apparent even to the hostage takers. Particularly important was the increasing
moderation of Iran after the death of the leader of their Islamic revolution,
AyatollahKhomeini, because that country had, officially or otherwise, been
the supporter and sometimes financier of the captors. In addition Syria, newly
acceptable to Western powers after its support for the UN-sponsored and US-
led Gulf War campaign, applied pressure that it was especially qualified to do as
the major Arab power controlling Lebanon. After the lengthy saga of hostage
taking, and occasional releases, most of the remaining hostages were released
within a few months in the second half of 1991. It is difficult to see what any
party gained from the entire process, but the internal politics of the USA was
seriously affected from time to time as the world’s greatest military power was
seen to be totally ineffectual, and even tainted by dubious and disastrous tactics
such as the Iran-Contra affair, when arms were secretly (and illegally) sold to
Iran, to encourage that country to use its influence over the hostage takers to
release Americans held captive, and then the profits were used to fund (again
illegally) the Contraguerrillasthen fighting in Nicaragua. There seems no
reason why the tactic of hostage taking should not reappear in the future. To
the extent that smaller and less internationalized groups have continued taking
hostages—whom they usually kill—it seems the motivations are as much
frustration and anger as strategy.
Human Rights
Human rights, one of a family of concepts likecivil rightsorcivil liberties,
ornatural rights, are those rights and privileges held to belong to any person,
regardless of any provision that may or may not exist for them in their legal
system, simply because, as a human being, there are certain things which they
may not be forbidden by any government. Exactly what the list of these rights
is, or why we are entitled to them, varies from thinker to thinker. Since the
Second World War there have been several quasi-official listings, among which
the most prominent are probably the United Nations Declaration of Human
Rights, and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights
and Fundamental Freedoms. Of these, the latter is actually partially enforce-
able, because it forms the legal basis for the European Court of Human Rights
(which operates under the aegis of the Council of Europe, in Strasbourg), to
which citizens of subscribing nations may bring cases against their own
governments. Since the passing, in 1998, of theHuman Rights Actthese
entitlements have become fully integrated into English law. Typical elements
on any list of basic human rights will be, for example, the right to freedom of
speech, religion, the right to family life, the right to fair trial procedures in
criminal cases, the right to be protected against inhumane punishment, the
right to political liberty, and so on. Philosophically all these lists and institutions
Human Rights