Javier Larrondo Calafat on Cuba’s Luis Frómeta Compte

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/07/25

Javier Larrondo Calafat is the President of Prisoners Defenders. Here we talk about a particular case, Luis Frómeta Compte, and associated cases in Cuba.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So today we’re here with Javier from Prisoners Defenders. We will focus on Cuba and a German prisoner, Luis Frómeta Compte. Regarding the 11J demonstrations in La Güinera, Cuba, what happened to those demonstrators, and why were some of their rights violated in terms of judicial proceedings or their legal rights?

Javier Larrondo: Well, the first answer to that, before going into detail, is to ask if there were any rights not violated. People went on the streets in San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba, saying “food, medicines, fatherland, and life” (Patria y vida), which is a song that won two Grammy Awards and talks about the needs of the Cuban people to fight for homeland and life, not homeland or death. It’s saying to the government, “We don’t want any more war.”

“You have had us at war for 65 years, and you’re telling us that the Americans are our enemies, but 60% of the meat we eat in this country comes from the USA because the United States sells 60% of the beef that enters Cuba to Cuba.” That is a reality, so the people no longer believe they must be at war to protect the homeland. No, “we want to protect the homeland, but we want life, and we don’t want death”.

So it was impeccable in that sense. It was full of sense, education, and an evolved message. Well, thousands of people went on the streets, but then other cities in Cuba knew about this, and they caught that feeling and took the same message.

Pacifically going on the streets, they were saying, “We don’t have fear; for the first time, we are on the streets, saying we want to be free, we want homeland and life, we want medicines, we want human rights,” and they were doing nothing wrong. Well, the president of Cuba went on television, saying, “Revolutionaries, go to combat against those counter-revolutionaries. I’m going to send you to combat them.”

So he set people against people. The reality is that the people didn’t confront the demonstrators because most of them knew that the demonstrators were asking for reasonable things. So, who went after them? The military forces and the police. Instead of dressing up in their uniforms, they dressed up as civilians, took military forces buses as civilians, and were given bats and baseball bats to hit the demonstrators. We have that recorded. We have seen that.

And hundreds of military people—well, not hundreds, but dozens, let’s say 50 or 60 [in that concrete vídeo Prisoners Defenders have analyzed]—came from the buses, took bats, and then they went against the population, and they were throwing stones at the population. So that’s where exactly Luis Frómeta Compte passed by. That is the case, because he was recording with his mobile phone. And he’s German.

He’s originally from Cuba, but he lived 40 years in Germany. His daughters don’t even speak Spanish, they only speak German and, at most, a little English. He was visiting Cuba. He saw the demonstrations, and he went to the demonstrations’ recording. “Oh, this is great.” People were crying, saying, “We want to be free.” People were crying there, artists who told me, “My heart was full of energy. I was crying. I couldn’t believe that my country, for once, would be able to speak. My people”.

Well, Frómeta is recording, and then you hear some voices in the video that say, “Hey, hey, the police are throwing stones.” Then, all the peaceful demonstrators where Luis Frómeta was started to run away, and he started to run, too. Then he got to the side of the road, and he recorded the police officers passing by, picking up stones, throwing stones, shooting up in the air, as others did not because one of those police bullets got into the back of a Cuban called Dubis Laurencio Tejeda, and he died. Some videos show how he died.

There’s a whole investigation on that, and the European Parliament condemned that in resolution P9_TA(2021)0389 (“whereas Diubis Laurencio Tejeda was confirmed dead by the police after being shot from behind in Havana while protesting;”).

So he [Luis Frómeta] was in that demonstration. And what happened? He went to the policeman, and instead of being afraid, as he was a German, he said, “Please, policeman, don’t throw stones. We have to be an example, please”. “We”, he said, “you and I”, the police, the authorities, “must be an example.”

Seconds later, you can hear a voice saying, “Hey, stop that recording right now.” Then, you see another camera from another demonstrator filming his detention. And he’s handcuffed.

And one policeman is grabbing him, the other one violent, three or four on him. And he’s trying to talk, “Please, please, policeman.” He’s handcuffed. The United Nations has condemned his detention and penal procedure, prior to the appearance of the video.

The video is afterward because he was forcibly disappeared for weeks, as the UN indicated in its Legal Opinion 13/2024 (“He was missing for more than 8 days, during which time he was held in a punishment and isolation cell at the 100 y Aldabó prison in Havana (…) The family had no contact with him for 20 days”). He was detained with no arrest warrant. He was taken to a place where he did not have a lawyer or help. He was interrogated. He was tortured. He was taken to a maximum security prison.

Until his trial, he was detained without judicial protection because, in Cuba, people go to jail only because the prosecutor determines so. By law, the prosecutor can put people in prison, and that’s what they do. The law says the first one to put in prison is the attorney.

So he went to prison for a long period. And then, after that, he was sentenced to 15 years for sedition. And if you take his case, he’s 61 years old, 15 years in prison in Cuba, excluding those he has already spent in prison, 73. He will not be alive. It is a death sentence. And the German government has done zero effectively in the three years that he’s been in prison. And why? If he were the cousin of the president of Germany, it would have been different. But he is a second-class German for them, a Cuban who was born in Cuba and then nationalized in Germany.

And then, when the government of Cuba says he committed “sedition”, the government of Germany doubts if he committed something… It’s a nightmare how these people [yhe German Government] cover their backs instead of analyzing the facts, getting deep into the story, and helping the family, and getting that citizen out of that death sentence. But that is not happening. So we put the video on the Internet, to make them aware of the injustice that is being committed.

We raised his case many times. We denounced it to the United Nations, and we won his denunciation. So the United Nations now has said, in a legal opinion, a Court of Arbitration process, “You, Cuba, must immediately release these 17 prisoners of the case of Luis Frómeta Compte.”

Why were they sentenced, all 17, to sedition and 20 years, 15 years, or 12 years? Because they were the ones who saw the death of Dubis Laurencio Tejeda. The government doesn’t want these people free, talking about how they witnessed that the police killed Dubis Laurencio Tejeda. That’s all. This is like the Stasi. Like Hitler. Like Franco,Mussolini, Videla, Pinochet…

The Cuban Government and this regimes are all in the same category. We have that in Cuba, but there are still people who believe that perhaps the poor Cubans… no, no, the poor Cubans for sure. The people, but the government. The elite of the government has imposed 65 years of terror to maintain power. What happens in Cuba is crazy; it is so heartbreaking. The case of Luis Frómeta is a significant one, but there are thousands of similar cases.

Jacobsen: With the use of the Rome Statute as a pillar when stating crimes against humanity in Articles 7(e), (h), (i), and (k), when looking at state crimes typified through the Rome Statute, how effective is using that instrument in getting justice in these cases?

Larrondo: The International Criminal Court is a court that only has a certain competence and jurisdiction of its actions. It’s competent for judging crimes against humanity and has jurisdiction over certain citizens or certain places where they are committed.

So it can only judge the crimes against humanity that are committed in a country that is a signatory of the Rome Statute, or if a citizen or a group of citizens of that country are suffering crimes against humanity in another country that is not a signatory. However, they cannot judge citizens of a country where crimes against humanity happen if that country is not a signatory of the Rome Statute. So, in those cases, the International Court can intervene if the Security Council of the United Nations initiates and asks for an investigation.

But that will not happen because, in that council, neither the United States, Russia, Cuba, Nicaragua, and others are signatories of the Rome Statute. So, none of them are interested in the Rome Statute and the International Criminal Court gaining a spotlight in the world of rights because they will be the first to be pressed to be signatories. And some countries are afraid of being judged in that arena.

That’s why the Cuban case cannot be taken to the International Criminal Court when it happens in Cuba with Cubans. But what you said is interesting because he’s German, right? The problem is when you have a case of one single person in the International Criminal Court. We have filed cases in the ICC. But that court is meant for cases that affect hundreds of people, thousands of people, not just one German citizen. As you can imagine, the court is full of work on crimes against humanity worldwide because they happen constantly, so it can only have the resources to solve the most important cases, such as what happened in Ukraine with thousands or hundreds of thousands of people, or in Sudan, etc. Cases that are so worrying, that they are prioritized.

So, I don’t believe trying to file that claim in the International Criminal Court will give any results. Though, we should have a better and stronger International Criminal Court to be able to take even these one-person crimes against humanity.

Jacobsen: How about the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties?

Larrondo: The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties is interesting because many countries still need to better accomplish it. It is curious. They only look at the Convention whenever their interests align with its articles.

The European Union has an agreement with Cuba called the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement (PDCA). 26 countries, out of 27, that conform the European Union signed the PDCA. Federica Mogherini said, “Well while waiting for all to sign, we’re going to apply it provisionally”.

The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties states, in Article 25, that a provisional instrument should be terminated if one country manifests that it will not sign the agreement. And that’s what happened in Lithuania. Lithuania, in its parliament, in the Foreign Commission of its Parliament, has the executive powers of foreign policy, because that is how it is defined in their political system. The president cannot say anything about foreign policy, but the Lithuanian Parliament has a Commission whose President holds the executive powers on foreign policy.

So in Lithuania when you talk about a treaty that involves two countries on foreign policy, the only one who can say “We’re not going to sign” is not the President of the country, but the President of the Commission of Foreign Affairs. And that’s what happened. The Parliament voted a resolution on that commission, stating “Lithuania is not going to sign the PDCA”.

They approved this executive resolution to “reject signing the PDCA unless Cuba respects human rights”. And the President of the Commission took that resolution to Josep Borrell. Josep Borrell claimed that the resolution was not from the Lithuanian President in order not to apply Article 25 and consider the PDCA suspended, but that action violates the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.

If in Lithuania the executive powers of foreign policy are in the committee of Foreign Affairs of the Parliament, Borrell should have complied in harmony with the Vienna Convention, and should have terminated that agreement. But he turned a deaf ear, and that’s something that impressed me, while Cuba is committing crimes against humanity.

Cuba is violating the rights not only of other countries’ people but, most importantly, their own people. They prohibit them from talking, writing, leaving or entering Cuba… If any Cuban leaves Cuba without permission, he/she faces a penalty of up to eight years in prison. That is wild. It’s in the penal code. Moreover, entering Cuba is prohibited for any Cuban who is considered “undesirable” by the government. Cubans who are considered “undesirable” cannot enter their country.

When you look at the system of Cuba, it is the same as the German Democratic Republic, the same. But many people, even the German government, are consenting to that.

There are people who believe they can say “Well, let’s be cool with the Cuban regime because they’re going to evolve”. There’s no way for a system to evolve when psychopaths are in power. And all that system is designed to create psychopaths because they intentionally create the psychopathic situation of having a constant war: “You have to be hungry. You cannot speak. You cannot doubt what we [the elite in power] do because you have to be a soldier”. “No, no, no, I’m not a soldier, buddy”, the People tell them today. “I’m a citizen. Come on! I have the right to say what is wrong, to say what is right, to sing the songs I want to sing, to enter or leave my country. What are you telling me?” And that’s what is happening in Cuba. Some people think that the government can have space for evolution. No, the more space you give them, the more war they export in Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Bolivia.

Jacobsen: So, regarding the Rome Statute, we’ve talked about the UN, the Vienna Convention, and the Law of Treaties. So, when it comes to the four claims being made about the violations, what are those? What substantiates those?

Larrondo: First, the Rome Statute defines 11 crimes against humanity. Four of them are arbitrary detention, even more grave when it is for long periods of incarceration, forced disappearance, torture, and other inhuman acts against prisoners and persons. Crimes against humanity are committed by definition by the powers of the government, let’s say, by the government that holds the power in a certain place or country.

So these four crimes are clear because the United Nations (not just me, which I do too, but not taking the point that Prisoners Defenders would say so) on April 2, 2024, issued an accusatory letter to Cuba pointing to all those crimes (and many others, but those clearly), and Cuba responded out of date and without addressing the substance. So, the accusations, we can consider, have been proven. But most importantly, in the case of Luis Frómeta the United Nations explicitly issued a condemnation and an exhortation to liberate him because he was detained arbitrarily, one crime against humanity, by the state power. He was forcibly disappeared, and it was demonstrated in the WGAD’s Arbitration Court proceedings. He was tortured, and it was demonstrated in the WGAD’s Arbitration Court proceedings, and he was treated in so many inhuman ways, and that is demonstrated, too. So that was not only an accusatory letter. Of course, both things add up, but this last one is a sentence from five international experts designated to make those sentences when these things happen. So, the United Nations is accusing Cuba of committing several crimes against humanity in the cases of Luis Frómeta and the other 17.

Jacobsen: And what are similar cases, more significant, that highlight how this is not something people can take as a one-off, how this is a continual process of people’s rights being stolen from them, their reputation being vilified, and this eventually having impacts on the whole population?

Larrondo: Yes. Well, the thing is, it’s not as if there are other examples. The problem is that all the political prisoners in Cuba are examples of this, but there are particularly outrageous cases.

One example is José Daniel Ferrer. The European Union, the European Commission, the European Parliament, and several resolutions defended José Daniel Ferrer. The United Nations defended him in another WGAD’s Arbitration Court proceedings, where they said he must be released for all the damage done to him, as he’s been disappeared and subjected to all sorts of torture.

Well, he’s receiving sound wave torture in his cell. He’s been in a solitary cell for three years now, alone, without being able to talk to anyone outside that cell. He doesn’t see the sun for months at a time. He’s been beaten many times. He’s been denied food and water. They once took him to a hospital when he had a complete infection in a tooth, and he let them do it because the pain was unbearable. They took out the wrong tooth and they laughed at him.

When he recovered, he said, “Hey, you took out the wrong tooth,” and they laughed. That’s what he is suffering. Why?

Because he’s a social guy who mobilized his whole city, giving food to people who didn’t have shelter or food. Not activists, not people for using them in a political war, just hungry people. He used to feed 100 people at his house daily so that the population would come to his place for food and medical treatment. He made ambulances for the city with private cars so anyone who needed an ambulance could call a private car and get to a hospital. His group repaired streets communally, with all the people volunteering to repair them…

What the regime hates most about him is that he was doing what the state should do regarding social services for its citizens, but they don’t. If he was a criminal it would have been easy to put him in jail with no problem, or even release him to dismantle the image of the opposition.

However, the problem is that he was mobilizing people because of the social services he was providing. He didn’t rest serving needed and marginalized people every day. His voice was becoming tired because he was talking to everyone and helping, and that was worrying for a regime that has a monopoly on services, and whose services do not fulfill at all what the citizens need. So when it comes to a person who does that for all Cuban citizens, it becomes a worrying matter for this regime.

He is the most tortured prisoner in Cuba right now, and if he isn’t killed, it’s because the political cost of killing him quickly is too high for the regime, and they know it. They’re killing him slowly so that when he gets out of jail, he will be in a wheelchair. That’s what they’re doing to José Daniel Ferrer, the most important leader of the opposition, activist, human rights defender, or however you want to describe him in Cuba.

Jacobsen: Is the fear of the regime that if an individual is killed quickly, like with a bullet to the head or electric shock…

Larrondo: They would pay a political cost to the European Union, Canada, and all the democratic countries in the world. So they avoid that by keeping him alive, but meanwhile killing him slowly, destroying his mind and nerves. Product of the tortures, he’s now shaking, his arms are shaking, and he has aches all over his body.

The last time they saw him was three months ago. The family goes to the prison every week, and they deny the visit. They don’t know how or where he is, but the last time he was seen, it was for two minutes because there was a rumour that he was dead. So the authorities, after 10 or 15 days, let one person see him for two minutes, and he wasn’t dead, but he was badly beaten. He was lying on the floor when the daughter of José Daniel opened the door. They opened the door, and she saw him lying on the floor. He couldn’t stand up, and he was destroyed.

But at the same time, when he talks, all the recordings we have from him say, “I can die, but I prefer to die being an honest human, and resisting, than accepting to leave my country or be expatriated or anything else. I haven’t done anything wrong and want my people to be free.” He always has this vision of goodness, history, and his duty with his life beyond the usual understanding. It’s a vocation beyond any understanding for normal human beings. He’s an incredible person. I’ve been working with him, knowing him, and talking to him many times for ten years, and I am deeply admirer of him.

He is the most important person I’ve ever met in congruence with truth, honesty, and transparency. He’s amazing, and I am deeply concerned about what they’re doing to him. But the problem is that the situation needs to be more known. Those who know him are concerned, but the world is not paying attention.

The Cuban regime says he’s a terrorist and other things, and he hasn’t done anything but provide social services to his people. He’s the most nonviolent, convinced activist there is in Cuba. He was the one who made others believe and think that nonviolence is the way.

So the thing is that it is sad that the governments of Canada and the European Union are not as convinced as those who know him about the greatness of this person and how we all must preserve these individuals. We should have preserved Gandhi’s legacy, Navalny’s, José Daniel’s, Mandela’s, and Martin Luther King’s. All these people are so special that when we see that light in a human being, we all must preserve them, because those are the images we need to look at to improve as humans. And we don’t protect them.

We don’t protect them. Mandela was, I don’t know, 20 years in prison or something like that until artists went on concerts all over the world. Then the politicians said, “Wow, all the fans of the different groups that participated in that—Freddie Mercury and so on—all their fans are pressing me too much on South Africa, so let’s do something.”

No, no, come on! You have to understand that there are people who are so ill that you cannot let let them terminate those lives, and you have to protect them. And we are not at that level. So there is still much to do to move our message to get real action of the politicians to protect these human beings, and all of them, but especially this case cannot be forgotten in those ignominious prisons.

Jacobsen: …Another fear of the regimes is that if they kill this person right off the bat immediately, the person then becomes a martyr for a cause, and this can trigger revolts, revolutions, mass nonviolent protests, or even mass violent protests.

Larrondo: They are clear. The dictators are clear about how to manipulate people’s opinions. For example, Hitler didn’t let anyone get his body because if they put him in prison, he would be falling, he would be deteriorated, so, history would remember a simple human being who is a pathetic psychopath and worth nothing. Thus, he killed himself not to pass through that. And the problem is that, if you kill a person when he/she is an inspiration, if you kill him at that moment, then you are creating a myth. You’re creating a martyr, and you’re getting all the regrets from all the parties all over the world.

Dictators want to avoid that political cost and destroy him at once. When he gets out of jail, perhaps he will not be able to speak. And then his image, the name of José Daniel Ferrer, will dissolve in history. That’s what they do. It’s scientific. It’s a scientific methodology of manipulating how to deal with the leaders against you: when can you shoot them, when can you destroy them, when can you manipulate reality and perhaps put a woman who says something about you and destroys your reputation…

It’s scientific. Evil is scientific about destroying its opponents. So that’s what they’re doing with José Daniel Ferrer, and sadly, the world does not react as strongly as it should.

Jacobsen: What are the strongest international rights and legal instruments we can use to have force? So we can use the Vienna Convention, the Rome Statute, and the UN as the most bureaucratic organization in the world, as we all know. These can be effective. They can help get the word out and have certain areas of jurisdiction. Yet, as we see with Resolution A/ES-11/1, which was passed at the General Assembly on March 2nd or 3rd, the vote was effectively 141 to 5 in favour of condemning both the annexation of land and the Russian Federation’s act of aggression against the Ukrainians. Yet, the violence continues. The annexation continues. So, even with those in place, what makes that actionable in your experience?

Larrondo: Humans evolved so much the day they defined the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It’s unbelievable that we took that step while having capitalism, communism, all kinds of issues, and then some people convinced everybody in the world that there should be the Declaration of Human Rights, and everybody had to sign it, and they did.

So that was an incredible step [for humans]. The problem is that when you create the rules of your society but don’t create an organism to enforce those rules, then the rules are not respected, and nothing happens. That’s why all probably signed it. If they had known that an organism would be created with executive powers to enforce the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, more than 100 countries wouldn’t have signed it.

They went step by step. But one step is missing, and that’s creating the executive organization with the executive powers to enforce the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. So, in this situation, what do we have? We have limited procedures to protect humans from violating other’s rights in countries that have not signed universal treaties or enforcement treaties that allow institutions to make executive decisions on them. For example, the European Court of Human Rights has jurisdiction over more than 40 countries, and whenever, for example, in Turkey, they put hundreds of thousands of people in prison without any reason, and we filed a complaint for one Turkish citizen, and we won, then the European Court of Human Rights put that in a massive case, taking it as an example, and protected over 200 people.

That was an executive order to Turkey to release that procedure against that prisoner, and they did. But they started the procedure again, like, “Well, I’ll erase this, but I’ll start a new case on him.” So, they will do the same again, but at least that was an executive order. The International Criminal Court has executive orders over the countries that are signatories. Cuba is not, so we don’t have that instrument.

The United Nations can make recommendations and even resolutions. However, if a resolution on the Security Council is not approved unanimously, because there is a veto power, then it cannot make that order executive, and if it is not executive, the dictator doing those things will continue. So, we have a debt to all human beings to create an organism with executive powers to enforce the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Until we do, we will suffer a lot.

Things will change when we all agree. It is a need to take that step. It’s a step missing from human history.

Jacobsen: Would you argue that even if you take a scatterplot of victories and losses towards that achievement or attainment of universalism, the line of best fit is more and more towards realizing the UN Declaration of Human Rights? So, even though you could have a shotgun image of the victories and losses over time since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was made, the line of best fit is increasingly toward realizing it.

Larrondo: Yes, the line has to go to that point. If not, well… Human nature is wild. Human egoism is crazy sometimes, and we don’t realize it. We are all a bunch of egoists, and we don’t realize, even the people who work for others… People might think that because I’m a human rights activist, I’m a saint or something like that. No, I’m full of crap like everyone else. The problem is that I have principles in my work area and try to be right about that.

But if you take other parts of any human being, we commit errors and are egoists and many micro-details of crap we do all the time. So, the problem is that we need to agree on principles. We need to build those principles well and then create a way to enforce them so that they are not violated. Those are the minimal principles, not political principles, they are basic human rights.: People have a right to speak. People have the right to gather. People have the right to demonstrate peacefully. People have the right to enter or leave their own country. These are basic rights that everybody knows, even dictators. So yes, we can spend centuries committing errors, but ultimately, we will discover that path is the only way. The only way is to put basic principles over societies so we don’t have any more Hitlers, Castros, Videlas, or Pinochet. Think about a person like Elon Musk. Elon Musk is a brilliant person, right? A brilliant entrepreneur, a brilliant mind, or Einstein. Now, imagine Elon Musk or Einstein working together to create a dictatorship and combining them with the image of John F. Kennedy. If you mix them all together, a dictator who manipulates the networks and all available can become the dictator of the whole world. There is always the possibility of falling into darkness if we don’t protect democracy, freedom, and human rights.

So we need to take that step. The problem is that we need more time to be ready because many countries that are powerful, and have been allowed to be powerful, are against those principles of rules for everyone, even for them. They want to exclude themselves. They want to control the others, but not them. That is the egoism that works against humanity, but I trust in humanity. I trust in humanity.

Jacobsen: I appreciate having a realistic perspective on the universal aspirations because we call them human rights, but, essentially, it’s a principle of universalism that is then applied in particular areas. So there’s another disconnect as well, or there may be confusion. When it comes to the application of universal rights and having a realistic view of people being human beings, I think there’s often a disconnect between what is called the intellectual class and what is called the blue-collar working people.

In your experience, when you’re working on these cases, do you notice a disconnect sometimes between the realities of how ordinary people might be living their lives? People who work as clerks, as janitors, as restaurateurs, and so on, who care about these things and care about these rights activists who get jailed and so on, versus those who are reading the laws, reading the textbooks, getting the degrees, and going on the news and making political commentaries. Do you notice a disconnect between those two sometimes?

Larrondo: The two groups are because you’re discussing disconnection, but I don’t have to categorize those because of the language understanding.

Jacobsen: Perfect. So, the intellectuals, or what are called intellectuals, versus those living ordinary lives, have less free time; they work as clerks and janitors.

Larrondo: That’s an interesting question. The other day, I was thinking about our education system. For example, I studied in the United States for one year. I studied 12th grade in Louisiana, and I learned about the amendments, the Constitution, the United States, and all that, but the concept of harmony, the concept of human rights, the concept of equality, the concepts that underlie those political things are not enforced, are not studied from the beginning. They are not instilled into the little child since they are four, five, six, seven, eight. On the other side there are… the evil guys, Hitler, Stalin, and so on, that have tried to manipulate education to put other principles, like communism, materialism, atheism, all those.

The ones who manage human rights believe that human rights, moral principles, ethical principles, and all these are important for their families. If you consider a universal value, that is not religion.

A universal value is something that is accepted by every country. So you better ensure that the new generations read and know their basic rights and what they should never take away from one another. Once you understand your right, if the right to speech is clear for anyone. when he’s overtaking the voice of another and the other says “Hey, let me speak,” he’s going to remember “Well, that’s a basic right. Yes, go ahead and speak”.

We don’t have that in the genetics of our educational system in any country, or I do not know of any country with a high level of human rights education in the genetics of its educational system. That is important because the people who work as human rights activists are instructed to know that. They have it. That inspires them, either vocationally, or they work on this even if they don’t. But we know the rules. We try to defend those principles. The people in the streets hear here and there many views and don’t have one voice. Everything is converted into a political matter. Everything. So, at the end they think “Yes, they’re suffering a lot there, but who knows why?”

And they don’t have a clear view from a source, an international source that makes things clear—for example, the death toll in Gaza. The numbers come from Hamas.  The numbers come from a terrorist organization. So, nobody can say in the media that there are 30,000 or 40,000 deaths. It’s impossible. You can say Hamas says this, but don’t forget that Hamas is a terrorist organization that started that war!

So if people hear a lot of noise everywhere, they try to isolate themselves and say “I don’t want any problem”, because we are egoistic in that sense.” However, they would react more if they had a better human rights education from the beginning regarding their “genetic” makeup of beliefs. They would unite more for causes. They would understand that it’s much more important to speak, to work, to have security, to be free, to enter and leave, to have a business if you want, to create any art and say anything if you want, than having a Tesla. But people are focused on having a Tesla, the new Tesla, the Lamborghini or the Ferrari, or a big house they don’t use… Because I’ve lived in a house that had a room, a studio, and you use it all, 100%. But when you live in a house with four rooms, you usually use only 25% of the house. These people live in houses with ten rooms and two swimming pools, and use them once a year. People are so focused on shaping their bodies with plastic surgery, shaping their life and their images with money instead of focusing on principles.

The principle that we must live with basic human rights for all is the only important thing if we want to progress. I believe that is not in the genetics of our educational system in democratic countries, and it should be, and we should export that. Not only do it in our countries, but export it with money, with organizations that export that concept, and convince other countries to have that human rights understanding in education from a young age.

Social services, too, because it’s not only that you see a sentence of the right to speak. Children must practice that: We’re going to take you to see these cases, you’re going to go on the streets, you’re going to know cases of women that have been raped, women that have been mistreated, men whose reputations have been destroyed… Social services that connect and make you connect with the human rights principles that you have previously studied.

We don’t have that orientation. We have the orientation of business, being a good professional, and making something specific and be the best at that. You’ll win a lot of money because you’re the best at that. And that’s the current worry of civilization and that’s been its main objective for centuries.

We need to change a bit because we’re losing time and destroying our environment and confidence. A third world war is knocking at the door. If Putin gets into a total war, China will use that moment to conquer Taiwan. North Korea will probably use that moment to send mass missiles to the United States, to South Korea, or to wherever. So we are in a delicate moment, like when Hitler took over Austria or Poland. We are about to commit another big-time error for humanity because we don’t have these things clear. So the only way to save humanity for me is to learn about the things we have agreed on and enforce them, put them in education everywhere in the world, export that knowledge, and get humans a little bit more conscious of what this world is about.

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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. ©Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use or duplication of material without express permission from Scott Douglas Jacobsen strictly prohibited, excerpts and links must use full credit to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with direction to the original content.