USA and China normalized relations in 1979: How have human rights fared?

“I want to suggest that there has been an evolution in China over the last 30 years since the first normalization of relations between the United States and China. “And my expectation is that 30 years from now we will have seen further evolution and further change.” - President Barack Obama, January 19, 2010

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.” - Martin Luther King Jr.

First let us examine the impact of Washington’s engagement with the Chinese government and how it has changed the United States for the worse. On January 1, 1979 the United States normalized relations with China. That same year the one-child policy was instituted. A decade later on June 4, 1989 the Chinese dictatorship engaged in a massive crackdown killing 3,000 Chinese students and workers who had been non-violently protesting in Tiananmen Square. One month later on July 4, 1989 George H.W. Bush sent a secret high level delegation to meet with the Chinese regime and join with them in celebrating American Independence while downplaying any pro-forma criticisms made by the Administration. Candidate Bill Clinton would critique this de-linkage of human rights and commercial interests only to continue the practice during his own administration. This reached a symbolic low point in 1996 when the General responsible for the 1989 massacre was received at the White House with an honor guard.

Twenty years later on July 20, 1999 the Chinese Communist regime banned the Research Society of Falun Dafa and the Falun Gong organization under its control after deeming them to be illegal. Those who refused to renounce their faith were dealt with brutally. In April 2000, Ian Johnson reported on the fate of one of the practitioners:

The day before Chen Zixiu died, her captors again demanded that she renounce her faith in Falun Dafa. Barely conscious after repeated jolts from a cattle prod, the 58-year-old stubbornly shook her head. Enraged, the local officials ordered Ms. Chen to run barefoot in the snow. Two days of torture had left her legs bruised and her short black hair matted with pus and blood, said cellmates and other prisoners who witnessed the incident. She crawled outside, vomited and collapsed. She never regained consciousness, and died on Feb. 21.

Since then thousands more have been tortured and killed while many more have been sent into forced labor camps. These practices continue to the present day.

In 2011, Women's Rights Without Frontiers is denouncing forced abortions, sterilizations and sexual slavery in China. This policy that began 32 years ago in 1979 has not improved, but in fact gotten worse:




China’s One Child Policy began in 1979 and continues to the present day. Amnesty International has monitored how it operates in practice and in 1996 published the report China: No one is safe and presented details and specific cases:

Birth control policy in China

The official line
Family planning is “voluntary”, although birth control has been compulsory since 1979. Government demographers recommend stabilization of the population at 1.3 billion by the year 2000, which they say can only be achieved through “strict measures”. “Coercion is not permitted”, according to the State Family Planning Commission.

Some facts
-Women pregnant outside the plan have been abducted and forced to have abortions or undergo sterilization.
-Pregnant women have been detained and threatened until they agree to have abortions.
-People who refuse to comply with the policy have been harassed and some have been ill-treated by officials.
-“Above-quota” new-born babies have reportedly been killed by doctors under pressure from officials.
-The homes of couples who refuse to obey the child quotas have been demolished.
-Relatives of those who cannot pay fines imposed for having had too many children have been held hostage until the money was paid.
-Those helping families to have “above quota” children have been severely punished.
-Those committing human rights violations while enforcing the birth control policy often go unpunished.

A victim
An unmarried woman in Hebei province who had adopted one of her brother’s children was detained several times in an attempt to force her brother to pay fines for having had too many children. In November 1994 she was held for seven days with a dozen other men and women. She was reportedly blindfolded, stripped naked, tied and beaten with an electric baton.
Quote: ‘It was part of my work to force women...to have abortions. In the evening, when the couple was likely to be at home, we would go to their houses and drag the woman out. If the woman was not at home, we would take her husband or another member along and keep them in custody until the woman turned herself in.’ - A former family planning official, 1993

In April of 2010, Roseann Rife, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific Deputy Director said:"Forced sterilizations carried out by officials amount to torture and the haste of the procedures raises questions about their safety and possible health impacts."

Is it normal to embrace a mass murdering genocidal regime and treat it as an equal partner and proclaim that things have improved when they have in fact gotten worse? As to the Chinese leadership talking the talk on human rights? They've been doing that since 2000 without improvements on the ground. On the other hand corporate America has sold its soul in the effort to win market share in communist China and even the victims of Chinese repression may have been used for entertainment in BODIES...The Exhibition. This has generated debate in Canada over the exhibition.

This may be change but it is in the wrong direction and it is the United States and other countries that are compromising their moral and ethical traditions and undermining their own societies. Martin Luther King Jr. in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail on April 16, 1963 observed that "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." That also applies to China.

The tyrant, the super model and the blood diamonds

“Ms Campbell's testimony reminds us of the damage that can be done by power-hungry individuals who illegally exploit their country's natural resource wealth to wage campaigns of violence and brutality against civilians. The Taylor trial is an important moment in the history of international justice, when the survivors of his regime may finally see some reparation.” Oliver Courtney, Global Witness spokesperson.

Naomi Campbell & Charles Taylor

Charles Taylor has been described by Spiegel Online as part of the "Slaughterers' Society" of African dictators. A society in which members feed opponents to crocodiles, hack their feet off, and allow their people to starve. Supermodel Naomi Campbell over dinner flirted with "President" Taylor and enjoyed his company. Then again she's also enjoyed the company of dictators in other continents and said so proudly. For example, back in 1998 Naomi Cambpell described Fidel Castro as an "inspiration" and meeting him as "very spiritual." She's also hung out with Castro's disciple Hugo Chavez. describing him as a "rebel angel" that poses "no threat to democracy." Now it seems that her encounter with another tyrant she met in 1997 Liberia's Charles Taylor is coming back to haunt the supermodel.





Charles Taylor is now on trial for war crimes committed while he was president of Liberia. Ms. Campbell has testified denying that she knew that the former Liberian president and mass murderer Charles Taylor had sent her blood diamonds. Now other witnesses, among them her friend Mia Farrow and Carole White, her former agent are now contradicting her testimony.

"As we were eating, Naomi leaned back and Charles Taylor leaned forward, and Naomi was very excited and told me he was going to give her some diamonds." - Carole White

Whereas, Naomi Campbell only flirted with an alleged war criminal over dinner and later received contraband diamonds as a gift . Fidel Castro was also closely involved in a working relationship with the convicted genocidal war criminal former Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, now a fugitive hiding out with another of Castro ally Zimbabwe's brutal Robert Mugabe, and sent thousand of Cuban troops to assist in killing Ethiopians and spreading terror.
Hopefully one day the world will demand that Fidel Castro answer for that relationship and the Ethiopians murdered with his assistance.

At the same time one cannot underestimate the seriousness of blood diamonds and what they signify. Blood or conflict diamonds are subject to an international sanctions regimen that aims to undercut a funding source for armed conflicts in Africa. A more detailed description is provided by the Security Council Affairs Division which is part of the United Nations and based out of New York which states:

On 1 December 2000, the United Nations General Assembly adopted, unanimously, a resolution on the role of diamonds in fuelling conflict, breaking the link between the illicit transaction of rough diamonds and armed conflict, as a contribution to prevention and settlement of conflicts (A/RES/55/56). In taking up this agenda item, the General Assembly recognized that conflict diamonds are a crucial factor in prolonging brutal wars in parts of Africa, and underscored that legitimate diamonds contribute to prosperity and development elsewhere on the continent.

The story is still developing, and offers an insight into the relationship between economic sanctions and attempting to improve the human rights situation in a regional context. Below on the Colbert Report, although humorous, makes a serious point about human rights and economic interests looking at business practices in China followed by the Naomi Campbell controversy.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Tip/Wag - Foxconn, Charles Taylor & Naomi Campbell
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election Fox News

Join the group to boycott supermodel Naomi Campbell http://bit.ly/c7dVgy

Cuba’s Role in an African Genocide and Revolutionary Racism on the Island

Cuba’s Role in an African Genocide and Revolutionary Racism on the Island

Mengistu strikes me as a quiet, serious, and sincere leader who is aware of the power of the masses. He is an intellectual personality who showed his wisdom on February 3. […] The prelude to this was an exuberant speech by the Ethiopian president in favor of nationalism. Mengistu preempted this coup. He called the meeting of the Revolutionary Council one hour early and had the rightist leaders arrested and shot. A very consequential decision was taken on February 3 in Ethiopia. […]Before it was only possible to support the leftist forces indirectly, now we can do so without any constraints.

Fidel Castro celebrating initiation of Red Terror on February 3, 1977
and implicating later Cuban involvement in later waves of the Terror.

“Mengistu, who fled to Zimbabwe after he was deposed in 1991, was sentenced to death on Monday after he was found guilty in absentia of committing genocide during his 16-year rule.” - Melissa Gray, CNN May 28, 2008

The Cuban government finds itself on the defensive faced with charges and ample evidence that it is a racist regime. Worse still, a former supporter of the regime Abdias Nascimento has sent out an open letter that denounces political intimidation against those protesting against racism in Cuba and against citizens “who dare call for the establishment, in their country, of a State that is respectful of Civil Rights.” This letter has inspired dozens of prominent African American to join in the denunciation of institutionalized racism in Cuba and the demand for the immediate release of Afro-Cuban civil rights activist Dr. Darsi Ferrer. The dictatorship’s response: an orchestrated campaign attacking that “the signatories of Statement on Civil Rights in Cuba Are Misguided and Hypocritical.”

For over five decades the Cuban government has nearly perfected terror, manipulation, and propaganda in the pursuit of the maintenance of power. The regime has adapted to changing circumstances both internally and externally in the service of maintaining absolute power and magnifying its influence internationally. Twenty years ago the Cuban dictatorship conducted a tribute to the fallen and on December 7, 2009 remembered the 20th anniversary of Tribute Operation or as official Cuban press accounts referred to it as “a posthumous homage paid to the more than two thousand Cubans fallen on international missions. “

According to official data, during the more than 13 years of Cuban military involvement in countries like Angola, Ethiopia and Nicaragua, 2,085 Cuban soldiers were killed in combat missions, and another 204 died while performing civilian tasks bringing the total number to 2,289 Cubans killed on “internationalist missions.”

In the case of Africa, Cuba projected its military forces on the continent for decades with two high profile “victories” according to government news sources: Ethiopia and Angola. The reliance on military force and successes on the battlefield obscured some hard truths that over time are revealed by history.

Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro and Ex-Ethiopian Dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam convicted of genocide

African Genocide
One of the deeds that the dictatorship in Cuba wants to keep hidden from the world and African Americans in particular, is its role in the mass killings in Ethiopia in the 1970s and 1980s. Beginning in late 1977, the first 5,000 of what would eventually number over 17,000 Cuban military personnel arrived in Ethiopia. By 1987 the Cuban presence had dropped to fewer than 2,000 personnel. During 1977-78, a conservative estimate of over 30,000 Africans perished as a result of the Red Terror unleashed by the Ethiopian Communists and their Cuban allies. Amnesty International concluded that "this campaign resulted in several thousand to perhaps tens of thousands of men, women, and children killed, tortured, and imprisoned." Sweden's Save the Children Fund lodged a formal protest in early 1978 denouncing the execution of 1,000 children, many below the age of thirteen, whom the communist government had labeled "liaison agents of the counter revolutionaries." Fidel Castro offered a different view of the terror addressing Cuban and Ethiopian troops in Ethiopia in September of 1978:

"Comrade Cubans, I can recall those days of December 1977 and January 1978 when we said farewell to the first Cuban internationalist combatants who were leaving for Ethiopia. [...]Eighteen months later we have returned to a Ethiopia which is victorious be cause of its combative sons' heroism and the support of international solidarity, as Comrade Mengistu stated 2 days ago. Moreover, it is also an already powerful Ethiopia. Tuesday's popular parade confirmed the enormous popular support for this revolutionary change. Yesterday's military parade tells us of the degree of organization and discipline achieved by the combative and courageous fraternal Ethiopian people. The rapid revolutionary offensive of the Ethiopian and Cuban troops practically annihilated the enemy. [...]Ethiopian brothers, together with you we have fought and we have won. Together with you we are ready to fight again and to win again. Together with you we pledge: Fatherland or death, we shall win!

The last few years of the Cuban government's collaboration with the Ethiopian communist regime were particularly brutal, and reminiscent of Stalin's treatment of the Kulaks in the 1930s. During the 1984-85 famine in northern Ethiopia, which shocked the conscience of the world and led Bob Geldof to organize the 1985 international rock concert "Live Aid," Cuban troops, following the lead of their ally, made the famine worse by refusing to allow food to be distributed in areas where inhabitants were sympathetic to opposition groups and engaging in a policy of "forcibly resettling people." This strategy resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands. According to a report issued by an international medical group as many as 100,000 Africans died.


Angola: Did Cuban involvement delay or speed up Apartheid's end?
Secondly, the military assistance to the African National Congress in the struggle against the South African apartheid state did not bring about the end of the racist apartheid regime, but may have in fact lengthened its lifespan. During the Cold War the goal of a Marxist-Leninist revolution in South Africa fit into Cuba's and the Soviet Union's geopolitical calculations. This terrified white South Africans, who at that time had acquired nuclear weapons and a willingness to use them to avoid a communist revolution backed by the black majority. Victories on Border States such as Namibia and Angola by Cuban troops served to aggravate those fears. The end of communism in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union demoralized the African National Congress who lost their main backers but it also ended the fears of the white minority that the transfer to black rule would mean becoming another satellite of the Soviet Empire.
This along with a new non-violent based anti-apartheid movement led both parties to the negotiation table and to Nelson Mandela’s release and subsequent election. Mandela's arrival to power in a post-Cold War setting set the groundwork for a democratic transition from the previous minority-white ruled regime. Civil rights leaders have celebrated Cuba's role in the wars in South Africa, Angola, and Namibia for nearly two decades, but the reality is that those wars probably prolonged the life of Apartheid by bolstering fear of a communist takeover.


Racism in Cuba
What of the plight of Cubans of African descent? Have things improved for the average Cuban of African descent? Cuba never had government enforced segregation and Jim Crow as in the United States. Racism did and does still exist despite the claims of the Cuban government and their apologists. Cuban blacks were found in Cuba's democratic political class and a number made it to positions of great power during the democratic era.

Black Panther William Lee Brent , a U.S. fugitive from justice who live in Cuba until his death on November 4, 2006, came to Cuba hoping that they had found the "antidote to racism." He discovered that Cuban blacks still suffer racism but no longer have the freedom to speak about it openly. "If a Cuban raises his voice to say, 'I am being discriminated against because I am black,' then he would be labeled a dissident." Cuban blacks, along with the rest of the Cuban people, do not have the right to their own opinion if it runs contrary to the permitted government line that Cubans are expected to take.

Jorge Luis García Pérez and his wife Iris Perez Aguilera

Nevertheless, many are speaking out and sometimes paying a terrible price. Jorge Luis García Pérez, an opposition leader in the locality of Placetas, was imprisoned on March 15, 1990 for speaking his mind openly and without fear in Cuba that is called "oral enemy propaganda." García Pérez was finally released more than 17 years later on April 22, 2007, having served one of the longest sentences for the present generation of prisoners of conscience in the island. While in prison he founded along with other prisoners of conscience, an organization called the Pedro Luis Boitel Political Prisoner’s Movement, to denounce the situation of prisoners inside the dictatorship's prisons and to promote civil disobedience in response to the jailers' brutality.

The letter denouncing those speaking up for the imprisoned medical doctor Darsi Ferrer, who like Jorge Luis, is only guilty of speaking his mind and exercising his rights claims in a patronizing tone that:

The elimination of racism, illiteracy and sexism as official state policy is commendable and sets an example for capitalist societies like the U.S. The Cuban government sent hundreds of thousands of its own people to fight for the liberation of southern Africa. Many of the African-Americans who signed this statement against Cuba were just as confused about the struggle for African liberation.

The critics of Cuban government intolerance for dissent, and the right of Cubans of African descent to be able to speak out against racism in Cuba are not "confused" and if anything it is the Cuban government's take on the "liberation of southern Africa" that is confused. The Cold War and the Cuban presence in the region probably prolonged Apartheid in South Africa and in the case of Ethiopia led to the Cuban government's complicity with genocide.

A DECLARATION OF AFRICAN AMERICAN SUPPORT FOR THE CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLE IN CUBA

In a landmark “Statement of Conscience by African Americans,” 60 prominent black American scholars, artists and professionals have condemned the Cuban regime’s stepped-up harassment and apparent crackdown on the country’s budding civil rights movement. This statement is the first public condemnation of racial conditions in Cuba made by black Americans.

ACTING ON OUR CONSCIENCE

A DECLARATION OF AFRICAN AMERICAN SUPPORT

FOR THE CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLE IN CUBA

Monday, November 30, 2009

We, the undersigned, join the growing international outcry against the unjust imprisonment by Cuban authorities of Dr. DARSI FERRER, an internationally known Afro-Cuban civil rights leader and courageous man who for 17 days has endured a hunger strike and placed his life at risk to draw attention to the conditions of racism and racial discrimination in Cuba that has hitherto been ignored.

We support the position of the Honorable Professor ABDIAS NASCIMENTO, historical leader of the Black Movement of Brazil, and others from around the world, who are demanding Dr. Ferrer’s immediate release from imprisonment.

Moreover, we also support the demand that Cuba recognizes Dr. Ferrer as a political prisoner, rather than a “common criminal”, as is now the case. (See Professor Nascimento’s Open Letter - attached). Dr. NASCIMENTO’s joint letter to the Heads of State of Cuba and Brazil, respectively General RAÚL CASTRO RUZ and President LUIZ INÁCIO LULA DA SILVA, is unequivocal. He requests of Cuba’s President that he intervene to stop the unwarranted and brutal harassment of black citizens in Cuba who are defending their civil rights.

Similarly, he requests that Brazil’s President immediately prevail on the Cuban government to safeguard the rights of Cuba’s most oppressed citizens who, in this case, happen to be more than 62% of the total population.

Professor NASCIMENTO has been a long standing supporter of the Cuban Revolution and government, but he, like we, cannot be silent in the face of increased violations of civil and human rights for those black activists in Cuba who dare raise their voices against the island’s racial system. As of late, these isolated, courageous civil rights advocates have been subject to unprovoked violence, State intimidation and imprisonment.

As African Americans, we know firsthand the experiences and consequences of denying civil freedoms on the basis of race, and we certainly understand what racial discrimination is and does to people. We have not tolerated it for ourselves, and will certainly not acquiesce in its perpetration against any other people. For that reason, we are even more obligated to voice our opinion on what is happening to our Cuban brethren a few miles away.

We support Cuba’s right to enjoy national sovereignty, and unhesitatingly repudiate any attempt at curtailing such a right. However, at this historic juncture, we also do believe that we cannot sit idly by and allow for decent, peaceful and dedicated civil rights activists in Cuba, and the black population as a whole, to be treated with callous disregard for their rights as citizens and as the most marginalized people on the island.

Racism in Cuba, and anywhere else in the world, is unacceptable and must be confronted!

We call on the authorities and Government of Cuba to immediately and unconditionally free our brother, Dr. Darsi Ferrer.

Signatories

Richard Adams, Jr.

Co-Convenor Western Pennsylvania Black Political Assembly (WPBPA)

J.B. Afoh-Manin, Esq.

Roslyn Alic-Batson

Publicist

Marva Allen

Manager, HUE-MAN Bookstore & Cafe (New York)

Dr. Molefi Kete Asante

Historian, Author

Peter Bailey

Bethune-Davis Institute

Dr. Gloria Batiste-Roberts

President, National Association of Black Social Workers

Lili Bernard

Fine Artist

Marie Brown

Literary Agent

Khepra Burns

Author

Dr. Iva E. Carruthers

Professor Emeritus, Northeastern Illinois University

Dr. Kathleen Neal Cleaver, Esq.

Professor, Emory University

Clarence Cooper

Manager, Sylvia’s Restaurant (NY)

Dr. David Covin

Professor Emeritus, University of California at Sacramento

Past President, National Conference of Black Political Scientists

Evelyn Crawford

Audiovisual artist

Dr. Earl Davis

Former Director, Institute of African Studies,

New York University

Ruby Dee Davis

Actress. 2007 Academy Award Nominee

Bill Day

Artist Photographer

Rev. Dr. Yvonne V. Delk (Ret)

United Church of Christ

Leonard G. Dunston

President Emeritus, National Association of Black Social Workers

Honorable Commissioner Betty T. Ferguson (Ret)

Former Miami-Dade County Commissioner

The Honorable Ambassador Ulric Haynes (Ret)

Former Executive Dean, Hofstra University (New York),

member of the US Council on Foreign Relations

Nzinga Heru

President, Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations

Marlon Hill, Esq.

Past President of the Caribbean Bar Association

Eugene Jackson,

Chairman and CEO of the World African Network

Dr. Winston James

Professor, University of California at Irvine

Guy Johnson

Author

Leroi C. Johnson, Esq.

Dr. Ollie Johnson

Professor, Wayne State University

Dr. Joyce E. King

President Academy for Diaspora Literacy, Inc.

Dr. Arthur Lewin

Professor, Bernard M. Baruch College of the

City University of New York

Dr. Shelby Lewis (Ret)

Former Project Manager, Special Programs,

United Negro College Fund

Dr. Ruth Love

Educator

Dr. Acklyn Lynch

Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland,

Baltimore County

Dr. Julianne Malveaux

President, Bennett College for Women

Honorable Congresswoman Carrie Meek (Ret)

House of Representatives of the Unites States of America

Dr. Claudia Mitchell-Kernan

Dean and Vice Chancellor for Graduate Studies

University of California at Los Angeles

Dr. Michael Mitchell

Professor of Political Science, Arizona State University

Editor of the National Political Science Review

Dr. K. C. Morrisson

Professor, Mississippi State University

Past President, National Conference of Black Political Scientists

Melvin Van Peebles

Film director, playwright, and author

Lori Robinson

Editor, Vida AfroLatina.com

Dr. Mark Sawyer

Professor University of California at Los Angeles

Bernestine Singley, Esq.

Author

Dr. Ann Smith

President, The Gamaliel Foundation

Dr. Donald H. Smith.

Past President, the National Alliance of Black School Educators

Rev. Dr. J. Alfred Smith Sr.

Pastor Emeritus, Allen Temple Baptist Church

Edward S. Spriggs

Former Executive Director of Hammonds House

Galleries and Resource Center

Susan Taylor

President, National CARES Mentoring Movement,

Editor Emerita of ESSENCE magazine

Dr. James E. Turner

Professor, Africana Studies and Research Center,

Cornell University

Makani Themba-Nixon

The Praxis Project

Patricia Valdés

Marketing Specialist

Dr Marta Moreno Vega

President, The Caribbean Cultural Center

African Diaspora Institute

Dr. Ron Walters

Professor Emeritus of Government and Politics

University of Maryland College Park

Dr. Cornel West

Professor, Princeton University

Randy Weston

Musician/Composer

Al Whack

Executive, National Cable Communications (NCC)

Rita Coburn Whack

Broadcasting Producer

Antonia Williams-Gary

Miami Consultant

Dr. Conrad Worrill

President, National Black United Front

Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.

Pastor Emeritus, Trinity United Church of Christ