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Obedience to
authority, sacrificing self-interest to what governments defined
as national interests, accepting curbs on free speech, all these
things were claimed to be specifically Asian, part of ancient
traditions, something all Asians had in their cultural DNA.
In
fact, it was a justification of authoritarian politics inherited
by the likes of Prime Ministers Mahathir and Lee Kuan Yew from
the British empire.
All
human beings would like to be free to express their thoughts and
beliefs, without danger of being arrested or worse. Who would not
like "the right to life, liberty and security of
person"?
The problem is that these rights can only be
guaranteed under certain political conditions.
No party,
or ruler, should be above the law. People should not be arrested
for peacefully criticising their government.
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Culture
is no excuse for China denying its people democracy
Ian
Buruma
The Observer
3 Feb
08
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2251492,00.html
Repressive
regimes are playing on our colonial guilt, but we must stand up
for those values to which oppressed people aspire
A
little more than a week ago, in Davos, at the gathering of the
world's great and the good, Kenneth Roth, executive director of
Human Rights Watch, directed a polite, though pointed question to
Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani strongman. How could we trust the
Pakistani supreme court as the arbiter of fairness of future
elections when Musharraf had removed all the judges who opposed
his authoritarian rule? President Musharraf lost his cool. How
could Roth (an American) presume to "impose" his
"European values" on the Pakistanis! Pakistan, he said,
had its own idea of democracy and human rights. Indeed, what
Musharraf was offering was not some Western notion of freedom,
but "the essence of democracy".
A day before
this arresting exchange, the same Kenneth Roth had annoyed
another official from a non-Western country, senior Chinese
diplomat, Wu Jianmin. China, Roth pointed out, was not a
democracy, so could not be expected to promote civil society
around the world, but it could, surely, do more to stop mass
atrocities in places such as Darfur. This launched Ambassador Wu
into a passionate speech about "Chinese democracy" and
about the folly of Westerners trying to "impose" their
idea of democracy on others.
The same sentiment was voiced
by a Chinese government spokeswoman, after Hu Jia, a prominent
human rights activist was arrested in December for allegedly
"inciting subversion of state power".
His crime
was to chronicle human rights abuses on his website, something
the government would like to nip in the bud before the Olympics.
The foreign ministry spokeswoman said: "Chinese people know
best about China"s human rights situation."
Such
arguments are not new and might, with frequent use, have started
to wear thin. But they resonate in some circles, where colonial
guilt still colours all perceptions of the developing world. More
important, perhaps, they resonate among businessmen who feel the
need for a moral justification for making money in non-democratic
countries: "They have their own way of doing things. It is
their culture. Who are we to impose...?" And so on.
There
are several things to be said about all this. First, the West has
very rarely, if ever, "imposed" democracy on anyone.
Perhaps the world would be a better place if it had. On the
contrary, during the Cold War, the main US policy was to support
"our bastards" whoever they were, as long as they were
anti-communist. A certain amount of lip service, faute de mieux,
was paid to democracy, after the invasion of Iraq, but few
members of the Bush administration had a serious interest in
imposing free institutions.
On Burma, Western governments
can do little more than preach about democracy and human rights.
In China, they have stopped doing even that. Business interests
are simply too important. Without Chinese money, the US economy
would be in even worse trouble than it is already. And China, for
better or worse, is buying more and more interests in the West,
as Friday's purchase of a 12 per cent stake in Rio Tinto
showed.
Now it is true that countries have their own
histories, peculiar circumstances and cultures and that too much
preaching can smack of the old missionary zeal to assume that all
the things we cherish at home should be universally adopted. But
culture, in the sense of custom and tradition, is often nothing
but an excuse for political arrangements. Democrats from
countries such as China, Pakistan or Burma do not accuse the West
of imposing its values. Only authoritarians do.
A few
decades ago, it was fashionable, especially in Singapore and
Malaysia, to talk about "Asian values". Obedience to
authority, sacrificing self-interest to what governments defined
as national interests, accepting curbs on free speech, all these
things were claimed to be specifically Asian, part of ancient
traditions, something all Asians had in their cultural DNA. In
fact, it was a justification of authoritarian politics inherited
by the likes of Prime Ministers Mahathir and Lee Kuan Yew from
the British empire.
Even as the Asian values were being
touted, South Koreans, Taiwanese, Thais, Chinese and Filipinos
were demonstrating in huge numbers against their authoritarian
rulers. In South Korea, Taiwan and, more fitfully, Thailand and
the Philippines, they succeeded. And what was it that the Burmese
were risking their lives for recently, not to mention Kenyans,
Zimbabweans, and many others, if not more of what Musharraf
dismisses as European cultural impositions? What they want is not
our culture, but the kind of freedoms that we take for
granted.
One reason why Taiwan is such a tricky problem
for the Chinese government is precisely its politics. If Chinese
culture demands authoritarian politics, or what Ambassador Wu
would call "Chinese democracy", then what about Taiwan?
Are the Taiwanese any less Chinese?
When it comes to human
rights, and not just political rights (although the two are
obviously linked), things can become more complicated. It is not
always easy to define what should be regarded as a human right.
Child labour, for example, can be a necessity in very poor
countries. Trying to stop it, in the name of human rights, can
make things worse for people instead of better. Nor is there a
universal agreement on the precise age at which a person stops
being a child.
But again, culture is often a poor excuse
for inhumanity. Slavery, female circumcision or stoning of
adulterous women are undoubtedly part of certain cultures, in
that they are traditional practices. So is widow burning in
India. This is not a good argument, however, for continuing such
practices. To what extent the West can, or should, directly
intervene, is a difficult question. Lord William Bentinck, who
served as governor-general of India in the 1830s, banned widow
burning and infanticide in the name of universal moral law. But
he did so with the full support of Hindu reformers. And, after
all, the British were more or less in charge, not a situation
that is likely to repeat itself.
Local support is the
crucial factor, when we talk about promoting reforms and cultural
changes. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed in
1948 by China, Burma and the Soviet Union, among many other
countries, would certainly be supported by most people in the
world, wherever they are. It is hard to imagine Chinese,
Pakistanis, North Koreans or Zimbabweans being in favour of
torture, arbitrary arrest, slavery or lawlessness for cultural
reasons.
All human beings would like to be free to express
their thoughts and beliefs, without danger of being arrested or
worse. Who would not like "the right to life, liberty and
security of person"?
The problem is that these rights
can only be guaranteed under certain political conditions. No
party, or ruler, should be above the law. People should not be
arrested for peacefully criticising their government.
There
must be mechanisms to resolve peacefully political conflicts of
interest and to change a government in power, if most people
desire it. Institutions that can accomplish these aims may take
different forms, according to local cultures and conditions. But
they can all be adequately described by one word, which has been
much abused of late, but still has enough power left to inspire,
in Beijing and Rangoon no less than in Barcelona or Washington
DC: democracy.
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