Comment: Human Rights Day 2012 marks exclusion and imposition of government by force
15 Dec 2012, 1:24 PM
Eva Abdulla
As we look back on this week’s celebration of Human Rights Day 2012, it is important to recall what, beyond the pageantry and back-slapping, this day really stands for.
During the 30-year long dictatorship of President Gayoom, those of us who longed for a fair, just and democratic Maldives would mark Human Rights Day by wearing secretly-printed t-shirts to mark the occasion – printed in stealth, worn in stealth. We took this risk (open advocacy of human rights and political reform was liable to end with a jail-term) because Human Rights Day was, we believed, important – a moment to remember that the outside world stood steadfastly behind our hopes for a better future.
It is therefore difficult, in 2012, not to feel a sense of disappointment – even shame – at what Human Rights Day has become, at least for Maldivians.
Human Rights Day 2012 goes under the banner of “inclusion and the right to participate in public life”.
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