ABSTRACT
Sometimes what is not done can be as significant as what is. As has been discussed the UN system has established high-level commissions to investigate three of the four great ‘holocausts’ currently afflicting humanity-war, poverty, environmental destruction-and their reports have done much to stimulate international concern and debate on these issues and even some action. But there has been no such highprofile special commission on the fourth inter-human holocaust: the systematic infringement of the most basic human rights of their citizens by most of the governments of the world. As Amnesty International reported in 1989:
Tens of thousands of people were deliberately killed in 1988 by government agents acting beyond the limits of the law…. Killing grounds were many and varied…. Some (people) were killed in full public view, others in secret cells and remote camps. Some victims were shot down near battlefields, others in mosques and churches, hospital beds, public squares and busy city streets. Prison cells and courtyards, police stations, military barracks and government offices were all sites of political killing by agents of the State. Many people were killed in their own home, some in front of their families.
