The Good and the Great of Jersey will be remembering Holocaust Day again today and that should be the very least we can do for those millions of people that died in the extermination camps of WW2.
But of course, the lessons of that terrible war should not just be evident on one day each year – the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights is for every day and everybody and it’s just one among dozens and dozens of international treaties and conventions that the people of Jersey should have embraced.
In fact the post war human rights history of Jersey is a dreadful disgrace and those people who assemble at the Jersey Holocaust memorial really do need to examine their own purposes.
This Island has still not even ratified such UN Conventions as the Rights of the Child or the Elimination of Discrimination against Women or the Protection of People with Disabilities. There are many more too.
Even where treaties have been ratified, Jersey lags behind other territories and has not ratified the “optional protocols” that make them effective. Thus Jersey still has no anti-discrimination legislation in place – 65 years after the end of the Occupation! It is an insult to those Jersey people who died and to all those people who have given their lives or been injured in conflicts the world over.
The attitude of Jersey’s government and people towards Human Rights and the adherence to basic international standards is one of ignorance and the failure to learn anything very substantial from the experiences of the Holocaust and the related inhumanities of war.
In accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the message of peace and respect for the dignity of mankind is supposed to be an integral part of education and promotion but in Jersey Human Right awareness is treated with contempt.
It is not enough to wreath lay on just one day per annum. The people of Jersey must accept their Human Rights responsibilities every day of the year in the workplace, in care homes, schools, homes, the courts and such like and the knowledge that enables people to understand the meaning of International Obligations should be an essential part of life.
Without the proper respect for Human Rights standards protected by law in Jersey – such potentially important occasions as Holocaust Day and Liberation Day are discredited.
Submitted by Thomas Wellard.
4 comments:
It's not just the "great and the good" who were represented there.
Ok, they will always go along, but be fair - what would be the remarks if they didn't? Look, Terry Le Sueur didn't even bother to turn up. See how little he cares about what happened..
But there are also the relatives of those who died, or those like Bob Le Sueur, who helped Russian escapees. Part of these occasions allow them to retell the story of the holocaust, because if it gets forgotten, or the lessons get forgotten, then it could well happen all over again.
I saw TLS there.
If you want more than mere recital of sad memories sign the treaties and conventions for heavens sake and make it illegal to happen again.
What is the efffing problem?
Sign the efffing international obligations like other countries do you bunch of apologists.
After WWII Human Rights had to be written into the legislation of continental countries because their legal systems did not contain the rights that the British citizen had under common law. (Something to do with Magna Carta and the 1689 Bill of Rights I understand.) This action was apparently encouraged by the Foreign Office. By the time the Home Office heard about it (sounds familiar?) the ball was well and truly rolling and the UK had to join in. The US - which derived much of its original legal system from the UK - has, I think, only limited ratification of the various treaties on the basis that most of the requirements under UDHR are already contained in the Constitution and other legislation.
Sadly the UK had decided that human rights really don't matter that much particularly in the family division.
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