eligious persecution has plagued Europe for millennia. Often the persecuted have become the oppressors. The Romans fed the early Christians to hungry lions. During the Crusades of the 12th and 13th centuries, Christian armies killed or tortured anyone who stood in their way. In both cases, the cause was intolerance of others’ religious beliefs. Two troubled centuries after the Crusades, violence erupted again in the religious wars between Catholics and Protestants. The Thirty Years’ War exploded across the continent. Whole populations were decimated in a religious conflict that solved nothing.
The advance of civilisation failed to solve the problem. The 20th century witnessed the most terrible example in history of man’s intolerance—the Nazi Holocaust. Six million human beings were murdered. They died because their beliefs and way of life were different from those sanctioned by the ruling power.
To prevent future persecutions and the appalling slaughter that has resulted from them, in 1948 the nations of the world came together to formulate and adopt a universal code that would serve as a standard for individuals, groups and especially nations. They called it the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). See Appendix 1, page 42.
Article 1 articulates the spirit in which the UDHR was conceived: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” The Adventure Begins Continued...
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