Message to President Obama and President Hu Jintao for their upcoming meetings in support of Human Rights which is a far bigger issue than the Yuan and the Dollar parities might ever be…
The future of one fourth of humanity is at stake and China’s economic prominence means they need to move on in positive Human Rights actions asap.
Start by this simple menu as proposed by China Human Rights workers.
Human Rights observance in China means a few simple things:
Support civil society, and in particular activists and lawyers who are taking great personal risks to promote human rights and democracy. The good news is that Chinese citizens are learning to speak up, to organize, and to demand that their rights be respected. For nearly a decade now, a civil rights movement known as the “rights defense movement” has spread among citizens of many backgrounds. Victims of forced eviction or migrant laborers are transformed into rights activists when they see their efforts to remedy injustices answered with censorship, police brutality, and corruption in legal institutions. Most of the 12,000 signers of Charter 08 —farmers, workers, AIDS activists, environmentalists, and others—are citizens who decided to endorse the charter even after police had suppressed it and imprisoned one of its authors, Liu Xiaobo.
Supporting civil society means to make strong and clear public statements in support of human rights activists and that speak directly to the Chinese people: Rhetoric is important. The Norwegian Nobel Committee did a great service by speaking past the Chinese government and directly to the Chinese people, saying, in effect, “we see you, too, and we honor you.” The most significant and sensitive divide in China today is between the Chinese state and its citizens. People in the democratic governments of the world should bear in mind that the Chinese state still dominates the Chinese press and rules without popular consent. It is insensitive to lump rulers and ruled together as if they were the same thing and as if only the rulers can speak for the whole.
It means to facilitate Internet freedom: Today the Internet is the most important way, in China as much as in other repressive societies, for ordinary citizens to access information, express their views, organize themselves, and engage in activism. The US government should do what it can to provide Chinese Internet users with technical support to get around the “Great Firewall” that the Chinese government has erected to block political dissent and prevent access to information. At a minimum, the US government should work to discourage American IT companies from the sordid practice of supplying the Chinese government with technology that facilitates censorship and surveillance.
It also means to strengthen direct contacts with activists and provide them support: US officials should publicly raise concerns about individual cases at high-level meetings; USleaders visiting China should meet Chinese civil-society activists personally; the State Department international visitor program should invite civil society actors only; the current practice of sending the US ambassador or someone from his embassy staff to attend the trials of dissidents, or their talks at civic forums, should continue and increase; small grants from the embassy for public civil-society activities should increase.
Focus on holding the Chinese government to its own rhetorical commitments to its citizens. Such an emphasis is effective in its own right and will also help avoid stirring up “nationalist,” anti-Western sentiment. The Chinese government, although it constantly abuses human rights, continually claims to observe them. “Human rights” no longer is a taboo phrase in official discourse. Such rhetoric creates opportunities to push the authorities to deliver. Western democracies can answer the Chinese government’s accusations about “interference in China’s internal affairs” by citing its own rhetoric. If the Chinese government is called upon to observe the constitutional and legal commitments that it has made to its own citizens—some of which are inscribed in international protocols—it can hardly claim “interference.”
Strengthen US involvement in multilateral forums such as the UN Human Rights Council. The Chinese government participates actively in the UN Human Rights Council. If it is eager to be a global player in this forum for promoting human rights around the world, then of course it should observe international standards for human rights. The US should use the UN HRC more effectively, to press the Chinese government to adhere to the international human-rights conventions that it has signed and/or ratified. Such a policy would require the USto take a leadership role in forums such as the UN HRC and to build multilateral coalitions to hold the Chinese government accountable for its failure to respect international conventions. This kind of international scrutiny will undercut the Chinese government’s exceptionalist claims about “human rights views with Chinese characteristics” and will render vacuous its reflexive accusation that discussion of its human rights record amounts to “interference in internal affairs.” It will also limit the Chinese government’s ability to fan nationalist sentiment at home into opposition to “Western” human rights.
US programs to assist “Rule of law” reforms and to facilitate exchanges of “legal experts” should be designed to address the particular administrative and legal problems in China that have led to human rights abuses. Current US legal assistance to China is misconceived insofar as it assists the existing legal system in becoming more efficient. Instead, US assistance would be better directed toward problems such as widespread torture. The Chinese government ratified the Convention against Torture in 1988. On paper, “torture to force confession” is no longer legal in China, and in legal circles torture is no longer a taboo topic. TheUS might use its legal-aid resources to address issues such as how to prevent deaths in detention and how, in court trials, to reject evidence that was extracted by forced confession. US legal aid could also be used to strengthen protections for criminal defense lawyers to help them avoid arbitrary prosecution or disbarment. Such lawyers —especially those who defend human rights activists, Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetans, Uighurs, and underground Christians—are already in very short supply.
The proposed US-China talk of “open government” must address China’s draconian “state secret” law. In January 2007, the Chinese State Council adopted the “Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Open Government Information” that was supposed to take effect in May 2008. But the government has ignored these regulations wherever it relates to human rights. For example the number of death sentences and executions remain “state secrets,” and authorities continue to use vaguely-defined “state secret” provisions of the criminal law code to prosecute many people for “leaking,” “stealing,” or “possessing” state secrets. Victims of such abuses have included not only Chinese human rights activists and protesters in ethnic minority regions such as Tibet and Xinjiang, but also American and European businessmen and a scientific researcher. Any talk about “open government” with the government of China must address this area of law and practice. Since Americans are among those who have been ensnared—and might again be in the future—this is not an “internal matter.”
Resume the “US-China Human Rights Dialogue” only if transparency and participation by representatives of civil society in China are guaranteed. Previous “dialogues” have brought no real change and were even counterproductive because they allowed the Chinese government to claim an “achievement” on human rights when in fact no progress was being made. The dialogue should not only address abuses of social and economic rights but also sensitive issues concerning serious violations of civil and political rights. Any future dialogues should be open—i.e., publicly reported in full. The lack of free press and free association (genuine NGOs devoted to human rights) in China has allowed the government to distort earlier dialogues in the state-run media and prevented them from having any broader educational impact for Chinese citizens. Maintaining secrecy diminishes the opportunity to authenticate and follow up with what the Chinese officials provided as “information” or promised to do behind doors. Each round of the dialogues should be followed by an honest and public assessment of impact, and talks should be resumed only if it can be shown that real progress has resulted from the previous round. Non-government human rights organizations in both countries should be invited to participate, or to engage in parallel dialogues, or they should at least be consulted and heard well in advance and afterward.
These are the things You two should make sure they start working in China before long.
History has no use for tardiness in the face of popular change and progress.
Remember that….
Yours,
Pano
PS:
Finally, this message must be clear to the US President:
The US should lead by example.
The US will only have an impact on positive changes in China and elsewhere by respecting human rights and strengthening democracy at home and taking a global leadership in upholding human rights as the guiding principle of its foreign policy. When the US ends torture, protects free press, or makes healthcare affordable to everyone, those who promote human rights and speak out against abuses in hostile environments can hold their heads high and carry on their arduous struggle, often at great personal risk.
