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Friday, August 11, 2006

One Form of Right to Self-Expression Shall be Obstructed

One Form of Right to Self-Expression Shall be Obstructed
Submitted by Vicheka Lay

Since the world has reached an era of humanity, all persuasion of human rights; the right to life, physiological adequacy, equal pay for equal work, religion, assembly and opinion are protected by the local government with profound encouragement from the international or regional organizations. However, there is one defect found in such the right. This defect is “self-expression through national flag-burning.

National flag-burning has become one of or probably the most common strategies of one group of people to express their views which totally contravene another country's foreign policy. It is because this group of people who burn the national flag of another country, think that another country whose national flag is being burned, is criminal or will take advantage from their own country or making any foreign policy that negatively impacts their country, so burning that country's national flag is the ensign of total contravention.

Indeed, it is not wrong at all, because until today, we do not have any national, regional or even international legal instrument to prohibit national flag-burning in the public yet, but this is a message to the world that We Should Have International Law to Prohibit National Flag Burning in any Circumstance, with No Exception.

From the author's point of view and analysis, national flag-burning shall not be an authorized or be an acceptable form of self-expression. The author's rationales behind this concept are arisen from two tendencies:

1. Generalization: National flag-burning is the direct generalization that everything; living and material, exist in the country whose national flag is being burned, are totally wrong or criminal. But the generalization concept” is not acceptable in this world; one person found guilty of any crime, only he or she is guilty of that crime, but his or her family members are totally innocent.

This similarly implies that not everyone or everything in the country whose national flag is being burned, are totally wrong or criminal, but may be only the government or any institution is totally wrong or criminal. National flag-burning is the form of generalization which only swells up the problem from a very small scaled problem into a protracted or even uncontrollable crisis.

So please use another form of self-expression against another country, but never deploy self-expression through national flag burning.

2. State is innately perfect in itself: To be short and precise, State is meticulously clean and is totally equal to one another. This means that only individual or a group of people have that State’s nationality are wrong or criminal, but they are just the very small portion of that State. State is always right, enlightened, sovereign, immortal, innocent and perfect, so please burn only the individual or group of people, but not the State.

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