Not All Humans Have Human Rights

According to Nadine Dorries, when someone breaks into a house they leave their human rights at the door. This sounds very worryingly like Dorries is arguing that burglars are "fair game", but in case you think I am misrepresenting her you can read her thoughts in full:

1. 
   NadineDorriesMP @SohoPolitico When you break into someones house to do harm, you leave every right you have at the door. Different burglars do different 36 minutes ago from web in reply to SohoPolitico
2. 
   NadineDorriesMP things, some steal, some use violence. Different householders deal with a threat in different ways. The easy way not to get into a situatio 35 minutes ago from web
3. 
   NadineDorriesMP n is, dont break into someone elses house! 35 minutes ago from web

http://www.quoteurl.com/rx3m4

While I agree that the best way to avoid a situation is not to break into a property that doesn't belong to you, I disagree with Dorries' stance that burglars "leave every right [they] have at the door."

Those human rights that burglars apparently "leave at the door" include the right not to be tortured or to be subjected to to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. This is made clear in The United Nations International Covenant On Civil And Political Rights. See Article 7 here for the relevant statement.

Of course, people have the right to defend themselves (and others) and may use reasonable force to do so. But the person they are defending themselves against does, whatever Nadine Dorries says, still have rights.

It is unclear whether Dorries is proposing that human rights be suspended while a crime is being committed or whether she actually believes that burglars should have their rights 'removed' - I do hope that she would agree with me that the rights listed in Articles 9, 14, and 15 of the covenant should be maintained.

Why I Write About Nadine Dorries

Well, for one thing there was the uncritical promotion of misinformation (that happened to fit her agenda), for example this hoax: 'hand of hope'. Then there was the ridiculous demand for an enquiry into how written evidence published openly and in full during a select committee hearing "got into the public domain" (badscience.net). The silliness of the demand for an enquiry into how openly-published information got into the public domain, and the uncritical promotion of a hoax, got my attention.

What really piqued my interest, though, was the perceived censorship in respect of Nadine's blog. Detailed here, Dorries decided to close blog comments (claiming she didn't have time for them, despite still finding time to blog). I made reference to Dorries in this general post about a failure to engage and a commenter pointed out that: "Lack of openness to public critical appraisal is a bad sign, whether in scientific or any other media format."

Nadine's Twitter account has provided further examples of silliness and censorship. I wrote about Nadine Dorries on drugs* recently and used comments made by Dorries on Twitter as the basis of my post. Her responses to comments made by others (using evidence to back up their points) were illogical in the extreme, as I detail in the blog post linked to above.

Having blogged about Dorries and mentioned my post on Twitter, I soon found that I had been blocked by Dorries.** Nadine later posted a tweet claiming: "I block people who are rude and offensive. kerry blocks people who are right." I've looked through my tweets mentioning Dorries and cannot find any that I would consider to be rude and offensive.

A later tweet from Dorries was this one: "Anyone who Tweets has the right to block or not who they wish without criticism. Its called freedom of Tweet and I'll fight for it!" Nadine seems to have approached Twitter the way that many people approach debate in general - they conflate the important and valuable right to free speech with the right to say (and do) what I like without being criticised for it - which, far from being a fundamental human right, is a made-up 'right' presumably invented by someone who did not wish to face up to criticism.

I'm not sure whether Nadine's wrongness or her inability to countenance being wrong is more worrying, but a combination of the two has certainly encouraged me to write about her.

*Blogs such as sim-o and markreckons also tackled the statements Dorries made about drugs.

**There is a list of 25 people who have been blocked by Nadine Dorries on Twitter, several of whom have asked Dorries to point out where they have been "rude and offensive" - apparently with no answer forthcoming from Dorries. I was one of them, and I certainly did not receive an answer.