Human Rights Violation

Humans rights is the basic freedom you have in a certain society as a human being. These rights include the rights of freedom, justice and equality, as the enlighten philosopher John Locke would have agreed. When these rights are not permitted in a society or is taken away is considered as human rights violation. Rights violation is something humanity has been fighting for hundreds of years yet it has not been solved. It happens in the largest cities and in the most remote places in the world.
A situation that clearly demonstrates various human rights violation is through out the course of the civil war in Sierra Leone. Through out Sierra Leone imperialism by Great Britain, they were a hundred percent dependent on the mother country. After Great Britain decided to decolonized Sierra Leone in 1961,the nation was left without any idea on how to control a country and coming up with a government on its own. Their first independent government, a centralized monarchy was very corrupted. This resulted in the rebel groups to rise up and work towards a democratic government. The rebel group became known as RUF which stands for Revolutionary United Front. However, their main goal of forming a democratic government was not necessarily it, they wanted to control the diamond sites.
The RUF committed many terrible crimes against humanity. Thousands of refugees were taken by the R.U. F. on their brutal rampages. Once they were taken some were killed others were taken to the stake, were they would chose who would work in the diamond mining camps; the others were put in one of the R.U.F. commander’s favorite games, the “long-sleeve, short- sleeve” game. In this game they would ask the refugee if they wanted long-sleeve or short-sleeve and depending on what was said by the distressed victim they would chop their whole arm or their hands. Approximately 10,000 people lost body parts during the civil war. This is a serious human rights violation because no one has the right to amputate part of your body. The RUF only justification for this indignant crime is that they didn’t want the people to vote for another corrupt government. However they were already corrupting the society, by terrorizing the people.
Another human rights violation was the forced labor camps or diamond fields. Poor Sierra Leonean people worked as slaves for long hours, burning their backs with the sun while mining for alluvial diamonds. They worked in poor conditions with no food or water. The RUF wanted diamonds as raw materials to support the war and buy weapons. If the workers did not meet the quota, the RUF would torture them. This is an example of a human rights violation because the workers were forced to work and the RUF treated them with injustice. The poor people didn’t have a choice but to work in the diamond fields. The unfair wage that they receive was enough to help them prosper.
The R.U.F. recruited child soldiers from nearby villages and tribes. The children were stolen from their families and led to a world of cruelty and murdering. They would maintain the kids on a constant supply of drugs and alcohol to make it easier to transition to the world the were being imposed to. They would train the children on how to use weapons and send them on killing rampages, were they would murder thousands of people. Over two million people were killed during the nine year ordeal. These actions from the RUF was a serious human rights violation, because they abused on the children innocence and make them became killers at such a young age.
Sometimes the human kind is control by their ego side and tend solve problems without a diplomatic action. The R.U.F did what is called “Operation Pay Yourself”. This was the action of the rebels to illegally take the people’s belonging and make them into profit. The rebels needed to fund the war and by taking people’s belonging and money they were able to. This is a human rights violation because it goes against the human rights to have your own property without anyone taking it away from you. The rebels didn’t have a justification to why they were taking things that didn’t belong to them. After all the injustice and cruelty the R.U.F imposed to the citizens they were given amnesty. Yet the survivors of the civil war can’t forget all the brutality and torment the rebels caused them.

He asked for long sleeves
By: Florangel De Leon & Kairy Garcia

Is imperialism inevitable? Will/ should we ever strive for pure equality of power and wealth?

Throughout history countries turned to imperialism for the benefit of their countries and according to what raw materials they need. Imperialism often occurs in countries that are not well developed and that have resources for more develop countries to use. Great Britain is and was one of the great powers in the world. They were military powerful and economically more developed than Africa. Great Britain took control of Africa because they had natural resources such as diamonds, gold and ivory; resources that helped them strive even more.

According to Jarred Diamond theory of “Geographic Luck” countries with more favorable geographic factors are able to strive more as a country, economically and socially. This is one of the roots of the existing inequality among nations. Nations like New Guinea are not able to strive because they don’t have favorable geography. Their climate is too moist and crops are not able to grow. Their only source of food takes too much to prepare taking most of the energy, not allowing them to spend more time on other things. People are born with the same human rights, however their surrounding affects their own intellectual, and social and economic developed. A person that is born in the United States has more opportunity than born in Third World countries such as New Guinea and parts of Africa. We should never strive for pure power and wealth in the world because then there wouldn't be progress in the world. If everyone is the same, then people are not going to have the interest to try to do better of themselves and achieve their highest potential. This would make the world undeveloped. According to An Rand objectivism theory one has its own set value and it should be counted as it is.

By:Florangel De Leon

How did the Industrial Revolution and the rise of Capitalism spark interest in Africa and the imperialism of the 19th and 20th century?

An Industrial Revolution is a change in how goods are produced by using machines and other technologies. During the 1900’s European countries and the United States were undergoing a major change in the ways of social and economic structure.
This was due to the fact that these countries had land, labor and capital. Their natural resources such as coal and iron ore help to build machines which could mass produce products and making a better profit, increasing their economic rank. Also this country had geographic luck. Geographic luck is when certain societies have access to favorable physical factors that help them prosper more than others. All of these factors allowed them to come up with new inventions such as the steam engine, vaccines and railroads.
Such inventions sparked interest of Western countries in Africa. The geography of Africa is very diverse. Having rivers with rapids and waterfalls slowed down the exploration of Africa’s interior. However with the introduction of steam boats to western countries Africa could easily be navigated by the stronger steam boats and not run of by the rapids. Also because Africa has a regular coastline it was hard for sail boats or more outdated ones to travel through and the steam boats allowed them to have more control over the sea. The tropical climate of Africa made it very common for diseases to roam the environment. European countries now had a vaccine for the combat of malaria. Africa’s interior was divided into rainforest and desert. This created a ethnic disunity, which permitted the Western countries to easily take over a small part of people rather than all united as one. European countries used tribalism to their favor; often they would turn tribes against each other. This would result in the tribes to have civil war, and turn weak allowing the imperialist countries to easily conquer.

All of the imperialist nations had a pure market economy. Capitalism or Laissez faire is when everything is privately owned and people invest in business to profit. Having this economic system greatly sparked nations appeal to Africa. Business wanted more wealth through cheap labor. This action was not supported by the government of their nations so the business and factory owners needed to find an alternative. They decided to have cheap labor in other countries that allowed them. In Africa capitalist forced Africans to work as slaves in mines such as mines of conflict diamonds, to gain more profit and pay their workers less. Also the growth of Capitalism resulted in and interest of imperializing because they wanted Africa’s raw materials such as gold, diamond and ivory to make more products and market them.

Capitalism Structure
By: Florangel De Leon

. Explain how the Berlin Conference and the imperialism of Africa that ensued effected the both the colonized Africans and the Europeans colonizers?

The Berlin Conference is a set of laws for 14 Europeans country who each wanted to obtain a piece of land from Africa. It started as that any country was able to control a part of the African country as long as they let each other know they would be getting that land. African leaders didn’t have any say in this conference. This had many negative effects such as:
Hundreds of thousands of Africans died out of war fare/
African tradition cultures broke down because of assimilation and colonization.
Europeans created African boundaries by dividing the nation.

Although the Berlin Conference had negative effects it also had positive effects because Europeans technology improved sanitation conditions and education in Africa, but it also benefited Europeans because they got to industrialize more since they got more natural resources from Africa.



Kairy Garcia

3. What role do you think the imperialism of the 19th and 20th century played in the sparking the Civil War in Sierra Leone?

Imperialism is when another country comes and colonizes country. Imperialism in Africa started when European countries went to Africa and decided they were going to take over Africa because they thought that people there were dumb and they needed help to modernize their style of living. That was when social Darwinism came about, a theory were some were more successful than other because of genetic and cultural superiority. Europeans thought that they had the right to spread their religion and government to a less privileged country. White mans burden felt that it was their duty to help civilize and westernize less modern people. Although the Europeans made people think that they would help them out their real intensions where to get natural resources from the land they were colonizing because this would help them industrialize more. How ever this was not beneficial for the Africans because they were force to another culture. Also many of them died of war fare. Europeans politically divided African countries creating African boundaries which created many conflicts among the Africans. This is when tribalism happened because Africans started to have civil wars over land ownership.

In Sierra Leone there was a civil war because of the diamonds. Rebel groups wanted to obtain diamond to be able to trade them for weapons. The RUF (Revolutionary United Front) wanted to obtain the diamond field, therefore they made people work and they terrorize the villages. Also the Liberia’s president wanted to make people weaker to be able to accomplish this goal. That is why people in Africa had their hands cut off. The rebels cut their hand off so that they wouldn’t be able to do anything, which it was the best way for them to take over the diamond filed. They also encourage kids to fight for them by providing them with alcohol and drugs, so that they can become rebels.

As we can see the imperialism of the 19th and 20th century sparked the civil war of Sierra Leone when civil wars started in Africa for land ownership.