On Violations of Human Rights by the Communist Regime in Poland

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (40) ◽  
pp. 224-262
Author(s):  
Bo Robertson (Bożysława Maria-Magdalena Nadolna)
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Social Unrest ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
The Core ◽  
Shame And Guilt ◽  
Individual Justice ◽  
The Way

During the communist regime, the Polish judicial apparatus was construed as a tool to liquidate the opposition. Many people were killed, imprisoned, tortured, dispossessed, and their families persecuted and condemned to lives of abject poverty. After the fall of communism, the perpetrators of these atrocities were not confronted with their crimes and continued to function surreptitiously. Their shame and guilt have been suppressed, while the wrongs suffered by the victims have not been remedied, and thus continue to hang over the nation like the Sword of Damocles. The unexpunged culpability and corrupted conscience inherited by their descendants continue to foment social resentments. The aim of the article is to suggest the approach to restoring social equilibrium taking as the premise that the legacy of historical violence must be remedied, and the wrongs must be rectified a priori. The scientific methods used in the article are restitution, restoration, reconciliation, and mediation. The sense of social and individual justice is at the core of humanity. Where this is lacking, social unrest arises and spills over with violence. The crimes of the communist regime must be conceded to prevent an impending revolution. Compassion toward the suffering can pave the way to forgiveness, and through that, to reconciliation.

scholarly journals Delegitimizing the Communist Past and Building a New Sense of Community: The Politics of Transitional Justice and Memory in Ukraine

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 372-405
Author(s):  
Oksana Myshlovska
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Sense Of Community ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Historical Justice ◽  
Communist Past ◽  
The Way

This article studies the way in which the crimes of the communist regime have been dealt with since the late Soviet period, and the way the legacies of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) have been subject to reevaluation. During the Soviet period, policies such as the rehabilitation of victims of mass repression were initiated from above, while the documentation of human rights violations and revelations of mass repressions and death by hunger were undertaken by the dissident movement from below. Since the late perestroika period, the focus on the crimes of the communist regime has been used by the opposition in Ukraine in the struggle for the restitution of group rights. Affirmative action concerning the Ukrainian language, culture and history was seen as the restoration of historical justice. This resulted most recently in the adoption of so-called ‘decommunization’ laws, which has been a controversial and contested issue in Ukraine. The article discusses the factors that shaped the way Ukraine has handled the communist past and constructed new narratives, and reflects on the reason why a ‘politics of regret’ has not resonated yet with political actors involved in the state legitimization struggle.

Deconstructing Turkey’s “Open Door” Policy towards Refugees from Syria

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 209-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Burcu Togral Koca
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Border Studies ◽  
Open Door ◽  
Open Door Policy ◽  
Security Framework ◽  
Liberal Policy ◽  
The Way

Turkey has followed an “open door” policy towards refugees from Syria since the March 2011 outbreak of the devastating civil war in Syria. This “liberal” policy has been accompanied by a “humanitarian discourse” regarding the admission and accommodation of the refugees. In such a context, it is widely claimed that Turkey has not adopted a securitization strategy in its dealings with the refugees. However, this article argues that the stated “open door” approach and its limitations have gone largely unexamined. The assertion is, here, refugees fleeing Syria have been integrated into a security framework embedding exclusionary, militarized and technologized border practices. Drawing on the critical border studies, the article deconstructs these practices and the way they are violating the principle of non-refoulement in particular and human rights of refugees in general. 

Strategic threats to energy security as risks of quality of people's life

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 730-744
Author(s):  
V.I. Loktionov
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Energy Security ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
Analysis And Synthesis ◽  
General Scientific ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Economic Well Being ◽  
The Way

Subject. The article reviews the way strategic threats to energy security influence the quality of people's life. Objectives. The study unfolds the theory of analyzing strategic threats to energy security by covering the matter of quality of people's life. Methods. To analyze the way strategic threats to energy security spread across cross-sectoral commodity and production chains and influences quality of people's living, I applied the factor analysis and general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis. Results. I suggest interpreting strategic threats to energy security as risks of people's quality of life due to a reduction in the volume of energy supply. I identified mechanisms reflecting how the fuel and energy complex and its development influence the quality of people's life. The article sets out the method to assess such quality-of-life risks arising from strategic threats to energy security. Conclusions and Relevance. In the current geopolitical situation, strategic threats to energy security cause long-standing adverse consequences for the quality of people's life. If strategic threats to energy security are further construed as risk of quality of people's life, this will facilitate the preparation and performance of a more effective governmental policy on energy, which will subsequently raise the economic well-being of people.

Humanitarian Intervention

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Caplan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Future Development ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Real Effect ◽  
General Decline ◽  
Humanitarian Crises ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
The Way

States – Western ones, at least – have given increased weight to human rights and humanitarian norms as matters of international concern, with the authorization of legally binding enforcement measures to tackle humanitarian crises under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. These concerns were also developed outside the UN Security Council framework, following Tony Blair’s Chicago speech and the contemporaneous NATO action over Kosovo. This gave rise to international commissions and resulted, among other things, in the emergence of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) doctrine. The adoption of this doctrine coincided with a period in which there appeared to be a general decline in mass atrocities. Yet R2P had little real effect – it cannot be shown to have caused the fall in mass atrocities, only to have echoed it. Thus, the promise of R2P and an age of humanitarianism failed to emerge, even if the way was paved for future development.

Comparative Views on the Right to Vote in International Law

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shai Dothan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
National Courts ◽  
European Court ◽  
Right To Vote ◽  
The Right ◽  
Democratic Elections ◽  
The Way

There is a consensus about the existence of an international right to vote in democratic elections. Yet states disagree about the limits of this right when it comes to the case of prisoners’ disenfranchisement. Some states allow all prisoners to vote, some disenfranchise all prisoners, and others allow only some prisoners to vote. This chapter argues that national courts view the international right to vote in three fundamentally different ways: some view it as an inalienable right that cannot be taken away, some view it merely as a privilege that doesn’t belong to the citizens, and others view it as a revocable right that can be taken away under certain conditions. The differences in the way states conceive the right to vote imply that attempts by the European Court of Human Rights to follow the policies of the majority of European states by using the Emerging Consensus doctrine are problematic.

‘To wise for a woman’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Clark
Keyword(s):  
Marital Problems ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Family ◽  
Made In ◽  
The Way

While there were clear strategic aims in the way that marriages were made in the Howard dynasty during this period, the family was only unusual in that it operated at the very top of the aristocratic hierarchy and was therefore able to use marital alliances to successfully recover and bolster both status and finances. Where they were different, however, was in the experience of some of these women within marriage. By and large, the marriages made by and for members of the family, including women, seem to have been as successful as others of their class. However, three women close to the core of the dynasty experienced severe marital problems, even ‘failed’ marriages, almost simultaneously during the 1520s and 1530s. The records generated by these episodes tell us about the way in which the family operated as a whole, and the agency of women in this context, and this chapter therefore reconstructs these disputes for this purpose.

Systematicity and Normative Justification

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Unique Form ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Normative Justification ◽  
The Way

This chapter examines systematicity as a form of normative justification. Thompson’s contention is that the Hegelian commitment to fundamental presuppositionlessness and hence to methodological immanence, from which his distinctive conception of systematicity flows, is at the core of the unique form of normative justification that he employs in his political philosophy and that this is the only form of such justification that can successfully meet the skeptic’s challenge. Central to Thompson’s account is the distinction between systematicity and representation and the way in which this frames Hegel’s relationship to the traditional forms of justification and the creation of his own distinctive kind of normative argumentation.

The Inviolability of Diplomatic Agents in the Context of Employment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Rodgers
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Fair Trial ◽  
European Convention ◽  
Employment Contracts ◽  
Domestic Servants ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Diplomatic Immunity ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Way

‘Ordinary’ employment contracts—including those of domestic servants—have been deemed to attract diplomatic immunity because they fall within the scope of diplomatic functions. This chapter highlights the potential for conflict between these forms of immunity and the rights of the employees, and reflects on cases in which personal servants of diplomatic agents have challenged both the existence of immunity and the scope of its application. The chapter examines claims that the exercise of diplomatic immunity might violate the right to a fair trial under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the way in which courts have dealt with these issues. The chapter analyses diplomats’ own employment claims and notes that they are usually blocked by the assertion of immunity, but also reflects on more recent developments in which claims had been considered which were incidental to diplomatic employment (eg Nigeria v Ogbonna [2012]).

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