Appendix B

Chapter 3
Inhumanity: An Historical Overview

The following section is excerpted from Chapter 3 of Human Rights: The
Struggle for Freedom, Dignity and Equality, published by the Connecticut
State Department of Education.

Teaching Objective

Students will be able to cite examples of recent and
past violations of human rights in the United States
as well as in other nations.

Since the beginning of recorded history, and, we may assume, even before events
were recorded, men, women and children have suffered mistreatment and death at
the hands of their fellow human beings. The perpetrators and the victims have been
found among all races, all nations, and all religions.

While humankind has made remarkable advances in knowledge and technology,
we have not much improved our ability to live together peaceably. In fact, we continue
to develop new and more powerful technologies for death and destruction. Today’s
biological and nuclear weapons give the world’s superpowers and some smaller
countries the capability of destroying all life on the planet. Moreover, the existence of
powerful new weaponry should not overshadow the destructive power of conven-
tional weapons and the suffering caused by primitive forms of physical torture.

Organizations such as Amnesty International which monitor human rights viola-
tions suggest that contemporary cases of “man’s inhumanity to man,” the violation of
human rights, are actually on the rise.

An early war

A study of history shows a long progression of aggression and destructiveness which
raises many difficult questions about human nature. It appears that human beings
have always been warring creatures, taking up arms in the name of tribe, in the name
of country and even in the name of religion.

When humans began to record history, much of the writing centered on war. The
horrors of war were highlighted even then. Writing in the fifth century B.C. about the
Peloponnesian War, a war between the Greek city-states Athens and Sparta which
began over a dispute about trade routes, the Greek historian Thucydides lamented,
“Never before had so many cities been captured and then devastated … never had
there been so many exiles, never such loss of life.” During this terrible war which
lasted more than 70 years each side did all it could to annihilate the other.

The advance of civilization did not see an end to war. As in the case of the
Peloponnesian War, nations continue to take up arms to gain trade routes, raw
materials, land, or even people to supply cheap labor, or to force their religious or
political ideologies on others.

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