BASIC PRINCIPLES
Every human being – woman, man, child – has inalienable, individual rights as basis for individual freedom, justice and development. Disregard or violation of these rights can be considered as inhuman, as a crime against humanity. The individual human rights apply to all individual human beings of all nationalities, all religions and ideologies and all races.
- Every human being is born dependent and is therefore, during the period of his dependency, entitled to care, food, health – c.q. cure from illness – and lodging. He/she has furthermore the right to develop into a free and responsible being, equal to Others in his thinking, his rights and his possibilities of development in the field of thinking, feeling and willing, according to his or her own talents and preferences.
- Every individual human right is a right for al humans, no one excepted. Discrimination, which means knowledge of the difference, knowledge of the distinctions between individual humans, cultures, customs, traditions and the like, may never be used as exclusion principle. The right to humanity can not be limited by nationality, culture, race, tribe, religion, gender or other individual qualities.
- Every individual has the right to life, water, food, lodging, freedom, justice, development, discrimination, inviolability and immunity of his person and his body, before and after death.
- Slavery – be it voluntary or involuntary – is contrary to every individual person’s humanity. Every individual human being has the right to evolve independently and autonomously in every society in the spiritual, cultural, social and economic fields.
- The initiation of any form of violence is contrary to humanity, to freedom and to the individual dignity of an individual, both of him who initiates the violence as of the victim.
- Every individual human being has the right – wherever he or she may be, whichever nationaliy he or she may posess or lack – to be recognized by the law as an autonomous, independent individual human being.
- Every individual human being is equal before the law and is entitled to equal protection of the law, the judges and the legislative power.
- Every individual human being has a right to legal assistance by authorities or persons of his choice . Every individual human being is free to be assisted legally or otherwise by whom he/she wishes, when his or her rights have been violated or hs/she is being prosecuted by a third party.
- Every individual has the right to stay where he/she wishes on a basis of independence, autonomy and his/her own responsibility. No one shall be arrested, taken or kept in custody, exiled, extradited or deported from a country arbitarily, without reason or a fair and public procedure.
- Every individual human being is entitled in full equality, under all circumstances, to a fair public hearing by a judge who is independent – even from the state – and impartial, and who is not remunerated by one of the parties, on the basis of the international universal rights of every individual human being.
- Every individual human being charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until the contrary is proven in a public trial at which he or she has had all the guarantees necessary for his or her defence. An individual person is innocent until the contrary has been proven convincingly, irrefutably and without any trace of doubt.
- An individual human being cannot be held guilty of a penal offence which did not consitute a penal offence, under local of international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed. An individual human being can only be condemned for a crime on the basis of the principle: let him who is without sin cast the first stone.
[to be continued]
Jan Pieter de Kok, September 29, 2010
