I refer to the letter from James Chu headlined, 'Stability impossible without responsibility' (South China Morning Post, March 19), in which Mr Chu calls for abandoning human rights and instead embracing the idea of human responsibility.
While I agree that a society must embrace the idea of human responsibility, one cannot renounce the importance of human rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted and approved by the UN General Assembly in 1948, defines human rights as every human being entitled to human dignity and personal freedom regardless of race, colour, sex, language, religion, political opinion, national or social origin, property, birth, or other status.
With human rights also comes personal responsibility, in which everyone has the responsibility to respect the rights of others. It is imperative that a balance exists between human rights and responsibility. Mr Chu writes, 'one person's right is another person's limitation'.
To view human rights as one person being deprived of his/her right because another person is given a right is missing the point.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that exercising one's right and freedoms does not mean ignoring the rights and freedoms of others, nor does it mean showing a disregard for public order, morality, and the general welfare of a democratic society. I take human rights to mean ensuring personal freedom and respect for all persons, provided that exercising these rights does not infringe upon nor harm others.
The idea of human rights, prevalent in Western society, is hardly 'confrontational, unstable, inefficient, rigid, static, binding, and restrictive', as Mr Chu claims when describing systems built on the foundation of rights.