Some democracies have their own taboos, such as slavery, the Jewish Holocaust and the Armenian genocide. The Turkish denocracy is fearful of it´s past without any reason. Admitting the sins of the past only them makes a stronger democracy… But it takes a philosophical leader to see this and a real leader to act upon it and carry the people forward past the point of denial.
Same is in Spain with the Franco years of the military, the religious sector, the church, and civil society atrocities during the many years of the longest dictatorship of Europe. The courageous judge Balthazar Curzon has started an inquiry after 60 years of sleep. Fearful sleep. As part of an unprecedented ruling last year that accused Franco’s forces of crimes against humanity, Spain’s best-known judge, Baltasar Garzon, called for an investigation into the cases of people known as “the lost children of the Franco regime.” He complained that “in 60 years they have not been the subject of any investigation whatsoever.” Ricard Vinyes, a contemporary history professor at the University of Barcelona, says many children were either offered up in adoption to pro-Franco families or placed in children’s homes run by the state or the church, or encouraged to become priests or nuns. Parallels have been drawn between Spain’s trauma and that of Argentina’s “dirty war” in the late 1970s and early ’80s, when hundreds of children were taken away from dissidents and raised by military and religious families or others that supported the ruling military junta.
Firm numbers are hard to come by. Vinyes says in Spain’s case no one knows how many adopted children were rendered from their parents and never told about their real families… Certainly there are way too many Spaniards out there who today do not know their true origins, and do not even know the fate of their parents who were most assuredly killed by the Franco regime.
Why is Spain fearing it´s past as today is a strong Democracy?
How can we expect lesser countries to open up to the horrors of the Armenian genocide and many others of the nine genocides of the last century, if Europe doesn´t show some leadership?
Many other nations fear their past too. Why?
Arab and Israeli regimes must stop breaking the promises they make when they sign international human rights agreements. For example, they should stop misusing the UN Human Rights Council, which will end up discrediting itself for defending countries that abuse human rights. Making alliances between countries simply to avoid sanctions as Israel is an expert in doing and the Arab nations are fast learners…and avoiding condemnation, as member-states of the Islamic Conference Organization have often done, should also end. Arab solidarity cannot be obtained at the expense of people Arab governments are supposedly defending. Israel´s complicity in himan rights crimes has to end.
Western countries must stop using human rights as a card they slap down when it is useful, but eagerly forget as soon as it goes against their strategic calculations and economic interests. They must also stop applauding democratic processes while rejecting the results of elections that bring to power people who do not happen to please them. Nor should they assume the mantle of “worldwide guarantor of democracy” when they engage in illegal and arbitrary imprisonment and other ill-treatment on the pretext of fighting terrorism.
It’s also time these countries asked themselves questions about their military expeditions conducted supposedly to restore democracy. We have seen the cost in Iraq and Afghanistan and Gaza… and we find it unsupportable and unethical.
Most all nations have signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In Western countries, the 60 year mark was an occasion being marked with speeches, resolutions and editorials that declare the declaration’s values to be universal. Those who disagree are dubbed enemies of freedom trying to justify the worst abuses on the pretext of cultural and religious differences. But let’s be careful to not forget the hundreds of millions of men and women who honestly believe some of these values are alien to them, or simply they see no benefit of their coverage.
Most of these people live under regimes that are termed Democratic… but are just a convenient front for selfish Western interests. let´s distinguish that true leaders face the music of thre past and pay the piper promptly so they can move off the stable of indecision and travel to a far brighter future cleansed off the ghosts of the past.
