particular decree a gay pride parade because this is probably be. most divisive issues social issue in russia these days and the latest poll show showed that seventy five percent of
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the russian population are very strongly against public display or of homosexuality now homosexuality itself is not banned and you know they are not hopefully not discriminated there is no embedded discrimination on books but. people the population in general is strongly against gay pride parades and that's why authorities. well thinking of themselves as being democratically elected and therefore under pressure to deliver on the what the majority demands don't grab those permissions you know here real coming back to a very important thing with human rights namely the. basic human rights cannot be overrun by a majority the i mean we are living in not only in a democracy but we are living in a constitutional democracy basic human rights constitutes what the majority are
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allowed to do my absolute and therefore the majority are not in part due to harm human rights or a minority i absolutely agree with this this is this is a basic thing they are going i only vision is that once a bill that the port authority is to safeguard this i'm not making an argument against the l.d.p. to wrestling there is a pretty much a legal and scientific consensus that this is a million people right here and then we are but when you will write us about why my question to you is not about the right per se but about making sure that the society at large accepts those rights and i actually want to play you something that we received from georgia recently the georges you know has a very very pro western policy is. your your own organization has been quite complimentary on their human rights record and they actually granted the permission to host
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a gay pride parade and this is what happened sixteen people were injured many of those gay pride activists were severely bitten police struggled to whisk them to safety and just look at the sheer number of people seventy thousand people showed up at those rallies and you see the rage toward those d.-rats activists and my question to you whether these rallies insisting on. hosting these rallies whether it is really here productive to the l d b t cause in general because i don't see these people coming home those people who wanted to kill them to lynch them on the streets of the beliefs i don't see them coming home and embracing homosexuals as you know. just as members of their community i think hosting l g b t parades is very counterproductive to the very idea of tolerance and giving them all those rides that they. have to have the crucial question which we have to protect her
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is who should be condemn those who are demonstrating or those who are attacking them but in the end all of the good an amish speak because. only or for it to. in particularly europe today kind would say the majority are against homosexuality so therefore we are against it. every or authority has to say the opposite namely we are granting the same rights to dispute all orders come so europe does not say that homosexuals for instance have special rights they only have the same rights as everybody else to for instance demonstrate that any authority has an obligation to safeguard that they can do so. it is easier said than done it's the same as you're saying that you know european governments have to solve a comic problem i agree with that that they have absolutely provide their citizens
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with full economic rights but the question is how you would do that in a country in a society that is extremely and openly homophobic how would you do that without putting those very same people who are also your citizens and who security you have to protect without putting them in danger because once you're a government official you would know that from your own expense it's not about what you believe it's about balancing the rights of various groups and in russia as well as in many other. countries homophobia. is enormous issue of enormous proportions and if you're really concerned about the granting this people those rights then you have to work with the society rather than slapping that society in the face that's how those gay pride parades are perceived and russian another country that i agree that everybody should entertain responsibility. whether it is constructive and responsible to have
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a demonstration if it for instance it's obvious that it will harm human life. then one has to sit down and think about whether it should be done but. i'm a little bit amazed that you say that well what it's going on in greece is. a threat which i think it is i'm in the group grocery stimulus and there but what we have witnessed now in in georgia i'm not condoning it's all the same kind of extremism and what worries me is that when it comes to homosexuality for instance responsible mainstream politicians are playing on the feelings and attitudes the down on the ground how this is done in the usa this using this for political exploit and exploiting this politically is irresponsible but i think the same argument could be made for western governments and you're only going to zation
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which is critical of again russia ukraine georgia because. your the government's ability to you because they they feel that you're using this homicide the issue of homosexuality for political means because again the russian society or other societies are not ready yet to embrace it doesn't mean that they will never be ready it doesn't mean that but as of now you have to work isn't that democracy after all working with people's attitudes working with their views trying to change it from within rather than coming here and or you know lecturing from a high pocket that you know you have to grant those rights the matter what yes here i can agree definitely every society in the kind of you see evolving in norway in my country. for instance. who are homosexual marriage. not at all i mean it was seen as something really wrong on it twenty years ago or
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today it's natural. human everyone contrary has the right to evolve based on their own history tradition religion and all this so i think i have said this many times in the in the confort europe and we have discussed this in the in the kontum insists that you cannot impose things on a society. because you're on their decision often criticize the societies for not living up to this very high standard that you have that but yeah but it has to be understood that we are not trying to impose for instance homosexuals mad which here in russia or else are the only thing we have to do is to protect the pre-dawn or expression the freedom of assembly even if that comes at an expense of. security their rights to life did this are for the mental rights that we have to
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protect and i'm in situ say that well this shouldn't take place. because it can cause a lot of tensions all that well if you look at history all from the mental rights that we have now has been fought for by somebody. i'm a very critical moments in history people have stood up. many have died for it but there's i mean many examples in history of why it was done through evolution rather than revolution through will stay but by step social change but unfortunately we don't have to press the button with you it would try to say this to a national mandela that he is he wouldn't have the right to stand up against all parted richie because it would be but ray martin was angry for example you would argue that violence or rather that i think he is the worst form of violence and if you were to take his logic then again some of the governments of europe would be.
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. it's tumbled taksim square use a pond through the un to government demonstrators with such a day in a row i mean fears and west could return with renewed vigor to your city if police moved it. all this out to to the days with tear gas and water cannons and have a spray used to well the public fury which reportedly left two people dead and sends a strong about the regime's all across to get. lost bob wire and on the override police around the european central bank in frankfurt laying into clouds of protesters were pulled from the scene where many thousands of demanded an end to austerity. also a prominent sunni cleric calls for upon islamic jihad against president assad granting him an infidel was the.
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