No matter how overshadowed by inter-governmental politics, the UN Human Rights Council's "Universal Periodic Review" (UPR) is under-appreciated. When it comes to China -- in February 2009 -- this becomes regrettable.
In the US, there is a general suspicion of things that the UN is trying to do. This may not be without good reasons. But UPR is not your yet another piece of useless UN resolution, another wasteful opportunity where diplomats make deals and the violators of human rights pat each other on the back! I understand how we taxpayers in the US have come to see the UN as a circus of political dealings, where repressive governments banging together – defeating efforts to examine or criticize those among them.
The UPR no doubt has its flaw and can potentially be abused by members states that fear for exposure of their human rights records. As far as China is concerned, though, under-appreciation accompanied by lack of activism in participating in this process will let go by an opportunity to shame China hence pressuring it to improve human rights:
1. Since 1989, each year, at the annual session of the former Human Rights Commission, efforts were defeated to try to put the review of China’s human rights records on the agenda! The new Human Rights Council (which replaced the Commission) made such hard work to jump that hurdle suddenly unnecessary. Human rights NGOs no longer need to sweat over lobbying governments claiming to care about human rights to sponsor a motion and get other governments to sign on in order to put the motion to examine China on the agenda!
2. China lost one major weapon against any international attempt to scrutinize its human rights: that it is "interference in China's internal affairs" and "selectively tarnishing China." All 192 members states of the UN are to be reviewed within 4 years, including China. This is no small measure for those of us who went through years of difficult lobbying, followed only by disappointment. China lost the very opportunity to manipulate the Commission procedures to block efforts to examine its performance: UPR is automatic - every 4 years - and comprehensive - all areas of human rights are examined whether or not China has signed or ratified any covenants or conventions governing specific areas of human rights.
3. Prior to UPR review, NGOs are given several opportunities to get involved to make the review work though their impact is limited. They can directly provide the UPR Working Group with their own reports of a country’s human rights performance. They need not to be “accredited” by the incredibly difficult process set by the UN for submitting such non-governmental reports.
UPR is not without its flaws and limitations, which can affect the objectivity and accuracy of the outcome of the review. The Geneva-based group International Service for Human Rights did a rather useful assessment of UPR in a report of the new Human Rights Council (2005- ) first-year performance.
One limitation is that the final conclusion of the Review is a running record of things said during the "interactive dialogue" and only states are involved in this dialogue. UPR is thus largely a peer review by member states (as contrasted to independent experts review conducted by treaty bodies). This can be manipulated by states under review. They can lobby their friends countries to occupy the 3-hour dialogue with praises!
Still, the upcoming Feb. 09 UPR on China is the first opportunity ever to put China's human rights performance in the past 4 years under the magnifying glasses at the UN. The review is supposed to be systematic and comprehensive. Concerned goverments and international or domestic civil society actors must not be blinded by cynicism and should fully explore the opportunities for making UPR bite!
Xiaorong Li
November 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Human Rights Prospect beyond Beijing Olympics
Many Chinese today still believe the official line about the 1989 Tiananmen massacre – a counter-revolutionary violent riot. On March 22, 30 Chinese intellectuals who publicized “12 suggestions” including un-distorted information about Tibet and independent investigation have been denounced by their friends and even fellow liberal reformists. This week, the 21 Beijing lawyers who offered legal service to detained Tibetan monks have been interrogated and some of them received death-threats.
It is difficult to tell how long it will take for the truth to be told to the Chinese about Tibet, or Tiananmen, or, for that matter, the current international criticisms of China’s human rights. For some time to come, the government censorship and propaganda will fan nationalism and anti-Western sentiments. Consequently, in a manner rather resembling the icy period post-Tiananmen, China will stage harsh crackdowns, pushing aside any pretence to respect human rights and rule of law. High rank officials told the visiting American John Kamm of the US based Dialogue Foundation bluntly that China is prepared to sacrifice the Olympic Games to counter threats to national security at end of March.
It is not too late, then, to think beyond August.
The problems with China’s human rights and Tibet will not be solved in four months. Western democratic countries’ leaders have done and will continue to do little about the problems for the sake of competing for China’s market. Chinese activists, those pushing for reform, advocating human rights, will continue their struggle and pick up where the protests and pageantries leave after the Games are over. For sure, the Beijing Olympics now goes into history, together with such types as Hitler Nazi Germany, the former USSR, Apartheid South Africa, and the former dictatorial South Korea. This will also be the “legacy” of the IOC under Rogge’s leadership, ironically, for having awarded the Olympics to Beijing and adamantly dismissed any efforts to get the IOC to speak up about China’s human rights. China paid a price. China has to learn about commonly accepted behavior of decency if it wants to act and be treated as a respectable big power in the modern world. Economic mighty does not always triumph over the right.
While somewhat unexpected, China’s Olympic-size headache is inevitable. The economically powerful and diplomatically sophisticated, but politically little changed China is bound to resort to the usual tricks of censorship, propaganda and suppression in handling such incidents. More precisely, China only has these “tricks” in its repertoire of tools. How else could an authoritarian police state that systematically censor and control the press, manipulating the media, suppress freedom of religion, imprison dissidents and critics, disrespect rule of law, could have handled the current crisis differently? This time, however, China may have wished it had alternative tactics for the outcome of its suppression clearly undermines its grandiose Olympics dreams.
In 2001, it was controversial to award China the Olympics, but enough people believed that this opportunity would encourage China to become more open and friendlier to ideals of fairness, human dignity, and tolerance, which are at the core of the Olympic spirit. China made some unusual promise at the time: Improving human rights and allowing more freedom in the press. Those who supported the decision or are willing to shelf their doubts are particularly caught unprepared by Tibet and by the international public outrage. As if all of a sudden, the call to boycott the Olympics over China’s human rights is not even that relevant. One main human rights objective of a boycott - drawing international attention to and scrutiny of China’s human rights behavior -- has been fulfilled beyond anybody’s wild dreams. Only one month ago, in a March 17 internal memo circulated by the IOC chairman, Jacques Rogge said the events in Tibet, though “disturbing,” would not jeopardize the "success" of the Olympics, counting on that no "credible" government or organization is supporting boycott.
So how has China managed to mess up its golden opportunity, as if it had “picked up the rock and dropped it on its own feet”?
First, it’s arrogance. Giving its growing power status and increasingly more sophisticated diplomacy, China has confidence that it could run the Olympics at a complete disregard to its own promise to “promote human rights”, a promise it made out of desperation to win the bid to host the Games in Beijing. China has failed spectacularly to keep its promise. Violent attack and imprisonment of human rights activists, censorship, political persecution – China’s preferred methods to ensure pre-Olympics security and harmony - have prevailed in spite of “silent diplomacy” and public criticisms. Any Chinese who dare to speak up to criticize pre-Olympics abuses now languish in prison or risk arrests, violent attacks, surveillance, and other forms of intimidation and harassment.
In the “year of Olympics,” China has, in the name of Olympic preparations (construction, security, harmonious image, etc.), failed to protect labor rights of construction workers in re-building Beijing and other cities hosting the Games; suppressed efforts to seek justice by victims of forced eviction from housing/farming land for constructing Olympic facilities; detained and tortured people arriving in Beijing to complain about local official abuses and corruption in clean-up operations to rid the Olympic city off “undesirables” or off potential protesters. Press censorship got worse despite official promulgation of relaxing pre-approval rules for foreign journalists to conduct interviews. Authorities closed down websites or blogs, shut down or changed management of journals and newspapers, patrolled online chat rooms, BBS, and monitored cell phone and SMS use. Outspoken critics of the authorities handing of the Olympics have been punished harshly. China has jailed a new set of prisoners of conscience – the “Olympics prisoners.”
Hu Jia, a soft-spoken activist who suffers from hepatitis B, was jailed this month for criticizing the Olympics-related abuses, among his other expressions critical of the regime. His wife and enfant daughter have lived under house-arrest and police surveillance. The Beijing lawyer Teng Biao, who co-authored with Hu Jia an open letter “The Real China before the Olympics,” demanding an end to Olympics-related rights abuses, was kidnapped and interrogated for 41 hours by Beijing security police who threatened him with violence. Yang Chunlin, a rural organizer of land-loss farmers in China’s northeastern province Heilongjiang, was sentenced to 5 years last month for organizing a petition campaign, in which more than 11,000 farmers signed the open letter “We Want Human Rights, Not the Olympics!” Many people who had traveled Beijing to petition the Central government to intervene and stop wrongdoings by local officials – from forced eviction to unpaid salaries to lost jobs, were intercepted and locked up in make-shift detention facilities for the purpose of making Beijing “harmonious” for greeting its Olympics visitors.
Secondly, it’s old habit. China reacted to the Tibetan monks’ protests in mid-March with its usual tactics – harsh crackdown with iron-fists, blaming the “Dalai Lama clique” for instigating the riots, blocking information, sealing off areas of protests, manipulating reporting, and fanning nationalism. The Chinese leaders’ continuing refusal to talk to the Dalai Lama gives the international community neither reassurance of any sincerity to solve the Tibetan issue peacefully nor any credibility in its claims about the “criminal” acts of the “rioting” Tibetans. The escalating numbers of detention and arrests of the Tibetan “instigators” only feed the fear of further suppression of religious freedom and violation of due process rights in the larger Tibetan areas.
It is unlikely that China could have avoided its current political crisis, not just a public opinion “disaster,” and could have handled things any better. Expensive public relations firms could not have saved China. Determined by its nature, it is accustomed to using brute force to suppress protesters, dissidents, “separatists” or “terrorists,” or anyone perceived as a threat to the state. There might be some indication of top leadership disagreement about how to handle the Tibetan incident, but the iron-fist approach wins because no leader within the high ranks would want to appear weak. Local officials in the Tibet Autonomous Region, including ethnic Tibetans serving in official capacity, stand to gain from escalating suppressions of the monks – in securing their own posts and increased allocation of state funding.
In short, China messed up its Olympics Gala because its approach, from beginning to end, is excessively political. On February 15, Xi Jinping, a member of the Standing Committee China’s Politburo and a front-runner to become the next president, told reporters that “holding the Olympics and the Special Olympics in 2008 is a major event for our Party”. Authorities throughout Beijing and the country have been charged with “the political duty” of ensuring “successful” Games. China treats the Olympics with such top political priority because it is eager to showcase itself a newly rising power, modern, prosperous, responsible and competent enough to host mega international events. Chinese leaders count on the world’s focus on China during and before the 3-week sports to officially inaugurate its international power status, to reclaim world recognition that took a nose dive after the 1989 bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Beijing. Domestically, Chinese leaders count on the international prestige to boost its legitimacy to rule over a country where the disadvantaged and marginalized are restless, posing political challenges. The leaders need this boost to strengthen their hands within the ruling elites’ internal power struggle.
China’s politicizing of the Olympics has backfired. To the Chinese leaders, the political objectives of the Olympic dream are paramount whether or not they have predicted the international reaction. They suppressed dissent and upended any potential “threat” in their cradles. The IOC and other Western leaders may have contributed to this dogged pursuit. In the above-mentioned internal memo, the IOC praised China for such “improvements” as resumption of dialogue between China and the US, the signing of a UN covenant on human rights and China's election to the UN Human Rights Council. But who would find “improvements” in this list unless one stupidly equivocates talking and promising to real changes in behavior! Human rights dialogues between China and the US, China and EU countries and others in the past 20 years have produced little in ending political/religious repression. China had signed and ratified the Convention against Torture in 1988, yet torture remains prevalent. China signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1998 but never ratified or reformed its laws accordingly. China has abused its status on the UN Human Rights Council to get rid of human rights monitoring mechanisms to its own dislike.
The US President Bush insists on the “non-political” nature of the Olympics. But his “non-political” presence at the opening ceremony, as democratically elected leader of the people of the United States of America will deliver a clear political message: that the US does not mind China’s crackdown on Tibet protesters and Chinese human rights activists, nor its handling of the Beijing Olympics on the ruins of many Chinese lives, homes, rights, and dignity – the Party must go on and business is as usual. This message will surely hurt those Chinese who have struggled to reform the repressive system and have suffered a great deal in the hands of the current leadership – particularly those who stood up to the government’s Olympics-related abuses and brutality. Mr. Bush may say something about religious freedom, which will be blocked or quickly brushed away by the government controlled media, while the spectacle of him standing side-by-side with Chinese leaders on the podium, admiring fireworks and pageantry at the opening ceremony will be prominently and repeatedly broadcast to the Chinese public. That spectacle is precisely the political boost that the Chinese leaders desire! Mr. Bush may maintain his “extraordinary relationship” with the Chinese President Hu Jingtao and enjoy himself as a “sport fan,” the American people will bear the moral disgrace of his political gesture endorsing China’s human rights repression at home and support to repressive regimes abroad!
Reacting resolutely to the Tibetan “riots” serves the Chinese leaders’ need to rally the population and divert them from the expanding social-economic disparities at least for now. Facing with “separatist” Tibetans, “instigated” by the overseas “Dalai clique,” trying to spoil China’s “coming out” party, Chinese leaders found the “external threat” to unite the Han Chinese. Defending the Olympics from being tarnished and ruined is now tantamount to defending national unity and sovereignty, defending the pride and glory of the Chinese nation. This tactic always works wonders. Government censorship that block independent media coverage and manipulate information to suit the government’s political agenda make this easy. The extensive control mechanism of official censorship has benefited from cutting edge technologies provided by foreign (mostly American) companies. A combination of information manipulation and demonizing of the Dalai Lama, long-time lack of public debate over Tibet (and, for that matter, over Xinjiang), not surprisingly, brought about the latest wave of nationalistic fervor. In interviews in Chinese cities, foreign journalists found a resounding agreement with the government over Tibet; dissident intellectuals who voiced their concerns over media blockade and lack of independent verification of official reports of “rioting”, and human rights lawyers who offered to provide legal council to arrested Tibetan monks, have received emails attacking them as “traitors” and even death threats. The huge number of ethnic Chinese showed up in the streets of San Francisco last week, the only stop of the torch relay in North America, to support the Beijing Olympics, seemed to consist mostly in youth from the Bay Area’s universities heavily populated with Mainland Chinese students, and backed up by the Chinese Americans business establishments with large import-export interest at stake in China.
Looking beyond Olympics, we must not lose sight of a growing civil rights assertiveness in spite of the current nationalistic frenzy. In the past several years, this assertiveness has grown in the face of harsh suppression. Public outrage at the beating to death by police of a young migrant laborer, Sun Zhigang, led to the abolition in 2003 of a notorious extrajudicial detention system – the “custody and repatriation” detention facilities – was the first landmark victory of citizen mobilization to fight rights abuses. Police had unrestricted power to lock up anyone in this facility without any judiciary oversight. Since then, Chinese citizens – mainly public intellectuals, dissident writers, journalists, lawyers, and a new class of NOG activists (though independent NGOs still face sometimes insurmountable legal, political, and financial hurdles) – have organized many campaigns, often online, over rights problems. The problems involve labor protection, rural migrants’ rights, housing/land forced eviction, rights of people infected with HIV/AIDS, unfair elections of village directors or representatives to the local People’s Congress, official ban on books, government Fire-Wall on the Internet, employment discrimination against people tested positive in hepatitis B, pollution, etc.
What has come to be known as the “rights defense movement” has taken the form of citizens’ actions such as signing open letters or public petitions addressed to government officials, proposing legislative suggestions to law makers, disclosing official corruption or violations on websites or blogs, filling lawsuits against government or officials to seek remedies and accountability, and organizing forums for public discussions or demonstrations. This activism has spread from political, economic, and cultural metropolitan centers to the less developed inland cities and villages. Coastal areas which have grown the fastest also see more indications of rights awareness. Increasingly more people from the professional, resources-rich, middle-classes have joined in. Initially, just as farmers were prompted to stand up to their land rights, these middle-class people are prompted by defending their housing rights, employment opportunities, privacy as consumers of Internet or cell phone services, which matter to their life style. But, after encountering official hurdles, repression, and retaliation, witnessing the lack of rule of law and serious defects in the system first hand, some have joined force with other groups and become more sympathetic to the less fortunate social groups’ causes. The fight for legal rights and personal protection, though may pitch one group against another, has seemed to unite different social groups when they come to realize that the lack of a rule of law and non-democratic unaccountability of officials lie in the roots of their diverse complaints.
This movement has cashed in to confront government abuses in the name of the Olympics. On the day of the one-year countdown to Games’ opening on August 8, 2008, several dozens of Chinese citizens – writer, lawyers, journalists, and professors – publicized an open letter “One World, One Dream, Universal Human Rights,” urging Chinese leaders to end persecution of out-spoken critics of its handling of the Olympics, stop harassment of protesters against forced eviction for Olympic constructions, lift censorship, release political prisoners, and protect labor rights on Olympics construction sites. In China’s northeastern province Heilongjiang, more than 10,000 land-loss farmers signed an open letter “We Want Human Rights, not the Olympics.” And a similar open letter was also publicized with 261 signatures of people fighting forced eviction in Shanghai, China’s most developed metropolis. By now, however, inside China, authorities have practically stamped out any public display of dissent from the official-line on the Olympics. The protests continued, mostly online.
It is not far-fetched to accept that the small handful of Han Chinese, initially 30, then increased to about 300, who signed an open letter to demand free press and independent investigation of the March “riot” in Lhasa, may in fact represented the views of a much larger size of the population. The repression of religious freedom in Tibet, unfair returns in social-economic benefits of the region’s boom for ethnic Tibetans, lack of freedom of expression, etc. should be easily recognizable by some Han Chinese as common concerns. This shared understanding, made possible by the rapidly deepening disparities among Han Chinese, will undermine ethno-centrism and nationalism fostered by censorship and official manipulation.
However, one must be warned against a period of post-Olympics overcast. The government is unlikely to back down under international pressure. The leaders in office would absolutely not want to look indecisive to their rivals in the power struggle at the high level. In stead, they are doing their best to transform international public opinion into imperialist interference, intended to demonize China, contain its modernization, and deprive it of its well-deserved great power status. This nationalistic rhetoric is counted on to divert attention away from the injustices and right violations suffered by many Chinese. To save face internationally, appear strong to rivals, and strengthen their legitimacy to rule, Chinese leaders will retaliate against those who have challenged their ways of handling the Olympics – after the 20,000 strong foreign reporters return home and the world attention shift elsewhere.
As long as the Chinese leaders perceive nationalism as politically beneficial, no meaningful dialogue with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama will be likely. International protests and pressures from some Western leaders will keep up. The Chinese government will do everything they could to transform this humiliation into a national crisis, justifying imposing more draconic measures against “separatists,” dissidents and reformers after the Dames. There may set in a period of freeze, so to speak, in a manner with resemblance to the post-Tiananmen era in the 1990s. Detained Tibetan monks (official number is put in the 900s now) and other protesters or critics may be forced to “settle scores after the Autumn.”
Yet, such set-backs on the treacherous road toward political openness in China, though inevitable, are temporary. China can’t shut its door to the global trafficking of ideas, activism, and solidarity with the repressed. The messages of the recent international protests are sipping through China’s Great Firewalls and will spread, thanks to globalization and the internet, faster than two decades ago. This will prompt some soul-searching among the Chinese populace. This prospect, depressing as it is, is no worse than the international lethargy before the current scrutiny on China: when business as usual with China predominated despite its disregard for human rights, while the international key players, preoccupied with the “war on terror,” seemed content with sterile “human rights dialogues” and quite diplomacy. International civil society actors can make a big difference as e have witnessed lately. They will keep the pressures on to extract good compliance to international norms and shining the spotlight on China.
The longer view beyond August also asks for better preparedness for assisting Tibetan protesters and activists inside China. Some of them are eager to take advantage of the unprecedented exposure to have their voices heard. The international community may be able to help cooling nationalistic frenzy, for instance, by keeping an focus on human rights abuses in both the Tibetan and Han Chinese regions by the same authoritarian regime. This would avoid playing into the hands of government-manipulated extreme nationalism and undermining positions for Han Chinese activists sympathetic and supportive to the Tibetan struggle for religious freedom, social-economic justice, cultural integrity, and human rights. A peaceful and democratic solution for Tibet requires fundamental political reform of the authoritarian regime. The international community can help the Tibetans more effectively by helping both the Tibetans and the Han Chinese to advance their common agenda.
Xiaorong Li
April 2008
(This paper, in Italian, appeared in the Aspen Institute Italia publication: Aspenia, No. 43 http://www.aspeninstitute.it/Aspenweb/Aspenweb.nsf/AspeniaUltimo?OpenForm&Li
ngua=I&Area=001000)
It is difficult to tell how long it will take for the truth to be told to the Chinese about Tibet, or Tiananmen, or, for that matter, the current international criticisms of China’s human rights. For some time to come, the government censorship and propaganda will fan nationalism and anti-Western sentiments. Consequently, in a manner rather resembling the icy period post-Tiananmen, China will stage harsh crackdowns, pushing aside any pretence to respect human rights and rule of law. High rank officials told the visiting American John Kamm of the US based Dialogue Foundation bluntly that China is prepared to sacrifice the Olympic Games to counter threats to national security at end of March.
It is not too late, then, to think beyond August.
The problems with China’s human rights and Tibet will not be solved in four months. Western democratic countries’ leaders have done and will continue to do little about the problems for the sake of competing for China’s market. Chinese activists, those pushing for reform, advocating human rights, will continue their struggle and pick up where the protests and pageantries leave after the Games are over. For sure, the Beijing Olympics now goes into history, together with such types as Hitler Nazi Germany, the former USSR, Apartheid South Africa, and the former dictatorial South Korea. This will also be the “legacy” of the IOC under Rogge’s leadership, ironically, for having awarded the Olympics to Beijing and adamantly dismissed any efforts to get the IOC to speak up about China’s human rights. China paid a price. China has to learn about commonly accepted behavior of decency if it wants to act and be treated as a respectable big power in the modern world. Economic mighty does not always triumph over the right.
While somewhat unexpected, China’s Olympic-size headache is inevitable. The economically powerful and diplomatically sophisticated, but politically little changed China is bound to resort to the usual tricks of censorship, propaganda and suppression in handling such incidents. More precisely, China only has these “tricks” in its repertoire of tools. How else could an authoritarian police state that systematically censor and control the press, manipulating the media, suppress freedom of religion, imprison dissidents and critics, disrespect rule of law, could have handled the current crisis differently? This time, however, China may have wished it had alternative tactics for the outcome of its suppression clearly undermines its grandiose Olympics dreams.
In 2001, it was controversial to award China the Olympics, but enough people believed that this opportunity would encourage China to become more open and friendlier to ideals of fairness, human dignity, and tolerance, which are at the core of the Olympic spirit. China made some unusual promise at the time: Improving human rights and allowing more freedom in the press. Those who supported the decision or are willing to shelf their doubts are particularly caught unprepared by Tibet and by the international public outrage. As if all of a sudden, the call to boycott the Olympics over China’s human rights is not even that relevant. One main human rights objective of a boycott - drawing international attention to and scrutiny of China’s human rights behavior -- has been fulfilled beyond anybody’s wild dreams. Only one month ago, in a March 17 internal memo circulated by the IOC chairman, Jacques Rogge said the events in Tibet, though “disturbing,” would not jeopardize the "success" of the Olympics, counting on that no "credible" government or organization is supporting boycott.
So how has China managed to mess up its golden opportunity, as if it had “picked up the rock and dropped it on its own feet”?
First, it’s arrogance. Giving its growing power status and increasingly more sophisticated diplomacy, China has confidence that it could run the Olympics at a complete disregard to its own promise to “promote human rights”, a promise it made out of desperation to win the bid to host the Games in Beijing. China has failed spectacularly to keep its promise. Violent attack and imprisonment of human rights activists, censorship, political persecution – China’s preferred methods to ensure pre-Olympics security and harmony - have prevailed in spite of “silent diplomacy” and public criticisms. Any Chinese who dare to speak up to criticize pre-Olympics abuses now languish in prison or risk arrests, violent attacks, surveillance, and other forms of intimidation and harassment.
In the “year of Olympics,” China has, in the name of Olympic preparations (construction, security, harmonious image, etc.), failed to protect labor rights of construction workers in re-building Beijing and other cities hosting the Games; suppressed efforts to seek justice by victims of forced eviction from housing/farming land for constructing Olympic facilities; detained and tortured people arriving in Beijing to complain about local official abuses and corruption in clean-up operations to rid the Olympic city off “undesirables” or off potential protesters. Press censorship got worse despite official promulgation of relaxing pre-approval rules for foreign journalists to conduct interviews. Authorities closed down websites or blogs, shut down or changed management of journals and newspapers, patrolled online chat rooms, BBS, and monitored cell phone and SMS use. Outspoken critics of the authorities handing of the Olympics have been punished harshly. China has jailed a new set of prisoners of conscience – the “Olympics prisoners.”
Hu Jia, a soft-spoken activist who suffers from hepatitis B, was jailed this month for criticizing the Olympics-related abuses, among his other expressions critical of the regime. His wife and enfant daughter have lived under house-arrest and police surveillance. The Beijing lawyer Teng Biao, who co-authored with Hu Jia an open letter “The Real China before the Olympics,” demanding an end to Olympics-related rights abuses, was kidnapped and interrogated for 41 hours by Beijing security police who threatened him with violence. Yang Chunlin, a rural organizer of land-loss farmers in China’s northeastern province Heilongjiang, was sentenced to 5 years last month for organizing a petition campaign, in which more than 11,000 farmers signed the open letter “We Want Human Rights, Not the Olympics!” Many people who had traveled Beijing to petition the Central government to intervene and stop wrongdoings by local officials – from forced eviction to unpaid salaries to lost jobs, were intercepted and locked up in make-shift detention facilities for the purpose of making Beijing “harmonious” for greeting its Olympics visitors.
Secondly, it’s old habit. China reacted to the Tibetan monks’ protests in mid-March with its usual tactics – harsh crackdown with iron-fists, blaming the “Dalai Lama clique” for instigating the riots, blocking information, sealing off areas of protests, manipulating reporting, and fanning nationalism. The Chinese leaders’ continuing refusal to talk to the Dalai Lama gives the international community neither reassurance of any sincerity to solve the Tibetan issue peacefully nor any credibility in its claims about the “criminal” acts of the “rioting” Tibetans. The escalating numbers of detention and arrests of the Tibetan “instigators” only feed the fear of further suppression of religious freedom and violation of due process rights in the larger Tibetan areas.
It is unlikely that China could have avoided its current political crisis, not just a public opinion “disaster,” and could have handled things any better. Expensive public relations firms could not have saved China. Determined by its nature, it is accustomed to using brute force to suppress protesters, dissidents, “separatists” or “terrorists,” or anyone perceived as a threat to the state. There might be some indication of top leadership disagreement about how to handle the Tibetan incident, but the iron-fist approach wins because no leader within the high ranks would want to appear weak. Local officials in the Tibet Autonomous Region, including ethnic Tibetans serving in official capacity, stand to gain from escalating suppressions of the monks – in securing their own posts and increased allocation of state funding.
In short, China messed up its Olympics Gala because its approach, from beginning to end, is excessively political. On February 15, Xi Jinping, a member of the Standing Committee China’s Politburo and a front-runner to become the next president, told reporters that “holding the Olympics and the Special Olympics in 2008 is a major event for our Party”. Authorities throughout Beijing and the country have been charged with “the political duty” of ensuring “successful” Games. China treats the Olympics with such top political priority because it is eager to showcase itself a newly rising power, modern, prosperous, responsible and competent enough to host mega international events. Chinese leaders count on the world’s focus on China during and before the 3-week sports to officially inaugurate its international power status, to reclaim world recognition that took a nose dive after the 1989 bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Beijing. Domestically, Chinese leaders count on the international prestige to boost its legitimacy to rule over a country where the disadvantaged and marginalized are restless, posing political challenges. The leaders need this boost to strengthen their hands within the ruling elites’ internal power struggle.
China’s politicizing of the Olympics has backfired. To the Chinese leaders, the political objectives of the Olympic dream are paramount whether or not they have predicted the international reaction. They suppressed dissent and upended any potential “threat” in their cradles. The IOC and other Western leaders may have contributed to this dogged pursuit. In the above-mentioned internal memo, the IOC praised China for such “improvements” as resumption of dialogue between China and the US, the signing of a UN covenant on human rights and China's election to the UN Human Rights Council. But who would find “improvements” in this list unless one stupidly equivocates talking and promising to real changes in behavior! Human rights dialogues between China and the US, China and EU countries and others in the past 20 years have produced little in ending political/religious repression. China had signed and ratified the Convention against Torture in 1988, yet torture remains prevalent. China signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1998 but never ratified or reformed its laws accordingly. China has abused its status on the UN Human Rights Council to get rid of human rights monitoring mechanisms to its own dislike.
The US President Bush insists on the “non-political” nature of the Olympics. But his “non-political” presence at the opening ceremony, as democratically elected leader of the people of the United States of America will deliver a clear political message: that the US does not mind China’s crackdown on Tibet protesters and Chinese human rights activists, nor its handling of the Beijing Olympics on the ruins of many Chinese lives, homes, rights, and dignity – the Party must go on and business is as usual. This message will surely hurt those Chinese who have struggled to reform the repressive system and have suffered a great deal in the hands of the current leadership – particularly those who stood up to the government’s Olympics-related abuses and brutality. Mr. Bush may say something about religious freedom, which will be blocked or quickly brushed away by the government controlled media, while the spectacle of him standing side-by-side with Chinese leaders on the podium, admiring fireworks and pageantry at the opening ceremony will be prominently and repeatedly broadcast to the Chinese public. That spectacle is precisely the political boost that the Chinese leaders desire! Mr. Bush may maintain his “extraordinary relationship” with the Chinese President Hu Jingtao and enjoy himself as a “sport fan,” the American people will bear the moral disgrace of his political gesture endorsing China’s human rights repression at home and support to repressive regimes abroad!
Reacting resolutely to the Tibetan “riots” serves the Chinese leaders’ need to rally the population and divert them from the expanding social-economic disparities at least for now. Facing with “separatist” Tibetans, “instigated” by the overseas “Dalai clique,” trying to spoil China’s “coming out” party, Chinese leaders found the “external threat” to unite the Han Chinese. Defending the Olympics from being tarnished and ruined is now tantamount to defending national unity and sovereignty, defending the pride and glory of the Chinese nation. This tactic always works wonders. Government censorship that block independent media coverage and manipulate information to suit the government’s political agenda make this easy. The extensive control mechanism of official censorship has benefited from cutting edge technologies provided by foreign (mostly American) companies. A combination of information manipulation and demonizing of the Dalai Lama, long-time lack of public debate over Tibet (and, for that matter, over Xinjiang), not surprisingly, brought about the latest wave of nationalistic fervor. In interviews in Chinese cities, foreign journalists found a resounding agreement with the government over Tibet; dissident intellectuals who voiced their concerns over media blockade and lack of independent verification of official reports of “rioting”, and human rights lawyers who offered to provide legal council to arrested Tibetan monks, have received emails attacking them as “traitors” and even death threats. The huge number of ethnic Chinese showed up in the streets of San Francisco last week, the only stop of the torch relay in North America, to support the Beijing Olympics, seemed to consist mostly in youth from the Bay Area’s universities heavily populated with Mainland Chinese students, and backed up by the Chinese Americans business establishments with large import-export interest at stake in China.
Looking beyond Olympics, we must not lose sight of a growing civil rights assertiveness in spite of the current nationalistic frenzy. In the past several years, this assertiveness has grown in the face of harsh suppression. Public outrage at the beating to death by police of a young migrant laborer, Sun Zhigang, led to the abolition in 2003 of a notorious extrajudicial detention system – the “custody and repatriation” detention facilities – was the first landmark victory of citizen mobilization to fight rights abuses. Police had unrestricted power to lock up anyone in this facility without any judiciary oversight. Since then, Chinese citizens – mainly public intellectuals, dissident writers, journalists, lawyers, and a new class of NOG activists (though independent NGOs still face sometimes insurmountable legal, political, and financial hurdles) – have organized many campaigns, often online, over rights problems. The problems involve labor protection, rural migrants’ rights, housing/land forced eviction, rights of people infected with HIV/AIDS, unfair elections of village directors or representatives to the local People’s Congress, official ban on books, government Fire-Wall on the Internet, employment discrimination against people tested positive in hepatitis B, pollution, etc.
What has come to be known as the “rights defense movement” has taken the form of citizens’ actions such as signing open letters or public petitions addressed to government officials, proposing legislative suggestions to law makers, disclosing official corruption or violations on websites or blogs, filling lawsuits against government or officials to seek remedies and accountability, and organizing forums for public discussions or demonstrations. This activism has spread from political, economic, and cultural metropolitan centers to the less developed inland cities and villages. Coastal areas which have grown the fastest also see more indications of rights awareness. Increasingly more people from the professional, resources-rich, middle-classes have joined in. Initially, just as farmers were prompted to stand up to their land rights, these middle-class people are prompted by defending their housing rights, employment opportunities, privacy as consumers of Internet or cell phone services, which matter to their life style. But, after encountering official hurdles, repression, and retaliation, witnessing the lack of rule of law and serious defects in the system first hand, some have joined force with other groups and become more sympathetic to the less fortunate social groups’ causes. The fight for legal rights and personal protection, though may pitch one group against another, has seemed to unite different social groups when they come to realize that the lack of a rule of law and non-democratic unaccountability of officials lie in the roots of their diverse complaints.
This movement has cashed in to confront government abuses in the name of the Olympics. On the day of the one-year countdown to Games’ opening on August 8, 2008, several dozens of Chinese citizens – writer, lawyers, journalists, and professors – publicized an open letter “One World, One Dream, Universal Human Rights,” urging Chinese leaders to end persecution of out-spoken critics of its handling of the Olympics, stop harassment of protesters against forced eviction for Olympic constructions, lift censorship, release political prisoners, and protect labor rights on Olympics construction sites. In China’s northeastern province Heilongjiang, more than 10,000 land-loss farmers signed an open letter “We Want Human Rights, not the Olympics.” And a similar open letter was also publicized with 261 signatures of people fighting forced eviction in Shanghai, China’s most developed metropolis. By now, however, inside China, authorities have practically stamped out any public display of dissent from the official-line on the Olympics. The protests continued, mostly online.
It is not far-fetched to accept that the small handful of Han Chinese, initially 30, then increased to about 300, who signed an open letter to demand free press and independent investigation of the March “riot” in Lhasa, may in fact represented the views of a much larger size of the population. The repression of religious freedom in Tibet, unfair returns in social-economic benefits of the region’s boom for ethnic Tibetans, lack of freedom of expression, etc. should be easily recognizable by some Han Chinese as common concerns. This shared understanding, made possible by the rapidly deepening disparities among Han Chinese, will undermine ethno-centrism and nationalism fostered by censorship and official manipulation.
However, one must be warned against a period of post-Olympics overcast. The government is unlikely to back down under international pressure. The leaders in office would absolutely not want to look indecisive to their rivals in the power struggle at the high level. In stead, they are doing their best to transform international public opinion into imperialist interference, intended to demonize China, contain its modernization, and deprive it of its well-deserved great power status. This nationalistic rhetoric is counted on to divert attention away from the injustices and right violations suffered by many Chinese. To save face internationally, appear strong to rivals, and strengthen their legitimacy to rule, Chinese leaders will retaliate against those who have challenged their ways of handling the Olympics – after the 20,000 strong foreign reporters return home and the world attention shift elsewhere.
As long as the Chinese leaders perceive nationalism as politically beneficial, no meaningful dialogue with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama will be likely. International protests and pressures from some Western leaders will keep up. The Chinese government will do everything they could to transform this humiliation into a national crisis, justifying imposing more draconic measures against “separatists,” dissidents and reformers after the Dames. There may set in a period of freeze, so to speak, in a manner with resemblance to the post-Tiananmen era in the 1990s. Detained Tibetan monks (official number is put in the 900s now) and other protesters or critics may be forced to “settle scores after the Autumn.”
Yet, such set-backs on the treacherous road toward political openness in China, though inevitable, are temporary. China can’t shut its door to the global trafficking of ideas, activism, and solidarity with the repressed. The messages of the recent international protests are sipping through China’s Great Firewalls and will spread, thanks to globalization and the internet, faster than two decades ago. This will prompt some soul-searching among the Chinese populace. This prospect, depressing as it is, is no worse than the international lethargy before the current scrutiny on China: when business as usual with China predominated despite its disregard for human rights, while the international key players, preoccupied with the “war on terror,” seemed content with sterile “human rights dialogues” and quite diplomacy. International civil society actors can make a big difference as e have witnessed lately. They will keep the pressures on to extract good compliance to international norms and shining the spotlight on China.
The longer view beyond August also asks for better preparedness for assisting Tibetan protesters and activists inside China. Some of them are eager to take advantage of the unprecedented exposure to have their voices heard. The international community may be able to help cooling nationalistic frenzy, for instance, by keeping an focus on human rights abuses in both the Tibetan and Han Chinese regions by the same authoritarian regime. This would avoid playing into the hands of government-manipulated extreme nationalism and undermining positions for Han Chinese activists sympathetic and supportive to the Tibetan struggle for religious freedom, social-economic justice, cultural integrity, and human rights. A peaceful and democratic solution for Tibet requires fundamental political reform of the authoritarian regime. The international community can help the Tibetans more effectively by helping both the Tibetans and the Han Chinese to advance their common agenda.
Xiaorong Li
April 2008
(This paper, in Italian, appeared in the Aspen Institute Italia publication: Aspenia, No. 43 http://www.aspeninstitute.it/Aspenweb/Aspenweb.nsf/AspeniaUltimo?OpenForm&Li
ngua=I&Area=001000)
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
China’s Failures and Human Rights Council’s Challenge
China’s “voluntary pledge,” made in May for the expressive purpose of winning a seat on the Human Rights Council, sounds ever more hollow these today. Breaking its own promises, China poses a serious challenge to the new HRC, which promises to provide stronger and more effective protection of human rights.
China pledged that, “The Chinese Government is committed to the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms of the Chinese people… The Chinese Government respects the universality of human rights and supports the UN in playing an important role in the protection and promotion of human rights.”
Having assured the votes to be elected, China went back to business as usual. In the same manner as in anticipation of major political events involving intense power struggle within the ruling elite, the Chinese leadership, citing security concerns, has staged a massive campaign to crackdown on human rights defenders, lawyers, and outspoken writers since mid-June. The leadership tries to strengthen its hand in controlling factions within the Communist Party and the party’s exclusive rule during the upcoming Sixth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of Chinese Community Party (CCP) this fall, the 17th CCP Congress and general election to the National People’s Congress in 2007. Out of fear for critics and public exposes of its human rights problems during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the leadership has also begun silencing and imprisoning activists as part of the clean-up preparations.
The current crackdown has resulted in gross and systematic rights abuses. In the four months since it made the “voluntary pledge,” the government has acted aggressively to:
- Promulgate press control regulations on international media operating in China. In June, the government proposed huge fines (up to the equivalent of US$12,500) for journalists, foreign or domestic, who report “emergency incidents” such as clashes with police, epidemic outbreaks, or natural/man made disasters without official permission. On September 10, government imposed another measure making the official Xinhua News Agency as the only authorized distributor of all news and information by foreign news agencies operating in China, banning several categories of information.
- Close down countless online publications, discussion forums, and chat rooms, monitoring email correspondences, cell phone calls, text messages and instant messaging. In the past few months, government shut down popular websites and online forums frequented by activists and independent writers, such as the Aegean Sea, Century China, Dijin Minzhu, and so on.
- Detain human rights activists and lawyers. For example, the blind activist Chen Guangcheng in Shangdong, the rights activist/independent writer Guo Feixioang in Guangdong, and the Beijing human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng; the police have placed his wife and children under close and invasive surveillance since arresting him in mid-August.
- Charge democracy/human rights activists with political crimes that carry long prison terms or the death penalty: “incitement and sedition to overthrow the state.” For instance, the rights activists Guo Qizhen and several writers/democracy party activists have been charged with this crime. On September 6, authorities arrested Internet writer and former Aegean Sea Web site editor Zhang Jianhong. He is accused of “inciting subversion,” and faces a possible prison sentence of several years.
- Imprison (sentence) activists for peaceful activities. The blind activist was sentenced for 4 years and 3 months on August 20. On August 11, Tan Kai, an environmentalist from Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province and founder of the NGO called “Green Watch,” was convicted of “illegally acquiring state secrets” and sentenced to 18 months of imprisonment. On August 25, the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court sentenced Zhao Yan, a researcher at the Beijing office of New York Times, to three years of imprisonment on charges of “fraud,” a trumped up charge to retaliate him paying close attention to peasant land rights and fair compensation, providing legal aid to help farmers who brought litigation against corrupt officials.
- Intensify persecution of unofficial “house church” members and demolish churches with many incidents in the eastern provinces. In one case, in Xiaoshan of Zhejiang Province, officials demolished a 200-year old Christian church in August and arrested more than 60 church members who opposed the demolition; Zan Aizong, a journalist, also a Christian, received seven days of administrative detention for reporting the demolition of this church. He was accused of “spreading rumors and disturbing public order.”
- Put hundreds of activists, outspoken critics, under house arrest or residential surveillance; some activists have been detained incommunicado or made to disappear for periods of time. On August 18, the activist Deng Yongliang and lawyer Zhang Jiankang, disappeared into police custody in Yinan, Shandong, and police denied knowledge of their whereabouts. They were eventually released.
- and authorize use of police force to suppress peaceful demonstrations by farmers demanding land rights. On August 9, 2006, Yao Baohua and Zhou Yaqin, representing landless peasants in Changzhou in Jiangsu Province were put under criminal detention by the local police and charged with “gathering a crowd to disturb social order.” They had been seeking to petition the local government and were expressing their views peacefully. On August 22, rights representative Liu Zhengyou in Zigong City, Sichuan Province was badly beaten by unidentified thugs right before the eyes of police. Liu has been urging the government to negotiate with peasants to settle a land dispute fairly and had been participating with the farmers in peaceful demonstrations.
This intensified crackdown on civil and political rights contradicts China “voluntary pledge” that “having signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), China is now in the process of amending its Criminal, Civil and Administrative Procedure Laws and deepening judicial reform to create conditions for ratification at an early date.” The government has instead switched on the green light for State Security Squads (SSS) and Public Security Bureaus (PSB) forces to override laws regulating detention and due process rights, which were recently enacted or amended, and to trespass the prohibits proscribed in ICCPR!
The government’s pattern of behavior also does not inspire any confidence that, even if the criminal, civil and administrative laws are amended and the ICCPR is ratified, rights conditions would see any brighter days. There is no indication the government will cease exempting itself from the country’s laws and its Constitution. Its behavioral patterns suggest it is now exempting itself from its membership obligations on the HRC.
Few among those who monitor rights conditions in China had their hopes up high upon hearing the “voluntary pledge,” though most had hoped the new HRC would handle China more professionally. The HRC faces a serious test to its ingenuity and sincerity – whether it too, like its predecessor, will play politics to the effect of muzzling critics of and diverting attention from rights abuses by a powerful member state. To some extent, the HRC’s promise to be a stronger, more effective, and more credible mechanism for promoting human rights, and to correct defects of the defunct Commission – politicization, double standards, regional alliance, “buying votes,” using procedures to block actions censuring abusive states, and other privileges in that “abusers club” - rest on whether and how the HRC will face up to China’s open challenge.
But can the HRC live up to its promises and does it have any real options in responding to China’s challenge? Consider the following two options that seem entailed in the promises the HRC made:
1. One is a review of China’s rights performance under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process, a responsibility of the HRC, as set out in the General Assembly Resolution 60/251: This review would have a large body of “objective and reliable information” to draw upon since independent Chinese and international NGO monitors, foreign governmental and inter-governmental agencies (like the EU), have put out reports about human rights violations in China. During its current (second) session, the HRC has also heard reports from Thematic Special Procedures Mandates, for example, the report from Manfred Nowak, the Special Rapporteur on Torture, about his mission to China last year, which found “torture remains widespread” in the country. This body of information points to the failures of Chinese government in fulfilling its human rights obligations and commitments.
This option is at its best remote. The HRC has yet to schedule its UPR, which is understandable given its heavy agenda during the second session. At this point, it is unclear when the UPR will be ready to look into countries’ human rights behaviors and how politics among member states will play out in the reviewing process.
2. Another possible course of action is to conduct special review of allegations of China’s “gross and systematic violations of human rights” for consideration of suspending its membership: Under the terms of General Assembly Resolution 60/251, the Human Rights Council’s member states are elected in a secret ballot by an absolute majority of the General Assembly, but taking into account candidates’ contribution to the promotion and protection of human rights and voluntary pledges and commitments, etc. And any member that commits gross and systematic violations of human rights can be suspended by the General Assembly by a two-thirds majority.
However, such a special review of China certainly will not take place within a meaningful timeframe. Even if such a review is put on the agenda, and sufficient information about “gross and systematic violations” is provided, it will be almost impossible to get two-thirds of the 47 member states to vote for suspending China’s membership.
It is very difficult to count on sufficient political will on the part of member states to make the HIC’s promises credible when it comes to China. Nevertheless, one can invest in international civil society stakeholders (NGOs, for example) to enable them to play an increasingly crucial role in pressuring the HRC to deliver on its promises, in providing reliable information, and in pressuring for reform of the UN human rights system – for example, by highlighting its inability to act when it must, as in the case of China.
Xiaorong Li
September 28, 2006
(This article appeared in Human Rights Features)
China pledged that, “The Chinese Government is committed to the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms of the Chinese people… The Chinese Government respects the universality of human rights and supports the UN in playing an important role in the protection and promotion of human rights.”
Having assured the votes to be elected, China went back to business as usual. In the same manner as in anticipation of major political events involving intense power struggle within the ruling elite, the Chinese leadership, citing security concerns, has staged a massive campaign to crackdown on human rights defenders, lawyers, and outspoken writers since mid-June. The leadership tries to strengthen its hand in controlling factions within the Communist Party and the party’s exclusive rule during the upcoming Sixth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of Chinese Community Party (CCP) this fall, the 17th CCP Congress and general election to the National People’s Congress in 2007. Out of fear for critics and public exposes of its human rights problems during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the leadership has also begun silencing and imprisoning activists as part of the clean-up preparations.
The current crackdown has resulted in gross and systematic rights abuses. In the four months since it made the “voluntary pledge,” the government has acted aggressively to:
- Promulgate press control regulations on international media operating in China. In June, the government proposed huge fines (up to the equivalent of US$12,500) for journalists, foreign or domestic, who report “emergency incidents” such as clashes with police, epidemic outbreaks, or natural/man made disasters without official permission. On September 10, government imposed another measure making the official Xinhua News Agency as the only authorized distributor of all news and information by foreign news agencies operating in China, banning several categories of information.
- Close down countless online publications, discussion forums, and chat rooms, monitoring email correspondences, cell phone calls, text messages and instant messaging. In the past few months, government shut down popular websites and online forums frequented by activists and independent writers, such as the Aegean Sea, Century China, Dijin Minzhu, and so on.
- Detain human rights activists and lawyers. For example, the blind activist Chen Guangcheng in Shangdong, the rights activist/independent writer Guo Feixioang in Guangdong, and the Beijing human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng; the police have placed his wife and children under close and invasive surveillance since arresting him in mid-August.
- Charge democracy/human rights activists with political crimes that carry long prison terms or the death penalty: “incitement and sedition to overthrow the state.” For instance, the rights activists Guo Qizhen and several writers/democracy party activists have been charged with this crime. On September 6, authorities arrested Internet writer and former Aegean Sea Web site editor Zhang Jianhong. He is accused of “inciting subversion,” and faces a possible prison sentence of several years.
- Imprison (sentence) activists for peaceful activities. The blind activist was sentenced for 4 years and 3 months on August 20. On August 11, Tan Kai, an environmentalist from Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province and founder of the NGO called “Green Watch,” was convicted of “illegally acquiring state secrets” and sentenced to 18 months of imprisonment. On August 25, the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court sentenced Zhao Yan, a researcher at the Beijing office of New York Times, to three years of imprisonment on charges of “fraud,” a trumped up charge to retaliate him paying close attention to peasant land rights and fair compensation, providing legal aid to help farmers who brought litigation against corrupt officials.
- Intensify persecution of unofficial “house church” members and demolish churches with many incidents in the eastern provinces. In one case, in Xiaoshan of Zhejiang Province, officials demolished a 200-year old Christian church in August and arrested more than 60 church members who opposed the demolition; Zan Aizong, a journalist, also a Christian, received seven days of administrative detention for reporting the demolition of this church. He was accused of “spreading rumors and disturbing public order.”
- Put hundreds of activists, outspoken critics, under house arrest or residential surveillance; some activists have been detained incommunicado or made to disappear for periods of time. On August 18, the activist Deng Yongliang and lawyer Zhang Jiankang, disappeared into police custody in Yinan, Shandong, and police denied knowledge of their whereabouts. They were eventually released.
- and authorize use of police force to suppress peaceful demonstrations by farmers demanding land rights. On August 9, 2006, Yao Baohua and Zhou Yaqin, representing landless peasants in Changzhou in Jiangsu Province were put under criminal detention by the local police and charged with “gathering a crowd to disturb social order.” They had been seeking to petition the local government and were expressing their views peacefully. On August 22, rights representative Liu Zhengyou in Zigong City, Sichuan Province was badly beaten by unidentified thugs right before the eyes of police. Liu has been urging the government to negotiate with peasants to settle a land dispute fairly and had been participating with the farmers in peaceful demonstrations.
This intensified crackdown on civil and political rights contradicts China “voluntary pledge” that “having signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), China is now in the process of amending its Criminal, Civil and Administrative Procedure Laws and deepening judicial reform to create conditions for ratification at an early date.” The government has instead switched on the green light for State Security Squads (SSS) and Public Security Bureaus (PSB) forces to override laws regulating detention and due process rights, which were recently enacted or amended, and to trespass the prohibits proscribed in ICCPR!
The government’s pattern of behavior also does not inspire any confidence that, even if the criminal, civil and administrative laws are amended and the ICCPR is ratified, rights conditions would see any brighter days. There is no indication the government will cease exempting itself from the country’s laws and its Constitution. Its behavioral patterns suggest it is now exempting itself from its membership obligations on the HRC.
Few among those who monitor rights conditions in China had their hopes up high upon hearing the “voluntary pledge,” though most had hoped the new HRC would handle China more professionally. The HRC faces a serious test to its ingenuity and sincerity – whether it too, like its predecessor, will play politics to the effect of muzzling critics of and diverting attention from rights abuses by a powerful member state. To some extent, the HRC’s promise to be a stronger, more effective, and more credible mechanism for promoting human rights, and to correct defects of the defunct Commission – politicization, double standards, regional alliance, “buying votes,” using procedures to block actions censuring abusive states, and other privileges in that “abusers club” - rest on whether and how the HRC will face up to China’s open challenge.
But can the HRC live up to its promises and does it have any real options in responding to China’s challenge? Consider the following two options that seem entailed in the promises the HRC made:
1. One is a review of China’s rights performance under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process, a responsibility of the HRC, as set out in the General Assembly Resolution 60/251: This review would have a large body of “objective and reliable information” to draw upon since independent Chinese and international NGO monitors, foreign governmental and inter-governmental agencies (like the EU), have put out reports about human rights violations in China. During its current (second) session, the HRC has also heard reports from Thematic Special Procedures Mandates, for example, the report from Manfred Nowak, the Special Rapporteur on Torture, about his mission to China last year, which found “torture remains widespread” in the country. This body of information points to the failures of Chinese government in fulfilling its human rights obligations and commitments.
This option is at its best remote. The HRC has yet to schedule its UPR, which is understandable given its heavy agenda during the second session. At this point, it is unclear when the UPR will be ready to look into countries’ human rights behaviors and how politics among member states will play out in the reviewing process.
2. Another possible course of action is to conduct special review of allegations of China’s “gross and systematic violations of human rights” for consideration of suspending its membership: Under the terms of General Assembly Resolution 60/251, the Human Rights Council’s member states are elected in a secret ballot by an absolute majority of the General Assembly, but taking into account candidates’ contribution to the promotion and protection of human rights and voluntary pledges and commitments, etc. And any member that commits gross and systematic violations of human rights can be suspended by the General Assembly by a two-thirds majority.
However, such a special review of China certainly will not take place within a meaningful timeframe. Even if such a review is put on the agenda, and sufficient information about “gross and systematic violations” is provided, it will be almost impossible to get two-thirds of the 47 member states to vote for suspending China’s membership.
It is very difficult to count on sufficient political will on the part of member states to make the HIC’s promises credible when it comes to China. Nevertheless, one can invest in international civil society stakeholders (NGOs, for example) to enable them to play an increasingly crucial role in pressuring the HRC to deliver on its promises, in providing reliable information, and in pressuring for reform of the UN human rights system – for example, by highlighting its inability to act when it must, as in the case of China.
Xiaorong Li
September 28, 2006
(This article appeared in Human Rights Features)
China’s Failures and Human Rights Council’s Challenge
China’s “voluntary pledge,” made in May for the expressive purpose of winning a seat on the Human Rights Council, sounds ever more hollow these today. Breaking its own promises, China poses a serious challenge to the new HRC, which promises to provide stronger and more effective protection of human rights.
China pledged that, “The Chinese Government is committed to the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms of the Chinese people… The Chinese Government respects the universality of human rights and supports the UN in playing an important role in the protection and promotion of human rights.”
Having assured the votes to be elected, China went back to business as usual. In the same manner as in anticipation of major political events involving intense power struggle within the ruling elite, the Chinese leadership, citing security concerns, has staged a massive campaign to crackdown on human rights defenders, lawyers, and outspoken writers since mid-June. The leadership tries to strengthen its hand in controlling factions within the Communist Party and the party’s exclusive rule during the upcoming Sixth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of Chinese Community Party (CCP) this fall, the 17th CCP Congress and general election to the National People’s Congress in 2007. Out of fear for critics and public exposes of its human rights problems during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the leadership has also begun silencing and imprisoning activists as part of the clean-up preparations.
The current crackdown has resulted in gross and systematic rights abuses. In the four months since it made the “voluntary pledge,” the government has acted aggressively to:
- Promulgate press control regulations on international media operating in China. In June, the government proposed huge fines (up to the equivalent of US$12,500) for journalists, foreign or domestic, who report “emergency incidents” such as clashes with police, epidemic outbreaks, or natural/man made disasters without official permission. On September 10, government imposed another measure making the official Xinhua News Agency as the only authorized distributor of all news and information by foreign news agencies operating in China, banning several categories of information.
- Close down countless online publications, discussion forums, and chat rooms, monitoring email correspondences, cell phone calls, text messages and instant messaging. In the past few months, government shut down popular websites and online forums frequented by activists and independent writers, such as the Aegean Sea, Century China, Dijin Minzhu, and so on.
- Detain human rights activists and lawyers. For example, the blind activist Chen Guangcheng in Shangdong, the rights activist/independent writer Guo Feixioang in Guangdong, and the Beijing human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng; the police have placed his wife and children under close and invasive surveillance since arresting him in mid-August.
- Charge democracy/human rights activists with political crimes that carry long prison terms or the death penalty: “incitement and sedition to overthrow the state.” For instance, the rights activists Guo Qizhen and several writers/democracy party activists have been charged with this crime. On September 6, authorities arrested Internet writer and former Aegean Sea Web site editor Zhang Jianhong. He is accused of “inciting subversion,” and faces a possible prison sentence of several years.
- Imprison (sentence) activists for peaceful activities. The blind activist was sentenced for 4 years and 3 months on August 20. On August 11, Tan Kai, an environmentalist from Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province and founder of the NGO called “Green Watch,” was convicted of “illegally acquiring state secrets” and sentenced to 18 months of imprisonment. On August 25, the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court sentenced Zhao Yan, a researcher at the Beijing office of New York Times, to three years of imprisonment on charges of “fraud,” a trumped up charge to retaliate him paying close attention to peasant land rights and fair compensation, providing legal aid to help farmers who brought litigation against corrupt officials.
- Intensify persecution of unofficial “house church” members and demolish churches with many incidents in the eastern provinces. In one case, in Xiaoshan of Zhejiang Province, officials demolished a 200-year old Christian church in August and arrested more than 60 church members who opposed the demolition; Zan Aizong, a journalist, also a Christian, received seven days of administrative detention for reporting the demolition of this church. He was accused of “spreading rumors and disturbing public order.”
- Put hundreds of activists, outspoken critics, under house arrest or residential surveillance; some activists have been detained incommunicado or made to disappear for periods of time. On August 18, the activist Deng Yongliang and lawyer Zhang Jiankang, disappeared into police custody in Yinan, Shandong, and police denied knowledge of their whereabouts. They were eventually released.
- and authorize use of police force to suppress peaceful demonstrations by farmers demanding land rights. On August 9, 2006, Yao Baohua and Zhou Yaqin, representing landless peasants in Changzhou in Jiangsu Province were put under criminal detention by the local police and charged with “gathering a crowd to disturb social order.” They had been seeking to petition the local government and were expressing their views peacefully. On August 22, rights representative Liu Zhengyou in Zigong City, Sichuan Province was badly beaten by unidentified thugs right before the eyes of police. Liu has been urging the government to negotiate with peasants to settle a land dispute fairly and had been participating with the farmers in peaceful demonstrations.
This intensified crackdown on civil and political rights contradicts China “voluntary pledge” that “having signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), China is now in the process of amending its Criminal, Civil and Administrative Procedure Laws and deepening judicial reform to create conditions for ratification at an early date.” The government has instead switched on the green light for State Security Squads (SSS) and Public Security Bureaus (PSB) forces to override laws regulating detention and due process rights, which were recently enacted or amended, and to trespass the prohibits proscribed in ICCPR!
The government’s pattern of behavior also does not inspire any confidence that, even if the criminal, civil and administrative laws are amended and the ICCPR is ratified, rights conditions would see any brighter days. There is no indication the government will cease exempting itself from the country’s laws and its Constitution. Its behavioral patterns suggest it is now exempting itself from its membership obligations on the HRC.
Few among those who monitor rights conditions in China had their hopes up high upon hearing the “voluntary pledge,” though most had hoped the new HRC would handle China more professionally. The HRC faces a serious test to its ingenuity and sincerity – whether it too, like its predecessor, will play politics to the effect of muzzling critics of and diverting attention from rights abuses by a powerful member state. To some extent, the HRC’s promise to be a stronger, more effective, and more credible mechanism for promoting human rights, and to correct defects of the defunct Commission – politicization, double standards, regional alliance, “buying votes,” using procedures to block actions censuring abusive states, and other privileges in that “abusers club” - rest on whether and how the HRC will face up to China’s open challenge.
But can the HRC live up to its promises and does it have any real options in responding to China’s challenge? Consider the following two options that seem entailed in the promises the HRC made:
1. One is a review of China’s rights performance under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process, a responsibility of the HRC, as set out in the General Assembly Resolution 60/251: This review would have a large body of “objective and reliable information” to draw upon since independent Chinese and international NGO monitors, foreign governmental and inter-governmental agencies (like the EU), have put out reports about human rights violations in China. During its current (second) session, the HRC has also heard reports from Thematic Special Procedures Mandates, for example, the report from Manfred Nowak, the Special Rapporteur on Torture, about his mission to China last year, which found “torture remains widespread” in the country. This body of information points to the failures of Chinese government in fulfilling its human rights obligations and commitments.
This option is at its best remote. The HRC has yet to schedule its UPR, which is understandable given its heavy agenda during the second session. At this point, it is unclear when the UPR will be ready to look into countries’ human rights behaviors and how politics among member states will play out in the reviewing process.
2. Another possible course of action is to conduct special review of allegations of China’s “gross and systematic violations of human rights” for consideration of suspending its membership: Under the terms of General Assembly Resolution 60/251, the Human Rights Council’s member states are elected in a secret ballot by an absolute majority of the General Assembly, but taking into account candidates’ contribution to the promotion and protection of human rights and voluntary pledges and commitments, etc. And any member that commits gross and systematic violations of human rights can be suspended by the General Assembly by a two-thirds majority.
However, such a special review of China certainly will not take place within a meaningful timeframe. Even if such a review is put on the agenda, and sufficient information about “gross and systematic violations” is provided, it will be almost impossible to get two-thirds of the 47 member states to vote for suspending China’s membership.
It is very difficult to count on sufficient political will on the part of member states to make the HIC’s promises credible when it comes to China. Nevertheless, one can invest in international civil society stakeholders (NGOs, for example) to enable them to play an increasingly crucial role in pressuring the HRC to deliver on its promises, in providing reliable information, and in pressuring for reform of the UN human rights system – for example, by highlighting its inability to act when it must, as in the case of China.
Xiaorong Li
September 28, 2006
(This article appeared in Human Rights Features)
China pledged that, “The Chinese Government is committed to the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms of the Chinese people… The Chinese Government respects the universality of human rights and supports the UN in playing an important role in the protection and promotion of human rights.”
Having assured the votes to be elected, China went back to business as usual. In the same manner as in anticipation of major political events involving intense power struggle within the ruling elite, the Chinese leadership, citing security concerns, has staged a massive campaign to crackdown on human rights defenders, lawyers, and outspoken writers since mid-June. The leadership tries to strengthen its hand in controlling factions within the Communist Party and the party’s exclusive rule during the upcoming Sixth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of Chinese Community Party (CCP) this fall, the 17th CCP Congress and general election to the National People’s Congress in 2007. Out of fear for critics and public exposes of its human rights problems during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the leadership has also begun silencing and imprisoning activists as part of the clean-up preparations.
The current crackdown has resulted in gross and systematic rights abuses. In the four months since it made the “voluntary pledge,” the government has acted aggressively to:
- Promulgate press control regulations on international media operating in China. In June, the government proposed huge fines (up to the equivalent of US$12,500) for journalists, foreign or domestic, who report “emergency incidents” such as clashes with police, epidemic outbreaks, or natural/man made disasters without official permission. On September 10, government imposed another measure making the official Xinhua News Agency as the only authorized distributor of all news and information by foreign news agencies operating in China, banning several categories of information.
- Close down countless online publications, discussion forums, and chat rooms, monitoring email correspondences, cell phone calls, text messages and instant messaging. In the past few months, government shut down popular websites and online forums frequented by activists and independent writers, such as the Aegean Sea, Century China, Dijin Minzhu, and so on.
- Detain human rights activists and lawyers. For example, the blind activist Chen Guangcheng in Shangdong, the rights activist/independent writer Guo Feixioang in Guangdong, and the Beijing human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng; the police have placed his wife and children under close and invasive surveillance since arresting him in mid-August.
- Charge democracy/human rights activists with political crimes that carry long prison terms or the death penalty: “incitement and sedition to overthrow the state.” For instance, the rights activists Guo Qizhen and several writers/democracy party activists have been charged with this crime. On September 6, authorities arrested Internet writer and former Aegean Sea Web site editor Zhang Jianhong. He is accused of “inciting subversion,” and faces a possible prison sentence of several years.
- Imprison (sentence) activists for peaceful activities. The blind activist was sentenced for 4 years and 3 months on August 20. On August 11, Tan Kai, an environmentalist from Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province and founder of the NGO called “Green Watch,” was convicted of “illegally acquiring state secrets” and sentenced to 18 months of imprisonment. On August 25, the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court sentenced Zhao Yan, a researcher at the Beijing office of New York Times, to three years of imprisonment on charges of “fraud,” a trumped up charge to retaliate him paying close attention to peasant land rights and fair compensation, providing legal aid to help farmers who brought litigation against corrupt officials.
- Intensify persecution of unofficial “house church” members and demolish churches with many incidents in the eastern provinces. In one case, in Xiaoshan of Zhejiang Province, officials demolished a 200-year old Christian church in August and arrested more than 60 church members who opposed the demolition; Zan Aizong, a journalist, also a Christian, received seven days of administrative detention for reporting the demolition of this church. He was accused of “spreading rumors and disturbing public order.”
- Put hundreds of activists, outspoken critics, under house arrest or residential surveillance; some activists have been detained incommunicado or made to disappear for periods of time. On August 18, the activist Deng Yongliang and lawyer Zhang Jiankang, disappeared into police custody in Yinan, Shandong, and police denied knowledge of their whereabouts. They were eventually released.
- and authorize use of police force to suppress peaceful demonstrations by farmers demanding land rights. On August 9, 2006, Yao Baohua and Zhou Yaqin, representing landless peasants in Changzhou in Jiangsu Province were put under criminal detention by the local police and charged with “gathering a crowd to disturb social order.” They had been seeking to petition the local government and were expressing their views peacefully. On August 22, rights representative Liu Zhengyou in Zigong City, Sichuan Province was badly beaten by unidentified thugs right before the eyes of police. Liu has been urging the government to negotiate with peasants to settle a land dispute fairly and had been participating with the farmers in peaceful demonstrations.
This intensified crackdown on civil and political rights contradicts China “voluntary pledge” that “having signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), China is now in the process of amending its Criminal, Civil and Administrative Procedure Laws and deepening judicial reform to create conditions for ratification at an early date.” The government has instead switched on the green light for State Security Squads (SSS) and Public Security Bureaus (PSB) forces to override laws regulating detention and due process rights, which were recently enacted or amended, and to trespass the prohibits proscribed in ICCPR!
The government’s pattern of behavior also does not inspire any confidence that, even if the criminal, civil and administrative laws are amended and the ICCPR is ratified, rights conditions would see any brighter days. There is no indication the government will cease exempting itself from the country’s laws and its Constitution. Its behavioral patterns suggest it is now exempting itself from its membership obligations on the HRC.
Few among those who monitor rights conditions in China had their hopes up high upon hearing the “voluntary pledge,” though most had hoped the new HRC would handle China more professionally. The HRC faces a serious test to its ingenuity and sincerity – whether it too, like its predecessor, will play politics to the effect of muzzling critics of and diverting attention from rights abuses by a powerful member state. To some extent, the HRC’s promise to be a stronger, more effective, and more credible mechanism for promoting human rights, and to correct defects of the defunct Commission – politicization, double standards, regional alliance, “buying votes,” using procedures to block actions censuring abusive states, and other privileges in that “abusers club” - rest on whether and how the HRC will face up to China’s open challenge.
But can the HRC live up to its promises and does it have any real options in responding to China’s challenge? Consider the following two options that seem entailed in the promises the HRC made:
1. One is a review of China’s rights performance under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process, a responsibility of the HRC, as set out in the General Assembly Resolution 60/251: This review would have a large body of “objective and reliable information” to draw upon since independent Chinese and international NGO monitors, foreign governmental and inter-governmental agencies (like the EU), have put out reports about human rights violations in China. During its current (second) session, the HRC has also heard reports from Thematic Special Procedures Mandates, for example, the report from Manfred Nowak, the Special Rapporteur on Torture, about his mission to China last year, which found “torture remains widespread” in the country. This body of information points to the failures of Chinese government in fulfilling its human rights obligations and commitments.
This option is at its best remote. The HRC has yet to schedule its UPR, which is understandable given its heavy agenda during the second session. At this point, it is unclear when the UPR will be ready to look into countries’ human rights behaviors and how politics among member states will play out in the reviewing process.
2. Another possible course of action is to conduct special review of allegations of China’s “gross and systematic violations of human rights” for consideration of suspending its membership: Under the terms of General Assembly Resolution 60/251, the Human Rights Council’s member states are elected in a secret ballot by an absolute majority of the General Assembly, but taking into account candidates’ contribution to the promotion and protection of human rights and voluntary pledges and commitments, etc. And any member that commits gross and systematic violations of human rights can be suspended by the General Assembly by a two-thirds majority.
However, such a special review of China certainly will not take place within a meaningful timeframe. Even if such a review is put on the agenda, and sufficient information about “gross and systematic violations” is provided, it will be almost impossible to get two-thirds of the 47 member states to vote for suspending China’s membership.
It is very difficult to count on sufficient political will on the part of member states to make the HIC’s promises credible when it comes to China. Nevertheless, one can invest in international civil society stakeholders (NGOs, for example) to enable them to play an increasingly crucial role in pressuring the HRC to deliver on its promises, in providing reliable information, and in pressuring for reform of the UN human rights system – for example, by highlighting its inability to act when it must, as in the case of China.
Xiaorong Li
September 28, 2006
(This article appeared in Human Rights Features)
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
柏林行 Trip to Berlin
第一次到柏林。时值隆冬，天色灰灰，空气冰凉。这座在二战废墟上重建的城市，点缀着许多现代派、后现代派风格的建筑，加之忙碌的节日前购物人群，倒也颇有生气。
应哈佛大学欧洲研究柏林中心邀请，我前往在该中心举办的“中国：人权与经济机遇”对话讲演会上发言。
抵达之前有一段插曲。会前三周，会议组织人来信说，曾答应与会的第三位发言人突然提出因故不能出席，剩下我们两位。另一位是《华尔街日报》前任驻北京记者尹.约翰先生。约翰今年刚出一本新书《野草》。书中记述三位普通中国百姓寻求社会公正的经历。约翰先生曾因为他在中国期间的新闻报道荣获美国的普里茨大奖。因故退出的第三位发言人是麻省理工大学的一位华人经济学教授。主持单位曾希望我们之间能有一场关于中国的经济、公民社会、和人权的对话。对话缺了一方，哈佛中心十分着急。几天后，他们另外邀请了一位欧籍经济学者、现任欧洲某商业公司驻上海代表。看来一场有趣的对话可以照原计划进行了。
没想到，会前三天，主持人来信说该商人也突然退出。不过他倒是坦诚，他说他的公司不允许他在这种讨论中国的人权状况的公开讲演会上露面，认为他答应出席太冒险，将损害该公司在中国的生意！到达柏林当天，笔者又听说，曾经提前注册的听众中的一些商界和金融界人士也来信表示歉意，说他们出于压力不得不缺席。
是这些金融和商界人士过于惧怕、因此实行自我审查（self-censorship）呢 ，还是有关机构在下面对他们施加压力、用取消合同和投资机会或者研究访问机会威胁他们退出？笔者不得而知。
这场讲演会定在柏林的“外国事务协商委员会”（相当于纽约的Council for Foreign Affairs）举行。好几位以短期进修大陆学生身份注册的同胞届时到达会场。陆续在会议厅后面落座后，当中不只一位举起相机纷纷对着我们几位坐在讲台上的发言人和主持人拍照。
出乎主持人意外的是，抵达的听众把一间能容纳120人的会议厅几乎装满了。后来得知，有些不能代表商界到场的人士以个人身份前来出席。
主持会议的塔夫茨大学（在美国波士顿）教授斯密斯简单回顾了20世纪各国在人权与经济贸易关系问题上失败与成功的经验教训。他谈到当年有些美国公司在希特勒上台后，继续与他治下的纳粹帝国通商好几年。二战后，美国人民接受了教训，支持政府对苏联实行经贸制裁以及随后在80年代对南非种族歧视当局实行的制裁。但是，89年后，美国很快解除了对中国实行的人权与贸易挂钩的政策。至于中国的人权与经济发展和国际贸易之间是否应该完全脱节，这是当前颇有争议的问题，他希望这次讲演会能激发听众的思考。
接下来，约翰先生发言。他注重介绍他在中国期间与普通百姓的接触，他的经历使他感到民间社会不屈的力量和困境，但是他相信这股力量将会推动中国社会自下而上的变革。
我的发言首先肯定了近年来中国政府在立法、乡村选举试验、以及把“保护人权”写入宪法等方面的正面尝试，但是，由于基本体制痼疾，在保护基本人权方面仍然存在严重问题，如大量使用死刑、酷刑（刑讯逼供）和非法羁押；民间自发争取经济和社会文化人权的团体和人士继续遭到迫害和压制，恰恰因为他们的参政、言论、结社、集会、信仰自由等公民政治权利受到严重侵犯；中国式的集权控制下的经济发展和官僚腐败造成社会分配不公、贫富悬殊急剧扩大；国外企业到中国投资经商对中国的政治改革进程和人权改进显然有直接影响，雅虎香港公司协助公安治罪网上作家师涛提供证据、雅虎和微软等公司签署进入中国市场自检条约、在其搜寻器上查封“民主”“人权”等字眼等例，就可以说明这个问题。
接下来听众提问，讨论了近一小时。主持会议的斯密斯教授最后邀请在场的几位“年轻中国学生”发言。他们之间悄声商议后，推出一位发言人。这位年轻女士用相当流利的英文说，邓小平的英明改革是中国历史上的伟绩，酷刑等只是文革中的现象，中国人口众多，是存在一些问题，但是要慢慢解决，不能因此造成社会动乱，繁荣的经济给外商带来极好的投资机会，不要错过，等等。台上台下各位的目光都集中到我身上，看来我不得不出来“应战”。
近年来在各种场合公开演讲，我已经习惯了这类“慷慨呈辞”，“应战”起来也有了经验。年轻人是中国的未来，出来留学的人更有挑起重任的机会。他们在海外公开场合如此发言，没准也是身不由己，但完全有可能是他们在言论、媒体控制下只能接触官方许可信息而形成了这些代表他们本人真实思想的看法。民族情绪或许也夹杂其中。
散会后的自由交谈中，这几位学生中的一位提醒我，德国、美国社会也有阴暗面。也许是这样，我回答说，但是我们不能因此就彼此心照不宣、闭口不谈阴暗面？可惜我当时没时间与这位继续交谈：既然中国签署了反对酷刑的国际公约、口头承认有关人权的普世性，官方媒体近来也大量报道美国士兵施行酷刑的消息，那么，为什么就不能公开批评中国现存的酷刑现象？
离开柏林前，我来到残存的“柏林墙”。当年隔绝东、西德两个世界，长达150多公里的森严壁垒，现在只剩下200米长的一段，作为历史遗迹保留下来。从61年东德修建“柏林墙”到它89年的倒塌，曾有150 多人因试图从东德越墙到西德而被东德看守击毙。
这里正好在举行一个露天图片展览：“恐怖的解析”。柏林市政府已经动工在这里修建一个纳粹反人类罪行博物馆，但因经费不足尚未完工。这块废墟曾是40年代纳粹盖世太保的总部。90年人们在这里的一块荒地下面发掘出盖世太保的监狱和刑讯室，旁边的一个荒土堆是他们执行示众绞刑和秘密枪决的地方。这个展览是柏林市举办的，有大量图片和文件翻拍，纪录了当时在这里被监禁、被施酷刑、和枪决的许多德国和国际地下抵抗人士，有他们身前的照片，被枪决的报刊新闻照，刑警的纪录，当中有作家，医生，记者，家庭妇女，有些仅仅因为发表了不满纳粹的文章，或参与了地下抵抗组织的活动，就被关押在这里，不少人在英美俄联军开始攻城时被草率枪决。展览的另一部分记载纳粹如何把柏林的犹太族居民，老人、小孩在内，解押到集中营，再一部分是战后纽伦堡审判战犯的图片和法庭纪录。
据展览引言介绍，当年纽伦堡审判期间对纳粹罪行的大量揭露在德国本土并没有得到充分的报道。世界各地媒体记者芸集纽伦堡，然而只有七个德国记者现场报道。战后德国百姓忙于艰难的日常生活，但是，人们也不愿正视自己身边的丑恶、更不愿承担自己的一份责任。希特勒的纳粹统治系统屠杀六百万犹太人的残暴反人类罪行和战争罪延续了十多年，没有社会各界（商界，媒体，知识分子、市民等）的普遍支持，可能吗？战后德国媒体和公众舆论的相对沉默，使德国社会错过一个极好的反思、教育机会。
在某种程度上，历史恐怕会在我们眼前重演。今天，一股无形的强大的压力正在迫使人们沉默，迫使他们对中国这块土地上发生的刑讯逼供、任意监禁、以言论信仰治罪等人权虐待避而不谈。不光是在德国，在法国，甚至美国，如果遇不到公证舆论的阻滞，这股压力将蔓延、侵蚀“自由世界 ”。
一位德国朋友告诉我，经历过二战的她的父母一辈至今仍然认为，“除了希特勒等头领，德国人民对二战罪行没有任何责任”；然而她的同辈人，60年代成长起来的叛离青年一代，则负有过于沉重的罪感和羞辱，以至失去了批评其他国度违反人权的勇气。这一代也是目前德国政界、商界和知识界的骨干。我可以理解这种心态，但是，他们这样做恰恰无助于杜绝让他们内疚的历史以别的形式、在不同程度上重演，也不利于巩固在斜恶和残暴的废墟上建立起来的德国民主自由。
灰蒙蒙的天空飘起小雨，我的脚趾头开始冻得发疼，我感觉步伐沉重。一群大陆游览者过来了，来参观“柏林墙”，他们没有浏览展出的图片，纷纷拍照留影，匆匆离去，可能是要赶到下一个游览胜地。他们渐去的谈笑声，是我联想起另外一些同胞：他们在做什么？忙于为狱中网络作家辩护？为维护土地权、寻求水源污染救助的同胞上访？为因“刑讯逼供”被判重刑的受害者准备上诉？为受到家庭暴力的妇女提供法律咨询？无形中我感到暖和了许多，加快了步伐。
晓蓉
2005年11月28日 于巴黎
应哈佛大学欧洲研究柏林中心邀请，我前往在该中心举办的“中国：人权与经济机遇”对话讲演会上发言。
抵达之前有一段插曲。会前三周，会议组织人来信说，曾答应与会的第三位发言人突然提出因故不能出席，剩下我们两位。另一位是《华尔街日报》前任驻北京记者尹.约翰先生。约翰今年刚出一本新书《野草》。书中记述三位普通中国百姓寻求社会公正的经历。约翰先生曾因为他在中国期间的新闻报道荣获美国的普里茨大奖。因故退出的第三位发言人是麻省理工大学的一位华人经济学教授。主持单位曾希望我们之间能有一场关于中国的经济、公民社会、和人权的对话。对话缺了一方，哈佛中心十分着急。几天后，他们另外邀请了一位欧籍经济学者、现任欧洲某商业公司驻上海代表。看来一场有趣的对话可以照原计划进行了。
没想到，会前三天，主持人来信说该商人也突然退出。不过他倒是坦诚，他说他的公司不允许他在这种讨论中国的人权状况的公开讲演会上露面，认为他答应出席太冒险，将损害该公司在中国的生意！到达柏林当天，笔者又听说，曾经提前注册的听众中的一些商界和金融界人士也来信表示歉意，说他们出于压力不得不缺席。
是这些金融和商界人士过于惧怕、因此实行自我审查（self-censorship）呢 ，还是有关机构在下面对他们施加压力、用取消合同和投资机会或者研究访问机会威胁他们退出？笔者不得而知。
这场讲演会定在柏林的“外国事务协商委员会”（相当于纽约的Council for Foreign Affairs）举行。好几位以短期进修大陆学生身份注册的同胞届时到达会场。陆续在会议厅后面落座后，当中不只一位举起相机纷纷对着我们几位坐在讲台上的发言人和主持人拍照。
出乎主持人意外的是，抵达的听众把一间能容纳120人的会议厅几乎装满了。后来得知，有些不能代表商界到场的人士以个人身份前来出席。
主持会议的塔夫茨大学（在美国波士顿）教授斯密斯简单回顾了20世纪各国在人权与经济贸易关系问题上失败与成功的经验教训。他谈到当年有些美国公司在希特勒上台后，继续与他治下的纳粹帝国通商好几年。二战后，美国人民接受了教训，支持政府对苏联实行经贸制裁以及随后在80年代对南非种族歧视当局实行的制裁。但是，89年后，美国很快解除了对中国实行的人权与贸易挂钩的政策。至于中国的人权与经济发展和国际贸易之间是否应该完全脱节，这是当前颇有争议的问题，他希望这次讲演会能激发听众的思考。
接下来，约翰先生发言。他注重介绍他在中国期间与普通百姓的接触，他的经历使他感到民间社会不屈的力量和困境，但是他相信这股力量将会推动中国社会自下而上的变革。
我的发言首先肯定了近年来中国政府在立法、乡村选举试验、以及把“保护人权”写入宪法等方面的正面尝试，但是，由于基本体制痼疾，在保护基本人权方面仍然存在严重问题，如大量使用死刑、酷刑（刑讯逼供）和非法羁押；民间自发争取经济和社会文化人权的团体和人士继续遭到迫害和压制，恰恰因为他们的参政、言论、结社、集会、信仰自由等公民政治权利受到严重侵犯；中国式的集权控制下的经济发展和官僚腐败造成社会分配不公、贫富悬殊急剧扩大；国外企业到中国投资经商对中国的政治改革进程和人权改进显然有直接影响，雅虎香港公司协助公安治罪网上作家师涛提供证据、雅虎和微软等公司签署进入中国市场自检条约、在其搜寻器上查封“民主”“人权”等字眼等例，就可以说明这个问题。
接下来听众提问，讨论了近一小时。主持会议的斯密斯教授最后邀请在场的几位“年轻中国学生”发言。他们之间悄声商议后，推出一位发言人。这位年轻女士用相当流利的英文说，邓小平的英明改革是中国历史上的伟绩，酷刑等只是文革中的现象，中国人口众多，是存在一些问题，但是要慢慢解决，不能因此造成社会动乱，繁荣的经济给外商带来极好的投资机会，不要错过，等等。台上台下各位的目光都集中到我身上，看来我不得不出来“应战”。
近年来在各种场合公开演讲，我已经习惯了这类“慷慨呈辞”，“应战”起来也有了经验。年轻人是中国的未来，出来留学的人更有挑起重任的机会。他们在海外公开场合如此发言，没准也是身不由己，但完全有可能是他们在言论、媒体控制下只能接触官方许可信息而形成了这些代表他们本人真实思想的看法。民族情绪或许也夹杂其中。
散会后的自由交谈中，这几位学生中的一位提醒我，德国、美国社会也有阴暗面。也许是这样，我回答说，但是我们不能因此就彼此心照不宣、闭口不谈阴暗面？可惜我当时没时间与这位继续交谈：既然中国签署了反对酷刑的国际公约、口头承认有关人权的普世性，官方媒体近来也大量报道美国士兵施行酷刑的消息，那么，为什么就不能公开批评中国现存的酷刑现象？
离开柏林前，我来到残存的“柏林墙”。当年隔绝东、西德两个世界，长达150多公里的森严壁垒，现在只剩下200米长的一段，作为历史遗迹保留下来。从61年东德修建“柏林墙”到它89年的倒塌，曾有150 多人因试图从东德越墙到西德而被东德看守击毙。
这里正好在举行一个露天图片展览：“恐怖的解析”。柏林市政府已经动工在这里修建一个纳粹反人类罪行博物馆，但因经费不足尚未完工。这块废墟曾是40年代纳粹盖世太保的总部。90年人们在这里的一块荒地下面发掘出盖世太保的监狱和刑讯室，旁边的一个荒土堆是他们执行示众绞刑和秘密枪决的地方。这个展览是柏林市举办的，有大量图片和文件翻拍，纪录了当时在这里被监禁、被施酷刑、和枪决的许多德国和国际地下抵抗人士，有他们身前的照片，被枪决的报刊新闻照，刑警的纪录，当中有作家，医生，记者，家庭妇女，有些仅仅因为发表了不满纳粹的文章，或参与了地下抵抗组织的活动，就被关押在这里，不少人在英美俄联军开始攻城时被草率枪决。展览的另一部分记载纳粹如何把柏林的犹太族居民，老人、小孩在内，解押到集中营，再一部分是战后纽伦堡审判战犯的图片和法庭纪录。
据展览引言介绍，当年纽伦堡审判期间对纳粹罪行的大量揭露在德国本土并没有得到充分的报道。世界各地媒体记者芸集纽伦堡，然而只有七个德国记者现场报道。战后德国百姓忙于艰难的日常生活，但是，人们也不愿正视自己身边的丑恶、更不愿承担自己的一份责任。希特勒的纳粹统治系统屠杀六百万犹太人的残暴反人类罪行和战争罪延续了十多年，没有社会各界（商界，媒体，知识分子、市民等）的普遍支持，可能吗？战后德国媒体和公众舆论的相对沉默，使德国社会错过一个极好的反思、教育机会。
在某种程度上，历史恐怕会在我们眼前重演。今天，一股无形的强大的压力正在迫使人们沉默，迫使他们对中国这块土地上发生的刑讯逼供、任意监禁、以言论信仰治罪等人权虐待避而不谈。不光是在德国，在法国，甚至美国，如果遇不到公证舆论的阻滞，这股压力将蔓延、侵蚀“自由世界 ”。
一位德国朋友告诉我，经历过二战的她的父母一辈至今仍然认为，“除了希特勒等头领，德国人民对二战罪行没有任何责任”；然而她的同辈人，60年代成长起来的叛离青年一代，则负有过于沉重的罪感和羞辱，以至失去了批评其他国度违反人权的勇气。这一代也是目前德国政界、商界和知识界的骨干。我可以理解这种心态，但是，他们这样做恰恰无助于杜绝让他们内疚的历史以别的形式、在不同程度上重演，也不利于巩固在斜恶和残暴的废墟上建立起来的德国民主自由。
灰蒙蒙的天空飘起小雨，我的脚趾头开始冻得发疼，我感觉步伐沉重。一群大陆游览者过来了，来参观“柏林墙”，他们没有浏览展出的图片，纷纷拍照留影，匆匆离去，可能是要赶到下一个游览胜地。他们渐去的谈笑声，是我联想起另外一些同胞：他们在做什么？忙于为狱中网络作家辩护？为维护土地权、寻求水源污染救助的同胞上访？为因“刑讯逼供”被判重刑的受害者准备上诉？为受到家庭暴力的妇女提供法律咨询？无形中我感到暖和了许多，加快了步伐。
晓蓉
2005年11月28日 于巴黎
Friday, June 10, 2005
Tiananmen is not for sale
Xiaorong Li and Lun Zhang
International Herald Tribune
SATURDAY, MAY 28, 2005
PARIS June 4 marks the 16th anniversary of China's bloody repression of pro-democracy protests on Tiananmen Square. The legacy of the massacre has been put sharply in focus by the current debate over lifting the arms embargo imposed by the European Union in response to that event.
The debate is not only about the meaning of Tiananmen in the context of rapid changes in China, but also the will of the EU to assert its values as it fashions coherent policies toward an increasingly influential China.
China has evolved in important ways, but not in its authoritarian political structure. Its dynamic economy has brought prosperity to many, fostered social pluralism and forced the state to scale back its totalitarian intrusiveness.
Yet those citizens who demand participation in decision-making or who criticize government policies risk retaliation, arbitrary detention, unfair trials or torture. The official verdict on Tiananmen as "counterrevolutionary" stands firm. Public commemorations and demands for an accounting remain punishable offenses.
Chinese leaders underestimate the potency of Tiananmen. After the "SARS doctor," Jiang Yanyong, earned international acclaim by disclosing official cover-ups of the epidemic, he joined the "Tiananmen Mothers" to demand an official re-evaluation of the massacre.
Mourners poured out their hearts for former Party Secretary General Zhao Ziyang, who died last January after spending 15 years under house arrest for having shown sympathy for the students in Tiananmen.
In April, the government hastily banned the anti-Japan demonstrations that it had tacitly permitted after demonstrators extended their focus from the atrocities committed by Japanese troops half a century ago to those committed by the Chinese Liberation Army in 1989.
By holding Tiananmen political prisoners, refusing any reckoning with what happened and burying the memories, it is the government that keeps the spotlight on the massacre.
China finds it humiliating to be classed with countries like Myanmar and Zimbabwe, which are also under EU embargoes for the violations of human rights.
Of course, China is worlds apart from these impoverished and woefully mismanaged states. However, like Myanmar, China harasses democracy activists and imprisons many for their ideas and convictions. Myanmar may have conscripted the most child soldiers, but China executes the largest number of people each year. Despite food insecurity and political violence, Zimbabwe has, unlike China, a functioning opposition, albeit tightly constrained.
Just as European leaders are not about to lift embargoes on Myanmar or Zimbabwe without real rights improvement, so they should keep the embargo on China until there is measurable progress.
The free world must reject the convenient assumption that the Chinese prefer prosperity to political freedom.
The explosion of independent reporting and information has been accompanied by the deployment of an estimated 50,000 cyberpolice who block Web sites, patrol cybercafes, monitor the use of cellular phones and track down Internet activists.
Enhanced economic performance has not meant better protection for those whose lives and interests inconvenience those in power. When China ratified the International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights, for example, it entered a reservation explicitly rejecting the right of workers to form independent unions. Workers who produce the products flooding European markets are powerless to fight hazardous sweatshop conditions and low wages.
International pressure after Tiananmen in the form of trade sanctions did some good, until the argument prevailed that they punished ordinary Chinese. That argument hardly applies to the weapons embargo, since it is the Chinese state and its military that benefit from the arms trade.
China threatens to retaliate by withholding business contracts and cooperation in other areas if the EU stands firm on rights conditions for lifting the embargo. Heeding these threats only encourages further use of this tactic.
The ball should be in China's court. It can have the embargo lifted by making concrete and structural progress on civil rights.
Even if a proposed "code of conduct" is applied to future weapons sales, the symbolic act of lifting the embargo would signal triumph of business interest over human rights, sending the wrong message to people in the region who aspire for what Europe stands for.
(Lun Zhang was a student leader during the Tiananmen protests and now lives in Paris. Xiaorong Li is visiting at the Center for International Study and Research in Paris.)
Copyright © 2005 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/05/27/opinion/edli.php
International Herald Tribune
SATURDAY, MAY 28, 2005
PARIS June 4 marks the 16th anniversary of China's bloody repression of pro-democracy protests on Tiananmen Square. The legacy of the massacre has been put sharply in focus by the current debate over lifting the arms embargo imposed by the European Union in response to that event.
The debate is not only about the meaning of Tiananmen in the context of rapid changes in China, but also the will of the EU to assert its values as it fashions coherent policies toward an increasingly influential China.
China has evolved in important ways, but not in its authoritarian political structure. Its dynamic economy has brought prosperity to many, fostered social pluralism and forced the state to scale back its totalitarian intrusiveness.
Yet those citizens who demand participation in decision-making or who criticize government policies risk retaliation, arbitrary detention, unfair trials or torture. The official verdict on Tiananmen as "counterrevolutionary" stands firm. Public commemorations and demands for an accounting remain punishable offenses.
Chinese leaders underestimate the potency of Tiananmen. After the "SARS doctor," Jiang Yanyong, earned international acclaim by disclosing official cover-ups of the epidemic, he joined the "Tiananmen Mothers" to demand an official re-evaluation of the massacre.
Mourners poured out their hearts for former Party Secretary General Zhao Ziyang, who died last January after spending 15 years under house arrest for having shown sympathy for the students in Tiananmen.
In April, the government hastily banned the anti-Japan demonstrations that it had tacitly permitted after demonstrators extended their focus from the atrocities committed by Japanese troops half a century ago to those committed by the Chinese Liberation Army in 1989.
By holding Tiananmen political prisoners, refusing any reckoning with what happened and burying the memories, it is the government that keeps the spotlight on the massacre.
China finds it humiliating to be classed with countries like Myanmar and Zimbabwe, which are also under EU embargoes for the violations of human rights.
Of course, China is worlds apart from these impoverished and woefully mismanaged states. However, like Myanmar, China harasses democracy activists and imprisons many for their ideas and convictions. Myanmar may have conscripted the most child soldiers, but China executes the largest number of people each year. Despite food insecurity and political violence, Zimbabwe has, unlike China, a functioning opposition, albeit tightly constrained.
Just as European leaders are not about to lift embargoes on Myanmar or Zimbabwe without real rights improvement, so they should keep the embargo on China until there is measurable progress.
The free world must reject the convenient assumption that the Chinese prefer prosperity to political freedom.
The explosion of independent reporting and information has been accompanied by the deployment of an estimated 50,000 cyberpolice who block Web sites, patrol cybercafes, monitor the use of cellular phones and track down Internet activists.
Enhanced economic performance has not meant better protection for those whose lives and interests inconvenience those in power. When China ratified the International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights, for example, it entered a reservation explicitly rejecting the right of workers to form independent unions. Workers who produce the products flooding European markets are powerless to fight hazardous sweatshop conditions and low wages.
International pressure after Tiananmen in the form of trade sanctions did some good, until the argument prevailed that they punished ordinary Chinese. That argument hardly applies to the weapons embargo, since it is the Chinese state and its military that benefit from the arms trade.
China threatens to retaliate by withholding business contracts and cooperation in other areas if the EU stands firm on rights conditions for lifting the embargo. Heeding these threats only encourages further use of this tactic.
The ball should be in China's court. It can have the embargo lifted by making concrete and structural progress on civil rights.
Even if a proposed "code of conduct" is applied to future weapons sales, the symbolic act of lifting the embargo would signal triumph of business interest over human rights, sending the wrong message to people in the region who aspire for what Europe stands for.
(Lun Zhang was a student leader during the Tiananmen protests and now lives in Paris. Xiaorong Li is visiting at the Center for International Study and Research in Paris.)
Copyright © 2005 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/05/27/opinion/edli.php
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