The concept of Human Rights is a political baton wielded by the West to keep former colonies and/or non-Christian nations in thrall. Yet Western regimes find the very human rights they peddle intolerable when invoked against themselves; hence the irresponsible liberalism of the post-World War II era is crumbling before a new conservatism in the name of domestic security.

Human rights and excessive liberties for NGOs remain valid for countries like India (Kashmir, minorities), Iraq, Iran, Libya, and now Syria. The aim is to deny agency to sovereign governments and bestow moral authority upon organisations funded by foreign agencies with hidden agendas.

Recently, a major television channel revealed that the Home Ministry has identified over one hundred NGOs that receive and divert foreign funds to Maoists, or use them for illicit religious conversion. In this manner, foreign governments and agencies become arbiters of our national security and sovereignty. All these NGOs will scream about ‘rights violation’ if the government tries to impose reasonable restrictions upon their activities.

Now, Britain is feeling the heat on two inter-connected fronts – multiculturalism and human rights – both of which threaten its core, white Christian, citizenry. British home secretary Theresa May is canvassing for scrapping of the Human Rights Act altogether, as it hinders Home Office efforts to deport dangerous foreign criminals and terrorist suspects (The Sunday Telegraph). This, after patronising the Arab Spring!

This has the potential to derail the coalition government. The Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and his party are committed to the Human Rights Act which incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law. But the Conservatives have appointed a commission of human rights experts to find a way out via a British Bill of Rights which can replace the Act by the end of 2012. The Home Office has initiated a review of Article 8 of the European Convention, which guarantees the “right to a family life”, a clause abused by criminals fighting deportation.

A failed asylum seeker who killed a 12-year-old child in a road accident used this law to avoid deportation, as did a drug dealer and many others. The climax came with a Bolivian who overstayed in Britain and used Article 8 to fight deportation, claiming he had made a home with a friend and jointly purchased a cat named Maya (no illusion). He won as the judge ruled that separating him from his cat risked ‘serious emotional consequences’!

Appalling as the stories are, one cannot sympathise, as Britain has the blood of too many innocents on her hands; centuries of colonial conquest have made her immune to the human suffering caused by her own actions and hyper-sensitive to her own discomfort. Sociologist Mahdi D. Nazemroaya has cogently argued that NATO’s war against Libya rests on a human rights fraud perpetrated by the Libyan League for Human Rights (LLHR), which got the UN involved through its claims at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

LLHR claimed that Col. Muammar Qaddafi ordered forces to kill 6,000 people in Benghazi. In February 2011, it got 70 NGOs to sent letters to President Obama, EU High Representative Catherine Ashton, and UN Secretary-General Ban-ki Moon demanding international action against Libya, invoking the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine. The UN Security Council passed two resolutions against Libya on the basis of these unproven claims, which became the basis for NATO’s war on Libya.

The signatories included Francis Fukuyama, United Nations Watch (which has informal ties to the US State Department), and others. Hence, the Obama Administration and NATO are fully complicit in this false build up to the Libyan tragedy.

LLHR has ties with the France-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Both agencies are active in Africa and issued a joint communiqué on February 21, 2011, urging the international community to “mobilize”. Curiously, they said over 400 to 600 people had died since February 15, 2011 (5,500 less than LLHR’s claim of 6,000 massacred in Benghazi!).

When challenged for proof, LLHR General-Secretary Dr. Sliman Bouchuiguir admitted the claims about the Benghazi massacres could not be validated by LLHR. When asked how a group of 70 NGOs in Geneva could support the LLHR claims, he replied it was on the basis of a network of close relationships! That is a dead giveaway.

The Security Council sanctioned the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya on the basis of this letter and LLHR’s false allegations. Not once did the Security Council and the member states pushing for war bother to investigate the allegations. The Indian Ambassador to the UN pointed this out in the session where India abstained from voting. More recently, New Delhi again opposed the unverified allegations by individuals and agencies supported by foreign powers, and took the principled stand to abstain from voting against Syria. Fortunately, this time the Russian and Chinese veto averted another vindictive assault against a sovereign nation and its citizenry, though some experts feel it may happen even without the UN fig-leaf.

It is surely pertinent that five LLHR leaders became members of the Transitional Council, including Dr. Mahmoud Jibril (prime minister) and economist Ali Tarhouni (minister for oil and finance). The latter was groomed in the United States and was party to all decisions regarding regime change in Benghazi. His very first act as oil minister was to privatize and virtually handover Libya’s energy resources and economy. UK’s Heritage Oil is currently lobbying foreign secretary William Hague to help it corner the security contracts around oil installations in Libya; it offered to help the new regime with intelligence on developments in the rebel-held east of Libya.

After cussedly nurturing terrorists wanted by nations across the globe, and spurning all extradition requests, London should not expect sympathy in its problems with terrorists or illegal immigrants. Even now, all proposed restrictions are racist, and apply mainly to persons from outside the European Union, specifically from Asia, and the now turbulent Gulf region (in turmoil only because of Western interference). London deserves to stew in its own juice.

The author is Editor, www.vijayvaani.com