Human rights are the basic rights that belong to each one of us because we are humans and it is given since we were born and will last until death. These rights allow each one of us to live with dignity, freedom, equality, respect, independence, justice and peace. It is good to hear and read the definition of human rights but then how about the decades ago where the Martial Law was declared? Was human rights abuse during that time? How do these people compare human rights then and now?
I interviewed my grandfather who is sixty-two years old which means that he was there or he experienced martial law. I started with the question what is martial law and he answered that martial law is when the places are under the control of the Arm forces, curfew hours were enforced, a lot of checkpoints, group assemblies were banned, you can’t speak about the government especially those journalists and activists. The second question is, was the human rights abuse during that time, my grandfather answered that based on his opinion is Yes, because there are a lot of people who are killed by the military especially those who speak about the government and they lost their rights to live and their freedom to speak. Also in that time there is no peace because of the rally and the bombings. Most of the people were abused and they lost their rights especially those victims that are being tortured by electric shock, Russian roulette, beating, burning and many more. Also in addition to the statement of my grandfather about the human rights he say that I don’t experienced any torture that time but then I will absolutely say Yes that the human rights before was abused. Lastly for the question, I ask him how do you compare human rights now and then, he says that the people nowadays has their freedom to live by their own, there is no curfew and you can go home even it’s late, you can post a lot in social media about the governments without getting any torture even sometimes what your saying is wrong and based on your perspective only. Human rights now compared to martial law is good enough for us to live because we have protection to those who are trying to abuse us and rights to live with our own.
After the interview about the human rights on martial law with my grandfather I felt sad for those victims who experienced a lot of torture and ended losing their life. I may say that we should be thankful because there is no martial law in our place where we can express ourselves with others without being tortured like, for example, a lot of people expressing their rants in social media about the government on how they feel about them even though sometimes what they’re saying is wrong. I will also agree with my grandfather that the situations of human rights these days are good enough because we have our freedom to live on our own, respect each other, have equality and can live freely with dignity and without abusing others.