April 15, 2008
Chinese perspective shared on panel on human rights
Amnesty International’s T. Kumar, critical of China, shared the podium with Wang Rong and WCL student Qin Zou. (Photo by Jeff Watts)
The news has not been good for China in recent weeks. The Olympic torch is winding its way to Beijing through protests. The Chinese crackdown in Tibet has sparked concern about human rights on the roof of the world.
For some Chinese students in the United States, it’s been frustrating to see a discussion that, as they see it, gives short shrift to the Chinese perspective. A panel on Tibet two weeks ago at the Washington College of Law prompted Chinese students to ask that their side be considered, too. A few days later, a second panel on human rights in China was changed to add Chinese voices as well.
“This is my first time sharing a panel with someone from China who are not dissidents,” said T. Kumar of Amnesty International. It was, he said, something that should happen more often.
Kumar spoke of human rights abuses, including executions without a fair trial, arrest at the whim of local officials, Internet censorship with special police to track down violators, and religious suppression in Tibet.
WCL student Qin Zou said that China’s failings should be put in perspective. While Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented human rights abuses, “these organizations never mention how far China has come in improving people’s lives,” she said.
Zou said that her mother in China, when told she’d be expressing her opinions in a public talk, was concerned about her safety. Zou saw that as indicative of a perspective born of years of turmoil, and one that will change only slowly as China progresses
Human rights also include the right to food and education, she said. Her parents’ generation, born in the early 1950s, struggled for many years to live hand to mouth, and many people in China still live on barely $1,600 a year.
Europe and the United States did not get to where they are overnight, she said. There has to be a process “before people get to the point where they think human rights is the most important thing in the world.”
Change is happening slowly, and won’t be helped, she said, by “exaggerated accusations” or boycotting the Olympics. “A lot of my [Chinese] friends are starting to feel it’s a little too pushy, a little too inaccurate, a little tunnel visioned,” she said.
Growing up in southwest China, in a region with many ethnic minorities, she said that, in her experience, minority culture is highly appreciated and minorities have rights that include affirmative action in university admissions.
The media has been falsely twisting the Tibetan situation, she said. She was fortunate to have more information, she said, because she could also read the Chinese newspapers. The Western press was not mentioning the Han Chinese victims of the Tibetan riots, she said, and are “being manipulated to push some other agenda, such as the independence of Tibet.”
Freedom of religion and speech are good things, “but do not combine this with other people’s political agenda,” she said.
Amnesty International does not take a position on the political status of Tibet, Kumar said. But in reference to human rights, it holds China to the same standards as other nations in the global community, including the United States, which has come under fire from Amnesty International for the death penalty, racial profiling, and other practices viewed by the organization as human rights violations.
In describing the human rights situation in China, he said that eighty percent of the world’s executions are taking place in China, and “almost all take place without a fair trial.” Local party officials can lock people up “on a whim,” he said, and there are concerns that the central government is losing control over what happens in the neighborhoods.
Gruesome torture is also used against Uighar Muslims, charged with being part of a separatist movement, he said. Internet freedom is limited, and a special police goes after perceived abusers.
Religious freedom is severely curtailed in Tibet, he said, and referred in particular to the case of the Panchen Lama, the second highest-ranking lama in Tibetan Buddhism after the Dalai Lama. In 1995, a six-year-old child was chosen by traditional means after the death of the previous Panchen Lama, whose reincarnation he is believed to be, and was recognized by the Dalai Lama.
However, the Chinese government also set up its own search committee and picked an alternate Panchen Lama, the son of two Communist Party members. “The question could be asked, ‘How did the Communist Party become a religious institution?’” Kumar asked.
The Panchen Lama viewed as legitimate by Tibetans disappeared the year he was named, along with his parents. They have not been seen since. “That shows religious freedom in Tibet,” Kumar said.
Also on the panel was Wang Rong, a professor at China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing. She described the “party’s democratic system” in China, saying it’s different from Western democracies because parties in China are not “opposition parties,” as in the United States, but “participant parties.”
She is a deputy of the Beijing’s People’s Congress, among other positions. She defined democracy as a “regime based on the will of the majority,” which she said exists in China in part because the “participant parties” are increasingly able to make suggestions.
“China likes harmony,” she said. “It doesn’t like conflicts.”
The panel was part of a daylong conference, “The Challenges Facing China,” as part of the 2008 Founders’ Celebration at WCL.
