My Family from Age to Age
Tatiana Mikhedova
2000s
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On 27 September 2012, the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution submitted by Russia on “Promoting Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms through a Better Understanding of Traditional Values of Mankind: Best Practises”. More than 60 states sponsored this initiative, including, collectively, members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the League of Arab States. The resolution reiterates the idea that understanding of and respect for traditional values both encourage and facilitate the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms.
We strongly believe that all cultures and civilisations, in their traditions, religions, and beliefs, share a common set of values that belong to mankind in its entirety, and that those values have made an important contribution to the development of human rights, norms, and standards. The family, society, and educational institutions all play key roles in asserting these values. In a broader sense, traditions underpin national identity. It’s widely-recognised that manifestations and symbols of national identity unite people and underpin their sense of national pride, community, and continuity. It’d be no exaggeration to say that traditional values are the backbone of every society and define its existence. By protecting traditional values, we protect our societies from destabilisation, the erosion of fundamental moral principles, loss of national identity, and basic cultural codes. It’s clear that safeguarding human rights goes hand in hand with preserving traditional values.
The resolution that Russia initiated calls on UN member states to recognise and reaffirm the vital role of traditional values in promoting human rights. This is the third resolution in this vein adopted by the Human Rights Council since 2009. However, a few states, namely the USA and some EU members, voted against it. Their position is quite clear… they see traditional values as a way of justifying human rights abuses, particularly against those considered the most vulnerable members of society. Such arguments and unwillingness to collaborate on the draft are regrettable. Russia is open to dialogue and cooperation in this sphere, but we think that no state or group of states has the right to speak on human rights in the name of the entire international community. After all, we have universal instruments, such as the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, amongst others. However, in some regions, the concept of human rights evolved considerably beyond that common denominator. Imposing that outcome on others isn’t an option. What, then, can we do?
I’m convinced that human rights issues should draw nations together, and that the Human Rights Council should focus on finding ways to accentuate the fact that human rights don’t exist in a societal vacuum. They didn’t emerge from nowhere. If traditional values crumble, so will human rights, since that would destroy the moral fabric that holds society together. It isn’t about which come first. There’s a real need to promote the understanding that human rights and traditional values are interconnected. To this end, it’s important to take into account the cultural, civilisational, historical, and religious heritage of all communities and nations. The concept of traditional values will only benefit from absorbing elements of different cultures. This is even more important now, when this period of global economic crisis puts the very foundations of social cohesion to the test.
17 January 2013
Aleksandr Yakovenko
RIA-Novosti
Editor’s Note:
Let’s keep it simple and focused. The thesis of this essay is that the USA has no right to impose its idiosyncratic notions on the rest of the world under the guise of “human rights” and “traditional values”. This is especially true considering that the USA believes that it has the “right” to “impose” such notions using military force and violence against leaders and/or countries that it doesn’t care for (in addition, “traditional values” is used by the same lot to justify brutality and discrimination against individuals and groups that they don’t like). We, as Orthodox believers, follow the moral ethos and civilisational values of the Orthosphere… not the depraved moneygrubbing “values” and the twisted “morals” of the American élite (we have nothing in common with the crackbrained “Evangelical” sectarianism that cheerleads such rubbish). Note well that some of our clergy and laity have sold out to the American apparat… these people are Sergianists of the worst possible sort. Remember the definition of a “Sergianist”:
One who sells out to the godless powers-that-be for personal power and/or personal gain.
That definition fits Paffhausen, Potapov, Alexander Webster, Lyonyo, Jillions, Dreher, Mattingly, Freddie M-G, and Reardon, amongst others (sorts such as Whiteford and Trenham are simply uninformed louts… they’re not sell-outs… neither are Lebedeff, Roman Krassovsky, Behr, and Bobby K… they’re just First Family apparatchiki). Have a care… there ARE “Chekists in riassas”… and you can find them all on the Right, sucking up to the most extreme and irrational elements in the Republican Party (for instance, Paffhausen, Dreher, Mattingly, and Webster have sold out to the K Street stink-tankers). The worm does turn, doesn’t it?
BMD
Voices from Russia 
Persecution of Christians: No Room at the Inn
Tags: BMD Posterart, Christian, Christianity, Free Syrian Army, London, Middle East, moral stance, morality, Persecution of Christians, political commentary, politics, poster, Religion, Religion and Spirituality, Syria, Syrian Civil War, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
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Editor’s Note:
When the right thing’s said, it doesn’t matter who says it. The Guardian has this one right, and that’s that. Was Ma’loula the last straw? Assad’s no choirboy, but Foreign Minister Lavrov is right to point up that if he didn’t have wide support, he’d be dogmeat. Russia and China stood against Western intervention… and they were right. Now, even Establishment voices like The Guardian are getting hip. The West (primarily, American interventionists on both sides of the political aisle) reached its zenith in the so-called Orange Revolution, where it staged a coup against the rightfully-elected President. South Ossetia in ’08 was “a bridge too far”… and Syria merely confirmed the trend. God willing, we can muzzle the godless warmongers in the West. Reflect on this… the most godless are those who use religious rhetoric… the Evangelicals and their fellow travellers aren’t Christian, and the sooner that we realise it, the better we’re off we’ll be.
BMD
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Last week, Prince Ghazi of Jordan joined the Prince of Wales on a visit to an Egyptian Coptic parish in Stevenage and the Syriac Orthodox Cathedral in west London, where he heard from a number of Christian families who’ve had first-hand experience of the rising tide of persecution. He said, “We can’t ignore the fact that Christians in the Middle East are, increasingly, being deliberately attacked by fundamentalist Islamist militants”. Author William Dalrymple said on the BBC last week, “The Arab spring [is] rapidly turning into a Christian winter”.
Clearly, this is a sensitive subject. The perceived support that Christians allegedly gave to President Assad in Syria and to the Egyptian army in deposing President Morsi in Egypt made them increasingly the target of violence, with churches assaulted, priests abducted, individuals targeted, and homes looted. In Egypt alone, Amnesty International reported that during this past year, there have been 207 attacks on churches and 43 Orthodox churches destroyed. The situation for Christians in Syria deteriorates rapidly as foreign jihadist militants increasingly influence the Free Syrian Army. Today, many thousands of Syrian Christians flee over the border to Turkey. One man who made the journey from Syria claimed, “Where we live, 10 churches have been burned down. They started to threaten Christians in the town we live. When the local priest was executed, we decided to leave”.
All this is a part of a wider picture, which sees Christians increasingly forced out of the biblical homelands. Indeed, across a vast swath of the world between Morocco and Pakistan, the persecution of Christians continues to gather pace, often with barely an eyebrow raised in the secular West. Perhaps, this is beginning to change. Last month Baroness Warsi warned, “A mass exodus is taking place, on a biblical scale. In some places, there’s a real danger that Christianity will become extinct”. On Saturday, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, Douglas Alexander, spoke up against the “political correctness, or some sense of embarrassment at ‘doing God'” that makes this a taboo subject.
This reluctance to speak out partly comes from a peculiar sense that there’s a hierarchy of victimhood, with Christians less deserving of concern. No doubt, the historical association of Christianity with persecution of other beliefs… the Crusades, the Inquisition, and so on… is also working away somewhere in the background, as is the idea that Christianity is essentially a Western faith. This links to the worry that supporting persecuted Christians is somehow taking sides in a clash of civilisations. This thought looks especially foolish when written down, which is precisely why it’s worth stating so baldly. One does not have to “do God” to recognise that protecting the rights of religious minorities, as enshrined in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is the human rights equivalent of the canary in a coalmine. It doesn’t help that some Evangelical Christians, not least the former archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, take every opportunity to speak of Christians persecuted for their faith in Britain. This is nonsense. Furthermore, it’s offensive nonsense, to millions of genuine victims. Douglas Alexander was right, “Across the world, there’ll be Christians this week for whom attending a church service this Christmas isn’t an act of faithful witness, but an act of life-risking bravery”.
Of course, it’s not just in the Middle East that Christians are targets. In addition, other religious groups are clearly subject to persecution. However, as billions of Christians gather for Christmas, with their attention focused on a troubled town in the West Bank… one from which Christians have also been fleeing for several years… it’s worth recalling that the message of peace and goodwill is hardly a political reality for a significant minority of the world’s Christians. This should concern religious and non-religious alike.
23 December 2013
The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/23/persecution-christians-religion-editorial