Ruth King

Iraq will shortly be voting on a Constitution. President Bush congratulated Iraqis for “completing the next step in their transition from dictatorship to democracy.” But don’t pop the bubbly quite yet.

In fact, it is not constitutions that protect citizens in democracies….it is the people who govern. Many states, despite exemplary constitutions, have been among the worst violators of human rights.

We need go no farther from our shore than Cuba, whose constitution, drafted in 1976 and amended twice, guarantees privacy, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, health benefits, schooling and rest and recreation. Odd then, that over decades hundreds of thousands of its 11,000,000 citizens have set forth on flimsy homemade rafts, risking oceans and sharks, to escape this constitutional paradise.

And what about Haiti? Chapter 11 of its constitution grants so many rights that one is hard put to explain the misery and lawlessness that prevails. On February 7th, 1991, Jimmy “I hate Israel” Carter attended the swearing in of the “democratically” elected Aristide and hailed Haiti’s Constitution. By September Aristide was overthrown by Raul Cedras, and as late as this spring government troops fired on demonstrators at a rally demanding constitutional rights. Dissenters are jailed, tortured and executed.

Then there is Zimbabwe, of which Robert Mugabe became the elected Prime Minister in 1987. Article 20 of its model 1980 constitution states:
“Except with his own consent or by way of parental discipline, no person shall be hindered in the enjoyment of his freedom of expression, that is to say, freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart ideas and information without interference, and freedom from interference with his correspondence.”

The only restraint on freedom in this lofty document is to forbid persons to obstruct traffic for political rallies.

On the stated theory “Every sovereign people is entitled to give birth to its own constitution” Mugabe periodically rewrites it; in 1999 he set up a commission to “update” the constitution: i.e. to give more power to Mugabe and his despotic land redistribution campaign (in itself in total violation of the rights provided to property-owners by the Constitution). Mugabe pays no attention to any rights guaranteed by the Constitution. So it’s hard to know why he has bothered to “update” it 17 times, most recently on August 18, 2005: the “new” constitution abolishes freehold property titles, strips landowners of their right to appeal against expropriation and permits the government to deny passports to its critics. The economy has shriveled along with the rights of Zimbabwe’s citizens, millions of whom have fled, while AIDS and Mugabe-created starvation ravage most of the rest.

Then there is the Syrian constitution enacted in March of 1973:
According to Article 4: “ Freedom is a sacred right and popular democracy is the ideal formulation which insures for the citizen the exercise of his freedom….The homeland's freedom can only be preserved by its free citizens. The citizen's freedom can be completed only by his economic and social liberation.”

The Assads, pere et fils, chiefly respected Article 2: “…..Likewise, any danger to which any Arab country may be exposed on the part of imperialism and Zionism is at the same time a danger threatening the whole Arab nation.”

Egypt’s constitution was passed in 1971. Among the articles guaranteeing every conceivable freedom….press, privacy, etc., there is this gem in Article 46: “The State shall guarantee the freedom of belief and the freedom of practicing religious rights.” Presumably the Copts are making up those stories about harassment, oppression, incarceration, rape and kidnapping.

And here is Article 12 of Rwanda’s 1991 constitution:
(1) The human being shall be sacred.
(2) The liberty of the human being shall be inviolable; no one may be prosecuted, arrested, imprisoned, or convicted other than in the cases prescribed by the law in effect at the time of the perpetrated act and within the forms prescribed by that law.
(3) No infraction may be punished by penalties which were not prescribed by law before it was committed.
(4) Any person shall be presumed innocent of the charges as long as a definite conviction has not taken place.
Too bad the rampaging Hutu did not heed these inspiring words.

Libya produced a sterling Constitution in 1951:
“Libyans shall be equal before the law. They shall enjoy equal civil and political rights, shall have the same opportunities, and be subject to the same public duties and obligations, without distinction of religious belief, race, language, wealth, kinship or political or social opinions.”

In 1969 a new Constitution blithely voided many of the freedoms guaranteed by the old, establishing the primacy of Shari'a, or Islamic law.

Perhaps the finest constitution of all was that of the Soviet Union. This document was passed in 1924, refined in 1936, amended in 1964 and in 1977. It got better with each rewriting. One could hardly be faulted for rushing to buy a dacha in Moscow on reading it. For example, here is Article 119: “The right to rest and leisure is ensured by the establishment of a seven-hour day for industrial, office, and professional workers, the reduction of the working day to six hours for a number of arduous trades and to four hours in shops where conditions of work are particularly arduous, by the institution of annual vacations with full pay and by the provision of a wide network of sanatoria, rest homes and clubs for the accommodation of the working people.”
So that’s what the gulags were! Paid vacation spas.

Article 123 guaranteed equality of rights in every area to all citizens “irrespective of their nationality or race” and declared any “advocacy of racial or national exclusiveness or hatred and contempt is punishable by law.” Article 124 declared “Freedom of religious worship and freedom of anti-religious propaganda is recognized for all citizens.” (Except maybe for “refuseniks” like Sharansky and Ida Nudel and the evangelical Christians sent to the gulag.)

Article 125 even has the government promoting dissent by “placing at the disposal of the working people and their organizations printing presses, stocks of paper, public buildings, the streets, communications facilities and other material requisites for the exercise of these rights.”

Amazing in light of this stirring document that Joseph Stalin and his KGB thugs starved, imprisoned, tortured, jailed and murdered over 20,000,000 people in the USSR.

And now in Iraq it is deja vu all over again. As Dr. Andrew Bostom points out “the current discussions about a constitution show no awareness of the fact that the Iraqis have tread this path before, when the British, who ruled the country from the end of the Great War to 1932, helped set up a modern state with a non-religious constitution under which the rights of all Iraqis would be protected. The results were grim, culminating in massacres of the Assyrian Christians in 1933-34 and the pogrom of Baghdad’s Jewish population in 1941.” In fact Iraq has had four other constitutions…..1963, 1964, 1968 and 1970.

They are clearly prolific constitution writers. Maybe a cottage industry could outsource this talent.

As Lupi Mushayakarara, a brave dissident in Zimbabwe has said: "The constitution is just a piece of paper. It won't transform Zimbabwe into a democratic society." That holds true for all nations. It takes much more than a constitution.

Oh, by the way, democratic Israel and England have no constitutions.

Put away the champagne.