'Demands of Dignity'

'Demands of Dignity'

<DEVELOPING THE DISCOURSE ON OUR DECEMBER 1Oth DECLARATION>

      On-Line Edition of the Book by Ed Aurelio C. Reyes    

 Introduction -- Campaigning for Deeper, Broader Discourse 

It was then the Golden Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the milestone international document categorically articulating human dignity by itemizing what every human being’s rights are, and recognizing that these rights have always been, still are, and will always be innate, indivisible and inviolable, long before any articulation whatso- ever on this theme was ever even thought, and much longer before that fairly recent mandate for universal observance as part of civilized behavior within the family of nations. The articulations of UDHR and all efforts to universally uphold them by deed, are just in fulfillment of the demands of the dignity inherent in the very nature of every human being.

It was also no less than the Centennial of the Treaty of Paris, a slightly less recent formal document, with at least a tacit international recognition, negotiated upon the premise that all men are not created equal (so peoples with skins darker than Caucasian white and with cultures deemed inferior may be ignored, trodden underfoot, robbed, enslaved, even killed en masse, by holders of superior weaponry). That treaty was an assault on the equality, even oneness, of human dignity, an offense that can neither be justified nor swept under the rug of induced amnesia. Coming to terms with such an offense -- by earnestly going through the process of cleansing through cate- gorical apology and receiving earnest forgiveness -- heals the wounds on human dignity mainly of the offenders. Human dignity itself demands such healing. It cannot be waived. Much less can it be bought.

The UDHR has been a cause for celebration by the entirety of Humanity as much as the TP has been a cause for indignation also on the part of the entirety of Humanity. However, the actual celebration and actual indignation has had to be dependent on the respective levels of understanding and acknowledgment of the essence of each document and of their integral logic in the path of human evolution attained by the various human groups and by the various persons.

Ten years ago, on the occasion of the Golden and Centennial anniversaries of UDHR and TP, respectively, an active network promoting a keen sense of history among the peoples of the Philippines spearheaded together with the largest alliance of human rights advocates in the country a human rights-oriented and historically-mandated project in the form of a "1998 Philippine Declaration of Felicitation and Protest."

Through the efforts of Kamalaysayan and the Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates (PAHRA) this was formulated and subsequently signed by over 300 history-oriented educators, human rights and students from all over the country, and copies were delivered to the respective embassies of Spain and the United States, the office of the United Nations resident representative in the Philippines, and some other official addressees, including the embassy of France.

This 1998 Philippine Declaration expresses, among others, a demand for an official apology from Spain and the same from the US. We got a response from the Spanish ambassador, and his letter makes for a very interesting reading.

Now, a full decade later, Kamalaysayan is launching as a campaign project a deeper and broader discourse on the contents of this 1998 Declaration, covering the effort to foster a deeper understanding and firmer grasp of both international documents along with their respective implications and consequences, and elaborating on the items for which we have earlier aired demands for apology.

To jumpstart this campaign and provide an initial folio of materials for circulation and discussion, this writer was tasked to put together this book, one of the thickest and most well-researched among his two dozen or so published works, full-titled, Demands of Dignity: Developing the Discourse on the Philippine December 10th Declaration, a Decade After. This book comes out in standard hard-copy version of about 180 pages, and in electronic full and popular versions mainly for an international audience.

The first two chapters tackle why the UDHR and the TP are, respectively, "a cause for celebration" and "a cause for indignation." The third chapter elaborates in detail the bases of the demands for Spanish and American official apology to the Filipino people and to Humanity, and the last two chapters respond to the Spanish written response and to the American non-response to the 1998 Declaration.

We have been asked why we still bother with these two very old documents "just because they got signed on the same date." Actually these two are much more closely related than that – they are mutually relevant! And they form part of our continuing past, for better and for worse. They are part of the History of Humankind, of all of us. They are both covered by the Demands of Human Dignity.

The various views on precisely this question and about many others would surely be part of the broader and deeper discourse that we want to have, as aided by more documented information that we all can share with one another within the Philippine peoples’ community and the bigger Human Family, in joint pursuit of "redress, closure and healing."

This pursuit seeks to serve well the promotion of what we firmly hold as the current human evolutionary imperative: human synergy in conscious oneness.