Human non-rights year
Sir: Mr Tibor Szamuely makes it clear (13 December) that his stimulating contribution at the Year's outset when asked by his students for an article on the subject, was to forecast failure, without any accompanying call for action to further the Year's aims. At its end, having listed some of the many violations of human rights which have occurred, he writes : 'If we want to preserve our own human rights and to have them strengthened elsewhere, the first thing to do—in the light of the lamentable experience of Human Rights Year 1968—is to see that this cynical and tragic farce is never re- enacted again.'
That Mr Szamuely should be capable of such a wholly negative, misconstrued, non sequitur conclusion is one of the Year's failures. To blame Human Rights Year for the violations that have occurred is like blaming those who light candles for the surrounding darkness or, as G. K. Chesterton remarked in another con- text, like blaming the ark for not stopping the flood.
The darkness will be dispelled and the floods controlled to the extent that the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights strike roots in the hearts and minds of the world's peoples. The main purpose of Human Rights Year has been to propagate these principles 'as a common standard of achieve- ment for all peoples and all nations.' It is probable that some of Mr Szamuely's students, undeterred by his defeatism or perhaps stimu- lated by it, are among the many thousands in this and other countries who have grasped the- Declaration as their own and accepted its pur-
poses as the marching orders for their generation.
Gordon Evans General Secretary, United Kingdom Committee for Human Rights Year, 1968, 93 Albert Em- bankment, London SE1
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