Human Rights

• History


  The enlightenment led to a refocus of human attitudes, including in Europe the protestant reformation and renaissance.
• State crimes + Human rights

  Most state crimes involve a violation of human rights, and most violations of human rights are state crimes as they are generally a state who has the power to restrict.
• Social conditions


  Kelman and Hamilton - focus on crimes of obedience and identified 3 key features of soldiers in the My Lai Massacre:

  1. Authorisation - pass responsibility onto superiors
  2. Routinisation - people are desensitised to violence
  3. Dehumanisation - the soldiers characterised the Vietnamese as 'gooks' and less than human
• Bauman


  Many features of modernity were needed for the mass murder of Jews in the holocaust:

  • Science - trials for gas chambers
  • Technology - railways
  • Division of labour - everyone does one thing to avoid responsibility

  He therefore argues that state crime is a defining feature of modernity
• Evaluating Bauman


  The holocaust remains and exception, not a rule. Other modern age genocides haven't used the same characteristics he identified e.g. Rwandan Genocide using machetes and conducted by mobs.