Sixty-six years have passed since the end of Auschwitz, the biggest extermination camp of Nazi Germany’s in south-western Poland, where ninety percent of its victims were Jews. This International Holocaust Remembrance Day, as it is celebrated around the world, should serve us to remember that since then, there has not been a single day without people being killed in massacres and wars.

Crimes against humanity are a daily phenomenon which we assist from our more or less distant countries. For ethnical, linguistic, religious, racial, geographical or economic reasons, citizens are subjugated and left under an uncomfortable indifference for some or in a theoretical sense of duty for others.   

Life, Dignity, Liberty and Equality are rights that appear in our constitutions since 222 years ago, but, after all this way, they are still not universal or any close from that.

The planet appears as “no man’s land” for several oppressed people in different forms and in distinct spaces and for diverse reasons. Jews, Roma, homosexuals, were and still are some of the millions of people whose lives are blighted by violence and daily discrimination.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, but Human Rights cannot reach its effectiveness outside a society because public authorities’ have to assure their respect. However, day by day, we observe the rise of nationalist parties in government. These parties are intent on erecting barriers to hold back minorities in Europe and all around the world, resulting in greater ethnic tension, division and hostility.

Governments have the responsibility of closely monitor developments related to any kind of discrimination, including institutionalised prejudice and to combat social exclusion, and get involved to the extent that they are permitted by law. When a state perpetuates the opposite, the international community has the moral obligation to stop the spread of such behavior, even if that act can damage its diplomatic relations. The non discrimination it is not only an agenda as it has been spread, it is a question of tone, and the cost of liberty must be less than the price of repression.

In a multicultural society, people should be able to preserve their identity, language and religion, and to pass on their heritage to their descendents in a free world without physical or psychological barriers’. Because if not the extermination of peoples, communities, and our brothers will be timeless.