“The British National Party represents the collective national, environmental, political, racial, folkish, social, cultural, religious and economic interests of the indigenous Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Norse folk communities of Britain and those we regard as closely related and ethnically assimilated or assimilable aboriginal members of the European race also resident in Britain.” (quoted from Section 2 (1) on membership of the BNP constitution).

The UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) recently issued county court proceedings against the British National Party (BNP) concerning its constitution and membership criteria. This is not (as the BNP argue) a politically motivated move simply because the BNP won two seats in the European Parliament at the last elections (in fact right-leaning parties gained significantly more seats in June in many European countries). The Commission believes that the party’s constitution is in violation of the Race Relations Act as it excludes ethnic groups and ironically the court case was adjourned because BNP leader Nick Griffin had to be in Brussels for his first week of work since being elected. The travesty is that this man was elected in the first place, after all the reason the EHRC is seeking an injunction against the BNP is that the party’s constitution only allows white British people to become members. Stories have also emerged recently of a BNP campaign inspiring violence after a Muslim councillor was kidnapped in an attempt to intimidate him into not standing for election. As we can see from the Guardian article, the party’s response (“kidnapping is not British”) was far from endearing…

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The history of the world is littered with countless examples of people’s inhumanity towards each other and Brazil is no different from any other country. The Human Rights record of Brazil from the military dictatorships of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s to the present day raises many serious concerns, especially about the stability of one of the world’s largest emerging economies. Human rights is often viewed through the prism of domestic policy owing largely to the state’s monopoly on the use of violence, however in Brazil this monopoly extends beyond the state to paramilitary groups and death squads who are often employed to support drug traffickers, the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest and the removal by force of landless and homeless workers. Indeed such violence has even extended to those who sought to defend human rights such as Chico Mendes.

Furthermore, the Plan Condor active during the 1970s and 1980s involved the coordination between the military governments of the Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay to eliminate their “opponents” and highlights how human rights issues have international repercussions. This plan (created and supported by the USA) was carried out through the extrajudicial execution, torture and forced disappearance of thousands of people, among many other serious human rights violations. Only recently has Brazil started to show signs of a willingness to punish those responsible with the extradition of Uruguayan colonel Manuel Cordero to Argentina, although the Brazilian state still has hundreds of cases of abuse to investigate that were committed under its own military regime.

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One of the fundamental principles of a democracy is the right to protest. In a modern liberal democratic society we have all sorts of rights and freedoms that are backed up by the rule of law, fundamental rights such as the freedoms of speech and movement. We, the people, can voice our displeasure at any particular government policy or  perceived injustice as long as we do so in a peaceful manner, within the framework of the law. Although we should recognise that the ability to protest is a luxury in a democracy and can be vastly different under other forms of governance.



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