No, there is no such things as Human Rights.

Now, lest anyone think that His Eminence is joking, let him repeat, no, really, there are no such things. In the wake of the massive protest over human rights in Tibet at the Beijing Olympic run, His Eminence risk being similarly booed at by daring such a statement. But, whatever these radical liberal zealots believe, His Eminence holds his ground that there are no human rights, no natural rights and no rights at all except under certain bare and minimal contexts, which His Eminence shall proceed to explain.

Let us consider a very popular example: The right to freedom of speech. As much as we may bitch about the ‘lack’ of it in Singapore, however, it can be easily seen that nobody really believes one has an absolute right to freedom of speech. For example, we do not have the right to publish or spread seditious materials or stir up hatred between one community against another. The point is evident. What your ‘right’ to free speech consist must be interpreted within a concrete political and social circumstance. Rights do not fall out of the sky conveniently for your to claim against the government, you have a right only in so far as the political institution and the law grants it. Your right can only be understood against the background of the law and political institution.

Since Singapore adopted the common law legal system, therefore, the application of any law, including the law prescribing your rights, can only be understood against the background of the tradition of the application of the rights law of the past. Thus, your ‘rights’ can only be understood behind a background of a political institution and a concrete and positivistic law, as applied to real situations and as understood in concrete circumstances. In fact, it is true that what you do have the right to do is precisely the right to what is not forbidden by the law. A right exists only as defined, protected and enforced by an instituition. Rights in the abstract on the other hand, is so vague and ambigious, that it cannot really tell you how to understand your rights. An understanding of a right in the abstract, removed from its real circumstances, permits of so many different readings and variations, you might as well not have it.

A person in a land with no law, no institution and no government, is a person without any rights. Rights only exists within a background of institutions and laws. The institution and law both determine the content of the right and the reality of it.

Therefore before there can be any rights, there must exist authority, government, institutions and laws to defined and enforced it.

As Scruton would put it,

“…a right becomes political reality only with the power that is able to enforce it. Rights without powers are political fictions.”

“…no citizen [possesses] a natural right that transcends his obligation to the be ruled. For what use is a right, without the law-abiding and law-enforcing power that upholds it?”

What I am saying must not be miscontrued as implying that a single de facto entity gets to decide everything. But rather, I am saying that for rights to exist, it must exist in a concrete setting, be it against a background of a common law of tradition of reading the law concerning a right or within an institutional and social comprehension.

But rights do not exist as abstract things floating in the air, dropped from the sky as a gift to everyone and anyone. It exists only as embodied in an actual socio-historical-political background.

For instance, Burke articulated the rights of the British people as rights which they inherit from past rulers and governments and customs. The Americans, in order to justify their War of Independence, invoked God as the source of their rights. (A case of a literal rights falling from the sky!) Nowadays, people shun God and prefer to invoke their rights from a Platonic heaven instead. Whatever it maybe, rights in the abstract does nothing, is nothing. Thus, the summoning of the spirit of rights from a platonic heaven is a ritual that is bound to fail, because the platonic heaven is not a concrete embodied thing.

Sometimes liberals like to invoke the constitution as a source of rights. But, pray, how can a piece of paper decorated with squiggles and ink gurantee your rights? Is it not, when this piece of paper, with its inks and marks is interpreted by real concrete institutions, governments and tradition does it then become alive and ready to enforce your rights? An analogy can be drawn with money. When does pieces of plastics and scraps of metal become dollar bills and coins for trade? Is it not when the Monetary Authority of Singapore, a real concrete institution declares it so? In the same way, a piece of paper entitled ‘The Constitution’ is just a piece of paper with ink on it until interpreted against a background of a concrete socio-politico-historico reality.

So, as for the Tibetians… sorry, you do not have rights. Until and unless the government or a real political entity gives it to you, nope, you have no rights. Rights falling down from a platonic heaven cannot tell you what they are nor enforce it for you.