Democratic Rights

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• Questions
• Summary

Rights are reasonable claims of persons recognised by society and sanctioned by law. 

1. The country is ruled by a hereditary king and the people have no role in electing or changing their rulers.
2. The king selects the legislature as well as the executive. He appoints the judges and can change any of their decisions.
3. Citizens cannot form political parties or any political organisations. Media cannot report anything that the monarch does not like.
4. There is no freedom of religion. Every citizen is required to be Muslim. Non-Muslim residents can follow their religion in private, but not in public.
5. Women are subjected to many public restrictions. The testimony of one man is considered equal to that of two women.

1. Kosovo was a province of Yugoslavia before its split. In this province, the population was overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian Muslims. But in the entire country, Serbs(Christians) were in majority.
2. A narrow-minded Serb nationalist Milosevic had won the election. His government was very hostile to the Kosovo Albanians. He wanted the Serbs to dominate the country. Many Serb leaders thought that Ethnic minorities like Albanians should either leave the country or accept the dominance of the Serbs.
3. 74-year-old Batisha Hoxha was sitting in her kitchen with her 77- year–old husband Izet, staying warm by the stove. She knew, five or six soldiers had burst through the front door and were demanding her children.
4. They shot Izet three times in the chest. When her husband dying, the soldiers pulled the wedding ring off and even before she comes out of the house they burnt her house.
5. This was typical of what happened to thousands of Albanians in that period. This was one of the worst instances of killings based on ethnic prejudices in recent times. Finally, Milosevic lost power and was tried by an International Court of Justice for crimes against humanity.

1. About 600 people were secretly picked up by the US forces from all over the world and put in a prison in Guantanamo Bay, an area near Cuba controlled by America’s Navy.
2. The American government said that they were enemies of the US and linked to the attack on New York on 11 September 2001.
3. Families of prisoners, media or even UN representatives were not allowed to meet them. The US army arrested them, interrogated them and decided to keep them there. There was no trial before any magistrate in the US.
4. Amnesty International, an international human rights organisation, collected information on the condition of the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and reported that the prisoners were being tortured in ways that violated the US laws.
5. Prisoners were not released even after they were officially declared not guilty. An independent inquiry by the UN-supported these findings. The UN Secretary-General said the prison in Guantanamo Bay should be closed down. The US government refused to accept these pleas.