arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

We strongly share his opinions on how parts of the left have behaved shamefully on Iraq. In this important assessment he writes that "Motivated more by hatred of the US and British governments than by love for the Iraqi people, many so-called leftists support a "resistance" that, if victorious, would bring to power Baathists, Islamic fundamentalists and pro-al-Qaeda militants. Is that what the left now stands for? Neo-fascism, so long as it is anti-western?"

The left’s retreat from universal human rights
Peter Tatchell

Liberal humanitarian values are under threat. Much of this threat comes not from the far right but from the left's moral equivocation and compromises. Sections of progressive opinion are wavering in their defence of universal human rights. In this era of post-modernism and live-and-let-live multiculturalism, moral relativism is gaining ground.

This holds that every community is different, and there are no eternal humanitarian values. In the name of "cultural sensitivity", we are expected to respect other people's religious beliefs and ethnic traditions. But sometimes this means colluding with religious-inspired barbarisms like female genital mutilation.

Over 100 million young girls in Africa and the Middle East have had their clitorises excised and / or their vaginas sown up. We would not tolerate this patriarchal abuse in Britain. Why should we tolerate it in other countries? Female genital mutilation is a crime against humanity. Don’t we have a duty of international solidarity with the victims?

Fearful of accusations of "racism", much of the left is reluctant to speak out against human rights violations perpetrated by people who happen to be non-white. This silence is killing black people the world over. President Mugabe of Zimbabwe has murdered more black Africans than apartheid; massacring 20,000 in Matabeleland in the 1980s alone. Where were the left-wing mass protests? Even today, as black Zimbabwean democrats, trade unionists, students, journalists, and socialists are being arrested, tortured, raped and murdered, the left says nothing and does nothing.

The same curious morality applies to Iraq. The Stop The War Coalition was right to oppose the US - UK led invasion, but utterly wrong to ignore Sadaam’s terrorization of the Kurds and Shias, and of socialists, democrats and trade unionists. The STWC’s failure to support the democratic and left opposition to Saddam ranks as one of the great moral failures of our era. It’s "do nothing" and "take no sides" policy failed to challenge Sadaam’s tyranny. Proposals for a campaign of international solidarity to help the Iraqi people topple the dictatorship and liberate themselves were decisively rejected by the STWC.

Right now, the STWC supports "the resistance" in Iraq by any means necessary - a tacit endorsement of the suicide bombing, hostage-taking and execution of innocent civilians, including brave, selfless aid workers, election supervisors and ordinary Iraqis on their way to school and work. The STWC justifies this carnage in the name of "national liberation" (sic).

Motivated more by hatred of the US and British governments than by love for the Iraqi people, many so-called leftists support a "resistance" that, if victorious, would bring to power Baathists, Islamic fundamentalists and pro-al-Qaeda militants. Is that what the left now stands for? Neo-fascism, so long as it is anti-western?

The left’s political somersaults and ethical acrobatics are most striking on the issue of Islamic fundamentalism. Muslims should be defended against prejudice and discrimination. But that does not mean that human rights violations by Muslims (or anyone else) should be ignored.

The threat of being labeled "Islamophobic" is inducing a new wave of moral paralysis, as evidenced by the way most leftists ignore the role of fundamentalist Islam in the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, where racist Islamists are exterminating the black African population.

We see similar double standards in Britain when many left-wingers fail to speak out against the sexism and homophobia of organisations like the Muslim Council of Britain, the Islamic Human Rights Commission and the Muslim Association of Britain.

Sections of the left now openly tolerate - and even seek to excuse - attacks on human rights by Muslim fundamentalists, when they would never tolerate similar attacks by fundamentalist Christians or Jews. This is a patronizing inverse racism. It judges Muslims by different standards than it judges others.

Where are the left campaigns in solidarity with liberal, progressive Muslims? The victims of the fundamentalists get little sympathy from many who claim to leftists. Indeed, the Socialist Worker’s Party, Respect and the Stop The War Coalition seem to be forging a strategic alliance with right-wing Islamists like Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi and the MAB - against left-wing, feminist and gay Muslims.

Whatever happened to the principles of universal human rights and international solidarity? Is it really Islamophobic to condemn the stoning of adulteresses in northern Nigeria and the arrest and torture of gay people by the PLO and the Palestinian Authority? Can we remain silent when Muslims are suffering persecution at the hands of fellow Muslims? Is Muslim-on-Muslim oppression any less worthy of our concern?

The queer rights group OutRage! has experienced the left’s ethical retreat from humanitarian values first hand. We are campaigning against the murder of gay Jamaicans, and against eight reggae singers who encourage these homophobic killings. Some black and left activists accuse us of "cultural imperialism". These armchair critics never lifted a finger to help gay Jamaicans, but they readily attack our solidarity campaign.

How can it be cultural imperialism to ask the Jamaican government to honour the international human rights agreements it has signed and pledged to uphold? What is neo-colonial about backing the struggle of Jamaican human rights campaigners who want an end to the killing of their gay Jamaican brothers and sisters? Why are we being pilloried for supporting the black victims of homophobia and for opposing violent homophobes in the music industry? The real racism is not our Stop Murder Music campaign, but the left's indifference to the persecution of lesbian and gay Jamaicans.

Peter Tatchell