Should we bury the ethics because of the politics?
Today (10/03/2010) the National Newspaper, Brazilian Globe TV, criticized in an exaggerating way President Lula's manifestation against of the Cuban dissident's Guilherme Fariñas hunger strike. The President of the Lawyers of Brazil Order (OAB) was interviewed and he said that the hunger strike is a legitimate instrument.
In the enthusiasm to corner the government (or of supporting the isolation foreign policy adopted by the USA in relation to Cuba) the pupils of Ali Kamel are playing in the garbage beginnings that they took centuries for they be formulated. And many centuries more for to start to inform the national and international legislations.
The life not always it was a supreme value. The Roman "pater famileae" had power of life and death on their children, grandchildren, son-in-laws and daughter-in-laws. The consules, proconsules and Roman emperors could order to execute prisoners in several ways and some got to ask to some of their auxiliaries that committed suicide. The word decapitation originates from the practice adopted by Roman commanders of executing one in each ten soldiers in case of collective insubordination or cowardice demonstration before the enemy.
The end of the Roman Empire didn't change almost anything. In the Medium Age and even after his end, the people continued to just be died because they became undesirable. During the Albigense Crossed, in reason of a military commander's objection that he affirmed to be impossible to distinguish between heretics and Christians, Pope ordered all to be executed because God would know how to choose yours. Everything that is so truism, that I won't prolongate myself more. Especially because until Brazil it also has long contempt tradition for the life and it had his quota of "no wanted" executed officially and extra-officially until the end of the Military Dictatorship.
The life as fundamental human right only if it turned a juridical reality after the end of the II World War. Now, for the Right there is no larger thing than the life. It is in reason of this that the penal legislations of many coutries, of most of the countries, they punish in a severe way the aid and the instigation to the suicide. Very it finds strange a President of OAB not to know of this or not to take this in consideration when manifesting on her such delicate subject. Ophir stepped strong in moving land and it sank.
Let us like or no the hunger strike is or a suicide modality can be considered. Therefore, to motivate her is an excellent way to play for earth centuries of progresses, of discussions and fights, sometimes even bloody, that they resulted in the definition of the life as the largest thing to be protected juridically.
The journalistic ethics cannot be companion of the political convenience. The journalist should not abdicate of his responsibility always to try to preserve the life. Nor that it is a prisoner's life that refuses to eat.
The dissidence is a natural right, but it is not reasonable to feed the illusion that a single person will get to curve the State or most of the population that it supports a government. For this, when the dissident demonstrates clearly that will put end to the own life (as is making the Cuban Guilherme Fariñas), for more praiseworthy than pretends to be, his resistance stops being political and if it turns humanly unjustifiable. The dissident until it can come to remove the life, but we should not motivate him or to support him. His life should be considered precious besides for the disaffections of Cuba, of Fidel or of Lula.
After so many centuries and centuries of contempt to the human life, of so much suffering to consolidate the right to the life as fundamental juridical beginning, our commitment with the supreme beginning (the valorization of the life) it should just be larger than the temptation of motivating a suicide to try to corner a government of which we diverged. The journalist's position that motivates the suicide of a dissident one is unsustainable for the ethics, the one of a jurist that makes that is still more precarious.
Under the mask of the false moralism and of the hypocrisy, those that they motivate the Cubans to die because they want to submit the State or a leaning government for most of the population, they demonstrate all his authoritarianism. How Brazilian (or Americans) who we are for it to decide what is or no better for the Cubans?
Original: THE ETHICS OF THE CONVENIENCE OR THE JOURNALISTIC SUICIDE