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GAZETTE
N O V E M B E R
1977
Congress of Catholic Lawyers, Dublin, 28 August-3 September 1976
Church, Christian Lawyers and Human Rights
By Maitre Louis-Edmond Pettiti
President of the International Association of Lawyers of
Pax Romana and Batonnier (President) of the Paris
Bar Council (1978-79)
Historical references
The years 1935 and 1945 marked turning points in the
new approach by the Church to human rights on the level
of definition. The terms
Church, lawyers, human rights
have only been related to each other for a few decades
and only appeared lately in theological and juridical
literature. The importance of the Universal Declaration of
1948 contributed much to strengthening this tendency.
Of course the Old Testament and the Gospels brought
to the world the message of the liberation of man through
salvation, the protection of the dignity of men and women
and particularly of the humble ones. The Church has
never ceased to be the institution which defends the
oppressed.
Vittoria and Las Casas were the great doctrinarians of
the safeguarding of Fundamental Rights. But the vigilance
of many Christian lawyers lessened during the 19th
century. They accommodated themselves, alas, to slavery
and racism.
The Church continued its action on the theological
levels and that of distributive justice and left to laymen the
task of positive law, showing by its charitable action its
inclination towards the poor and the oppressed. Stimulated
by the ICOs and in particular by Pax Romana since
1921, a deepening reflection was made on human rights
first in relation with the League of Nations, then with the
UN.
Popes Pius XII and Paul VI marked their pontificates
by the insertion of the Church in the body of international
institutions. From then on the Church became through its
congregations and commissions the instrument of
juridical promotion of human rights.
The Universal Declaration had the merit of
incorporating civil, social and political rights in the
international thematic schema. The progression was
retarded by uncertainty on the part of lawyers as to the
identification of fundamental rights and by the refusal by
the government members of the UN beginning in 1957 to
create international penal jurisdiction.
Two international institutions, the European
Economic Community and the Council of Europe had
great merit in creating supranational jurisdictions but they
cannot yet come to agreement on the content of the
fundamental rights.
Question for Christian Lawyers
In this perspective what should be the attitude of
Christian lawyers toward this field of action?
— That of a Christian, a believer who in his task of
information takes into consideration first of all the fate of
the victims regardless of their appurtenance and of those
who accuse and those who defend them.
— An attitude which in the experience of his mission of
aid does not hesitate over the origin of temporary allies
even if he knows they act with the intention of gaining
glory for their party. It is better to act along with those
whose orientation one suspects than not to act. Not to
take a decision is already a political act. (Ph. Potter).
Errors of vision
The tragic lessons of the First and Second World Wars
have accustomed us to class those responsible for
genocide, torture and repression by categories and
governmental and political systems. The result has been
the temptation to attribute all the responsibility to
belonging to a particular nation or having a particular
political option, and only to see as cause of the violation
one's integration into such a system.
Undoubtedly a reading of the history of repression can
be made with political philosophies and their intrinsic
perversions as a starting point; in the hierarchy of causes,
a will to power on the part of the State apparatus is
primary. But not to go beyond this leads us to a
systematization which calls a halt to all reflection.
We contemplate the torture in Latin America and in
the Goulag with the same detachment as we read the
Marian chronicles by Bradbury. For us the torturers and
tortured are "others". They belong to another sphere.
Added to this there is a certain, possibly unconscious,
racism. It is because these are other peoples that such
aberrations are possible, and we forget that we have
witnessed similar horrors at certain periods of our history
without having the heroism to fight against them.
The third error consists of limiting our efforts to setting
up an inventory and a catalogue of the violations and
tortures, of deploring them and publishing a few
communiques.
New aspects of the problem of torture
But the evolution of torture, the development of the
science of human rights, the participation of lawyers
believing in the new development have revealed some very
different aspects of the phenomenon.
In many countries the practice of violence and torture
have lost their alibi of so-called momentary justification,
supposedly necessary for immediate security reasons or
to uncover proofs. Torture develops independently of its
police or political utility.
— The technique tends toward "clean torture" which
leaves no physical traces—sensorial privation or isolation
being one of these procedures and psychiatric internment
being most typical.
— Violence clothes itself in scientific research and uses
depersonalization procedures even beyond the need to
psychically eliminate the opponent.
— The participation of doctors in the application of
treatment and in the perpetration of violence is
increasingly frequent.
— The number of men implicated in the system of torture
or internment is growing. The torturers belong to all
social classes and quickly descend from behaviour
becoming to a citizen above all suspicion to that of a
sadist. In the past these men were not torturers.
— Elimination of opponents sometimes replaces
detention and torture.
These facts are neither unknown nor distant. Even
during a non-crisis period in our western countries
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