Human Rights Must Be Upheld By The Law

For the past two weeks I have not been able to turn on the TV at night without coming across a discussion of the war in Iraq and President Bush's policy regarding the mistreatment of prisoners of war. Then, last night I caught a hearing on C-Span during which spokespersons from the medical community, the legal profession and even psychologists registered their opposition to the abuse and torture of such prisoners. But no one representing the Christian Church spoke.

Bush is smoothly getting around the Geneva Convention by calling our armed enemies "illegal combatants" and other names. He also has us hung up on the definition of how much abuse should be considered torture. But we the American people have allowed him to undo 60 years of progress in leading the world toward the ideal of respecting human rights. Meanwhile, the silence of the Church is deafening.

I grew up hearing with horror about the torture of American POW's in Vietnam. I am ashamed to think that America has joined the list of nations that think it is “appropriate" to sanction the torture of prisoners of war. I wore a POW bracelet to protest the fact that American families were not informed when their loved ones were captured. Many of our POW's were never returned after the war. Why on earth would we now turn around and do the same thing to others?

The ideal of human rights does not come from the law, but it must be upheld by the law. The idea that "all people are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights" which was inscribed into the Declaration of Independence, comes from Christian Theology. More specifically, it comes from the belief that all human beings have been created in the image of God and therefore have honor and dignity in God's sight and should be treated with justice, honor and dignity no matter where they are, who they are, or what they have done. But Christians are not the only people to believe that human beings possess in innate dignity. Jews and Muslims share the same belief that we are all made in the image of God. Hindus and Buddhists take the ideal even higher, believing that every person carries a piece of God within their soul. Therefore, there is universal agreement that any individual who intends to injure or harm another person is in violation of the will of God - even if that person has been captured in a battle.

The blood, and the cruelty of World- and even American history is a testimony to the bestiality of humankind. It reveals how far down we can fall when we refuse to see the divine in every person and treat him with justice. Witness the "ethnic cleansing" perpetrated against the Native Americans, and the capture, slavery, abuse and oppression of Afro-Americans.

The liberation of the concentration camps at the end of World War II shocked the American conscience as we stared into the ultimate picture of the depravity to which mankind can fall when there is a lack of basic respect for human rights. We began to make slow progress in extending human and civil rights to Blacks and other minorities in our own society. The United States government also protested against the human rights abuses in Communist and other totalitarian nations. They did not want to listen - insisting that their ends justified their means. But now our own President has decided that our need for intelligence and our need to break the spirit of our enemies justifies the abuse and torture of prisoners. Do our politicians not know that torturing people is against the will of God? Do they not know that if you pull the dog's tail, the dog will turn around and bite you?

Dr. Greene is an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ and a resident of Richmond, IN. He is also the author of Benjamin's Dog Joseph, Feeling Better: The Wisdom of the Doc, You Can Feel Better: How to cope with chronic pain and physical disabilities, and co-author of Walking Free: the Nellie Zimmerman Story.

For further information about his books, please visit www.densmorereid.com

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