Week 12

Civil Disobedience

"An unjust law is no law at all"- St. Augustine



There was a school of thought, which still has many adherents, that defended the existence of a link between "justice" and "divinity"; therefore, what is right is what is not against the "natural law". This argument provides the basis to object in conscience to all that, according to the understanding of some people, is unnatural (in this context, euthanasia or abortion would be considered as a rejection of the sovereignty of God). This line of thought has been, and is today, a dangerous assimilation between "justice" and "religion" in which the most fundamentalist doctrines are based.

For the opposite point of view, only what is "legal" is right, and therefore, there is neither disobedience nor conscientious objection to a particular law, although it may seem unnatural.

 In my opinion, we can and must disobey unjust laws, because the health of democracy depends on it. What we have to fear is the day when there not be unjust laws, because it would mean that we all would be under the yoke of the only thought. In addition, disobedience has always played an important role in society, as disobedience to the laws of racial exclusion in the U.S. during the years 40 and 50.

Martin Luther King appealed to the ideas of St. Augustine who said, "An unjust law is no law at all". However, for St. Augustine, all human law derives from natural law, and if in any case a law is contrary to natural law, it is no longer law, but corruption of law. The problem is figure out what does the "natural law" mean, especially for agnostics and atheists. We must be careful when interpreting these concepts because any person could claim the right to disobey a particular law with the excuse of being unfair according to his-her scale of values, his-her personal interest or simply his-her whim.

Civil disobedience, which was applied in many countries and times throughout history, consists in consciously breaking the law, not to gain advantage or personal interest, but to change the transgressed rule into other more in line with general interests.

I was in Peru when the Amazonian indigenous people declared themselves in rebellion and civil disobedience. They started the uprising of the people under the motto "The forest is our mother, our mother is not on sale, we defend our mother" in protest against a government that did not heed their demands. The Government was privatizing and plundering the natural resources in the region putting in danger the Peruvian Amazon and violating the laws and international treaties that protect indigenous people. Through this civil disobedience, there were achieved major changes in national legislation in order to safeguard the rights of indigenous people, while they were recognized as important political actors with the right to be involved in the development of national legislation and measures, especially when they can have social, cultural and environmental consequences for their community.