World Human Rights Day

This morning, I woke up feeling dysfunctional. Anyway, I dragged myself to work. Then, I realized everyone was out and about attending events except me and two other colleagues. I did my media monitoring session as usual. The main news that graces the front pages of many newspapers is about lawyers and activists arrested during a peaceful assembly yesterday morning in conjunction with the World Human Rights Day today. As usual, I am in favour of the lawyers and activists who tried to practice their right to peaceful assembly because Article 10 of the Federal Constitution gives us the right to peaceful assembly.

Under forgotten circumstances, S, my colleague started to attack me when I told her that I have never voted in my life cos I simply don’t believe in voting and politic. Then, she kept insisting that I don’t have the right to talk about human rights if I don’t want to practice my right to vote. I repeatedly told her that I am not concerned about my right to vote cos I am more concerned about other rights. According to her, her father used to fight against British imperialism during the old days for our right to vote. Of course, I understand how that had affected her. I told her that one of my friends used to be imprisoned without trial which really affected me a lot too. That’s why I am very concerned about human rights violation and state violence.

Then, we started to raise our voices to outdo each other’s voice. It was quite a comical scenario. I actually had to approach her to calm her down and she stood up starting to grab my arms as it we were about to engage in a wrestling session. Then, we started laughing and later we went out to have lunch. I promised her(did I?) that next time I am gonna vote in memory of her father who had fight for our right to vote even though I am very much an anarchist. (I can always void the vote…opps…)

Wishing all of you a peaceful and un-confrontational World Human Rights Day. Hmm…..very unlikely.