KNOW THIS: China’s Human Rights Offenses as Offensive as any other Government’s
December 31, 2009
Since warning China in November that the international community will not tolerate continued violations of Chinese citizens’ basic human rights, President Obama has chosen not to address Beijing’s renewed hard-line approach to silencing prominent citizen critics. Sadly, other western leaders and most western media outlets have followed suit.
In October, The Know Something Project launched a series on Freedom of Expression with a review of events involving Chinese writers not only deterred from attending the 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair, but intimidated on a regular basis for voicing their views regarding Chinese government policies.
Prior to President Obama’s state visit to China, the PEN American Center of the International PEN literary and human rights organization sent the president a letter requesting his intervention in the cases of more than 40 writers imprisoned in China. The letter cited in particular a prominent, internationally recognized poet and scholar who taught at Columbia University until leaving the U.S. to help organize Tianenmen Square protests in 1989, 54-year-old Liu Xiaobo.
Liu Xiaobo was detained last December on the eve of the publication of Charter 08, a document that calls for political and human rights reforms and has been signed by thousands of people throughout China. Liu Xiaobo reportedly helped organize the writing of the open letter to the Chinese government, as well as the solicitation of signatures to the document. After six months of “residential surveillance” while evidence was gathered against him, Liu Xiaobo was arrested in June.
On Christmas, Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years in prison and two years “deprivation of political rights” on charges of subversion.
While articles about Liu Xiaobo’s arrest, very brief trial, and recent sentencing have appeared in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, the Obama administration has remained relatively silent regarding this case. On December 14, the U.S. State Department joined the European Union in calling for Liu Xiaobo’s release, and immediately following the activist’s sentencing a State Department spokesperson said Liu’s treatment is “uncharacteristic of a great country.”
We at The Know Something Project believe our own government’s failure to speak out much more strongly against basic human rights violations in China is also “uncharacteristic of a great country.”
In the introduction to our series on Freedom of Expression, we stated: “…the fact China is guilty of a long list of human rights abuses does not seem to diminish U.S. enthusiasm for involvement with it as a powerful partner…or U.S. efforts to ignore instances in which Chinese citizens are mistreated by their own government.”
The case of Liu Xiaobo makes it clear that Chinese governing powers are determined to deny basic freedoms to their citizens, the same freedoms young American soldiers have been charged to defend in other countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Why is the Chinese government seemingly immune from similar intervention when it continues to commit crimes against its own citizenry? Why do the Obama administration, other leaders of western nations, and our mainstream media continue to ignore these injustices? Wouldn’t it help oppressed people…and a government striving to succeed in the 21st century…to press Beijing to accept and pursue what is right?
As Liu Xiaobo and others behind the writing of Charter 08 so eloquently put it:
“Where will China head in the 21st century? Continue a ‘modernization’ under…authoritarian rule? Or recognize universal values, assimilate into the mainstream civilization, and build a democratic political system? This is a major decision that cannot be avoided.”
—Sherry Seiber
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