Human Rights And Prisoners Of War

Human rights are the basic rights given to all human beings. Human rights are presented in many different forms and ways. Every country presents its own convenient version of human rights. The Asian, the Islamic, the European and the U.S. all has their own versions of presenting the human rights.

The Uiversal Human Rights Commission was formally accepted in 1948 around the world. The clauses in the declaration are so much generalized that it allows too many interpretations. The post-colonial world had experienced erosion in the universality of human rights. The development and violation of human rights have been discussed in great detail in today’s world. There is a wrong perception among people that human rights violation is increasing day by day but every reliable human rights indicator suggests progress in the implementation and application of the human rights.

Since human rights imply basically towards application, we should learn to apply human rights in their correct form without interpreting it in our own convenient way. Violators of human rights include terrorist organizations which pose a great threat to international peace and security. Because of the

secretive nature and policy about targets and operations of these organizations, information becomes a vital thing in combating terrorism all around the world. Because of this, terrorists who are caught as prisoners are tortured mercilessly to squeeze out all the information that they may have. Officials take cover under the provision of the so called 'legalized torture' which was even approved by the prominent US legal scholar Alan Dershowitz as a counter terror measure. This case occurs not only to terrorists but also to soldiers who are caught as prisoners of war. They are ill-treated and beaten up mercilessly to have all the secret information disclosed. In most of the cases they are tormented until they are dead or if they are fortunate enough, sent back in the process of prisoner exchange. This violation of human rights is said to be done based on the principle of 'legalized torture'.In today’s world of development in science and medicine, we all know about ‘truth serum’ which can be used to gain almost any kind of information that a person is not willingly giving. Skilful questioning and use of truth serum can be used to totally abolish the torture to prisoners.There are many other ways that can be employed to decrease violation of human rights.

Certainly, there are exception to every law and they are necessary too. But interpretation of those exceptions in one’s own convenient way we can creating loop holes in our own system and machinery of law and justice. Although, many conventions have been created to stop the torture to soldiers caught as prisoners of war like the Geneva Conventions which declare that no harm is to be done to any POWs and they are to be returned safe, compliance to these conventions in the real time is a big issue.