Rights Beautiful Collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik
They are by no means the eternal heritage of an original cultural
endowment of Europe. 4
On this account, all the ambivalence should now be put to rest
as to the current controversy about both cultural essentialism and
relativism. The one, Western claiming monopoly of the definition on
human rights; while another, non-Western denying the fundamental
universality of human rights, i.e., human life and dignity. The two, thus
far, can only indulge in self-styled polemics and actually get us nowhere
in terms of human progress, to be here defined as freedom from domination
according to W.F. Wertheim’s Emancipation Principle.5 As a matter of fact,
both human freedom and human progress simply constitute two sides
of the same coin. One cannot do without the other. The inclusive “four
freedoms” – freedom of expression, religious freedom, freedom from want,
freedom from fear – that Franklin D. Roosevelt advocated towards the
end of World War II underlying the vision of peace, security and human
rights, are basically along the same line of thinking. As we all well remember,
it is this global vision that brought about the establishment of the United
Nations and subsequently the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
From then on, the world body takes upon itself the major task of gradually
and persistently expanding and broadening the scope of human rights
even further. And it is still going on fairly consistently, in spite of its
inherent weaknesses and limitations, both legal and operational, as
international organization. But at the very least, it can afford to provide a
certain legitimate democratic groundwork for the rights holders, the people,
to work their way out with a moral support of global public opinion.
Fortunately enough, the subject matter of bio-diversity and indigenous
4
5
Heiner Bielefeld, “WESTERN VERSUS ISLAMIC HUMAN RIGHTS CONCEPTION? A
Critique of Cultural Essentialism in the Discussion of Human Rights”, Political Theory,
vol. 28, No. 1, February 2000, pp. 96-97.
W.F. Wertheim, Evolution and Revolution: The Rising Wave of Emancipation, Middlesex:
Penguin Books, 1974, p. 47.
OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF THAILAND
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