[Pyramus]

Let me ask the question differently: Who would protect human rights?

Extrapolating from your examples it seems that only democracies (and the hypothetical benevolent dictator) grant individuals human rights. The question is: What comes first, democracy or human rights?

[cjfd]

Human rights are a precondition to democracy. The key idea is that in a democracy people can get laws changed if they can get enough others behind the idea. To do this one needs, at the very least, to tell other people about this idea that one has about this law that needs to be changed. If such speech is prohibited then democracy stops at square one. Your hypothetical benevolent dictator already points in this direction. A benevolent dictator could in principle respect all human rights but he would still write all laws so it would not be a democracy. It could even be allowed to say that the dictator situation sucks but it would just be impossible to change. So human rights precede democracy logically speaking, but perhaps not practically speaking.