The Gazette 1977

N O V E M B E R

1977

GAZETTE

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Historical references The years 1935 and 1945 marked turning points in the new approach by the Church to human rights on the level of definition.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 199