"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
Showing posts with label Nobel Peace Prize. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nobel Peace Prize. Show all posts
"It's up to all of us to try, and those that say that individuals are
not capable of changing anything are only looking for excuses." - Vaclav
Havel, Interview with Amnesty International in 2011
Oswaldo Payá and Liu Xiaobo and the power of moral actions
Five years ago on Christmas morning in Beijing the nonviolent dissident, scholar and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years in prison for the crime of speaking. He had already been jailed for more than a year for being one of the authors of Charter 08 that sought to gather signatures in a petition calling on the Chinese regime to gradually shift toward democracy.
The speech he delivered at his trial on December 23, 2009 is one that remains extremely relevant today and more so on Christmas. In a key passage of his final statement Liu Xiaobo said the following:
But I still
want to say to this regime, which is depriving me of my freedom, that I
stand by the convictions I expressed in my "June Second Hunger Strike Declaration" twenty years ago ‑ I have no enemies and no hatred. None of
the police who monitored, arrested, and interrogated me, none of the
prosecutors who indicted me, and none of the judges who judged me are my
enemies. Although there is no way I can accept your monitoring,
arrests, indictments, and verdicts, I respect your professions and your
integrity, including those of the two prosecutors, Zhang Rongge and Pan
Xueqing, who are now bringing charges against me on behalf of the
prosecution. During interrogation on December 3, I could sense your
respect and your good faith.
Hatred can rot away at a person's intelligence and conscience. Enemy
mentality will poison the spirit of a nation, incite cruel mortal
struggles, destroy a society's tolerance and humanity, and hinder a
nation's progress toward freedom and democracy. That is why I hope to be
able to transcend my personal experiences as I look upon our nation's
development and social change, to counter the regime's hostility with
utmost goodwill, and to dispel hatred with love.
This decision to bust up hatred with love combined with the firmness and courage at the same time to reject and defy the injustices committed is not only a core principle of nonviolence but also of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Let us not turn to violence and force, but we will not submit or allow
ourselves to be intimidated by them. Yes, we want change, changes in all
of society, because the heart of Cuba has already changed, and we have
renovated it in hope, work, suffering and sorrow. We have renovated
ourselves and do not want Cuba to sink and our children with her. That
violence not explode, that repression not explode, that the truth break
out, and let there be an outbreak of Peace and Freedom.
No one in Cuba wants to submit to a foreign power, or return to other
forms of injustice. Let us not fool ourselves any more, Cubans know what
we want: we want reconciliation
among all, we want a reunion with our distant brothers in exile, we
want to work for our Country and our families, with boundless generosity
to our hard work and positive creativity, we want dialogue, we want to solve this juncture of our history together, with love, we want freedom.
We know it is possible and we will achieve it, it will be everyone’s victory.
Norway was threatened by Communist China not to award the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo but courageously went ahead and did so. Relations between the two countries have not been the same since then. In addition the Chinese regime initiated its own "Peace Prize" in 2010 to counter Nobel's and Fidel Castro is the 2014 winner. Human rights activists in 2014 organized a Christmas card writing campaign in solidarity with imprisoned Chinese dissidents to mark the five years that have passed since the trial of Liu Xiaobo where he was found "guilty" of "incitement to subvert state power."
Imagine for a moment that Norway with a population of five million shook up Communist China with a population of over 1.3 billion and the largest economy on the planet with a simple moral and courageous stand by recognizing one Chinese human rights defender who nonviolently advocates for a peaceful transition in China. This demonstrates how small moral actions can have huge consequences, and why sending Christmas cards to imprisoned dissidents is of such great importance.
"Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique
in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields
it."
Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., Oslo (1964)
Fifty years ago on December 10, 1964 Martin Luther King Jr. was presented the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his accomplishments and gave an acceptance speech both the video and full text are available online. A day later at the University of Oslo a large audience heard the Reverend King's Nobel Lecture. Below are excerpts of this important speech which addressed the evils of racism, poverty and war. Targeting these three evils was not novel but the identification of the source of the problem and the means to combat them were new. Material Abundance and Spiritual Poverty
The civil rights leader identified a paradox that still haunts the world today. Materially there is increasing abundance while at the same time both morality and spirituality are decreasing. He outlined the problem in the space of a paragraph:
There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually. We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.
Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live. So much of modern life can be summarized in that arresting dictum of the poet Thoreau1: "Improved means to an unimproved end". This is the serious predicament, the deep and haunting problem confronting modern man. If we are to survive today, our moral and spiritual "lag" must be eliminated. Enlarged material powers spell enlarged peril if there is not proportionate growth of the soul. When the "without" of man's nature subjugates the "within", dark storm clouds begin to form in the world.
Violence versus Non-violence
Where others would declare a war against the materialists and the immoral, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. rejected violence and embraced nonviolence for both pragmatic and principled reasons:
Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding: it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.
In a real sense nonviolence seeks to redeem the spiritual and moral lag that I spoke of earlier as the chief dilemma of modern man. It seeks to secure moral ends through moral means. Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.
Nonviolent resisters message
The Baptist Minister laid out the challenge issued by nonviolent resisters to their oppressors and recognized the example of Mohandas Gandhi in India as an inspiration:
The nonviolent resisters can summarize their message in the following simple terms: we will take direct action against injustice despite the failure of governmental and other official agencies to act first. We will not obey unjust laws or submit to unjust practices. We will do this peacefully, openly, cheerfully because our aim is to persuade. We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself. We will try to persuade with our words, but if our words fail, we will try to persuade with our acts. We will always be willing to talk and seek fair compromise, but we are ready to suffer when necessary and even risk our lives to become witnesses to truth as we see it.
This approach to the problem of racial injustice is not at all without successful precedent. It was used in a magnificent way by Mohandas K. Gandhi to challenge the might of the British Empire and free his people from the political domination and economic exploitation inflicted upon them for centuries. He struggled only with the weapons of truth, soul force, non-injury, and courage.
There is much that freedom activists can learn from Martin Luther King Jr., in his struggles against racism, poverty and war and positive vision of brotherhood, solidarity and peace. Let us take these days to reflect and act.
For Laura Pollan, a founding member and spokeswoman for the Ladies in White, who tonight is battling for her life in the Calixto Garcia Hospital in Cuba.
Women dressed in white in Liberia
Women dressed in white ended a bloody civil war in Liberia and drove a tyrant from power using nonviolent means. Could women dressed in white in Cuba resisting a cruel tyrant using nonviolent means achieve the same ends as their counterparts in Liberia? Both groups of women formed more or less at the same time in the Spring of 2003. The women in Liberia were confronting a civil war and a blood thirsty tyrant named Charles Taylor. The women in Cuba were confronting a Stalinist dictatorship led by Fidel Castro that had just imprisoned their husbands, fathers and brothers to decades in prison in show trials because they had organized petition drives, written for independent publications and/or defended human rights.
Ladies in White in Cuba. Laura Pollan in front on the right with sling and sunglasses
Living in Miami in the Cuban exile quarter awareness of about the Ladies in White in Cuba has been widespread since March of 2003. Not so the events that led to freedom and the end of bloodshed in Liberia. The first time I heard about the women dressed in white in Liberia was when I purchased and read a small book by Steve Crawshaw and John Jackson with a forward written by Vaclav Havel titled: Small Acts of Resistance: How Courage, Tenacity, and Ingenuity Can Change the World. Listening to the book presentation on September 29, 2010 sold me on making the purchase.
Today, I was reminded about one of the remarkable stories that impacted me at the time because it had reminded me of the Ladies in White in Cuba when one of these Liberian won the Nobel Peace Prize. There story has now been told in a documentary: Pray the Devil Back to Hell.
Trailer for Pray the Devil Back to Hell Documentary
Now thanks to the Nobel Committee the world will have another opportunity to examine this important chapter of history. Crawshaw and Jackson adapted an article based on their book that was published in the April 1, 2011 edition of Yes! Magazine that outlined what happened in Liberia and is reproduced here:
The west African nation of Liberia was founded by freed American slaves. The country’s coat of arms declares, “The love of liberty brought me here.”
In the last years of the 20th century and the early years of this one, however, Liberia was anything but a land of liberty. Drug-fueled militias maimed and killed civilians. Government and rebel forces alike raped with impunity. Hundreds of thousands fled. Others were trapped by the unending violence, unable to flee. As one Liberian woman later remembered, “My children had been hungry and afraid for their entire lives.”
In spring 2003, a group of women decided to try to end the conflict once and for all. Dressed all in white, hundreds of them sat by the roadside, on the route taken daily by President Charles Taylor, rebel leader-turned-president.
The president’s motorcade swept past, slowing down only briefly. But the women returned, day after day. In pouring rain and blazing sunshine alike, they danced and prayed. In the words of Comfort Lamptey, author of a book on the Liberian peace movement of those years, the women were “fighting for the right to be seen, heard, and counted.”
Taylor mocked the women for “embarrassing themselves.” Still, though, the protests gained momentum. Religious leaders—imams and bishops alike—spoke out in support of the women’s demands. Radio stations began reporting sympathetically on the roadside protests. Leymah Gbowee, one of the protest leaders, declared in front of the cameras, “We are tired of our children being raped. We are taking this stand because we believe tomorrow our children will ask us: ‘Mama, what was your role during the crisis?’”
Pressed on all sides, Taylor agreed to talk. He met with the women’s leaders in the presidential palace. Peace talks with the warring factions began in Ghana a few weeks later.
It soon became clear, however, that the talks were going nowhere. Even as the warlords basked in the comfort of their luxury hotel, they worked the phones, directing a renewed orgy of violence at home in the Liberian capital, Monrovia.
The women decided that enough was enough. Determined to focus on the human cost of the war, they barricaded delegates into the room where the talks were taking place. One of the negotiators, Nigerian General Abdulsalami Abubakar, remembered later: “They said that nobody will come out till that peace agreement was signed.” As described in the 2008 documentary film Pray the Devil Back to Hell, one warlord tried unsuccessfully to kick his way out of the room. Others tried (and failed) to escape through the windows.
The men with guns agreed to talk seriously at last. A peace deal was struck. Charles Taylor went into exile. International peacekeepers arrived in Monrovia, greeted by cheering crowds. In 2006, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf became Liberia’s first peacefully elected president, Africa’s first woman leader.
Johnson-Sirleaf said: “It was ordinary Liberians who reclaimed the country and demanded peace.”
Two out of the three women who won the Nobel Peace Prize, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee are named in the above article. Not only did they end a bloody and brutal civil war but also drove a ruthless and brutal dictator using nonviolent means. As the world witnesses the aftermath of violent resistance in Libya against another ruthless and brutal dictator. This episode offers hope that there is a better way and indeed women have and are leading the way.
Women dressed in white prayed the Devil back to Hell in Liberia while resisting evil without doing evil. The women in Cuba using nonviolent means got their loved ones back from brutal and inhumane prisons which was there immediate demand, but the reason that their husbands had been imprisoned and they beaten for defending them remains: a brutal Stalinist dictatorship led by Fidel and Raul Castro. Hopefully, Cuban women dressed in white will be able to do in Cuba what their counterparts did in Liberia.
Tonight I am praying for the life and health of one of these brave Cuban Ladies in White, Laura Pollan who is battling a dangerous respiratory illness. Praying that she makes a speedy recovery and that one day soon Cubans can look back and honor the Cuban Ladies in White who played an instrumental role in ending a half century of tyranny and division.
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." - Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of Present Discontents (1770)
Today, December 10, 2010 is International Human Rights Day and also the day that the Nobel Peace Prize is Awarded to imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. The Nobel Prize Award Ceremonies for Liu Xiaobo will be webcast live today, Friday, December 10 beginning at 1:00 p.m. CET [7:00am EST] and will continue at 4:30 p.m. CET. [10:30am EST].
The death of a prisoner of conscience combined with the brutal assault of mothers, sisters and daughters of prisoners of conscience attacked for simply attending Mass at Santa Rita Catholic Church and silently marching along a main avenue in an effort to obtain their husbands, fathers and sons freedom generated a huge amount of international outrage and press attention.
Today as the world observes International Human Rights Day which marks the 62nd Anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948, where Cuban diplomats representing a democratic Cuba wrote one of the early drafts of this human rights charter, Cubans continue to be imprisoned for their ideas.
Now is the time for quick and concrete action that requires a minimum of effort but will make an impact. Here are three suggestions:
1) Operation Cubans have a Right to their Rights focusing on Article XIX of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states:Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
The human rights defenders imprisoned since 2003 were imprisoned for seeking, receiving and imparting information and ideas to other Cubans and the international community. Name each one of the 11 imprisoned activists. All have been recognized by Amnesty International as prisoners of conscience. They can be listed together or separately. Post their names on face book, twitter, in blogs and any other social media that is appropriate.
2) Organize flash mobs beginning on December 10 to generate awareness outside of cyberspace and in the real world. By definition its quick and can be organized quickly through social media tools. Go out and gather signatures petitioning the Cuban regime for their release. Norwegian students in November 2010 gathered over 400 signatures calling for the release of Cuban prisoner of conscience Librado Linares and made the newspapers raising awareness.
3) Write a letter requesting the release of a political prisoner. Record and post video messages of solidarity on youtube directed at these prisoners of conscience and their families by name demanding their freedom along with what human rights mean to you. Make a poster with a photo of one of the images on this page. Take your picture holding up the poster or a message of solidarity and e-mail it to us at freecubanow@hotmail.com
"Centralization as a system is inconsistent with non-violent structure of society." – Mohandas Gandhi
Cuban regime equated Liu Xiaobo with Cuban dissidents like Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet
Upon learning that the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo had won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize the official press of the Cuban regime equated Liu Xiaobo with Cuban dissidents like Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet and Librado Linares on the island and declared the Nobel Prize “anti-Nobel”. [1] It is not surprising that the Chinese, Cuban, Vietnamese dictatorships or that the regime in Venezuela are not attending the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. However, according to Amnesty International: Afghanistan, Colombia, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sudan, Tunisia, and Ukraine have declined to attend according to the Nobel Committee due to a “combination of political pressure and economic blackmail” exerted by China [2].
On Tuesday, December 7, 2010 in Stockholm, Sweden the 2010 Nobel Laureate in Literature Mario Vargas Llosa described the present challenges facing the international community in his Nobel Lecture: “Every day, all over the world, countless victims are sacrificed by those who feel they possess absolute truths. With the collapse of totalitarian empires, we believed that living together, peace, pluralism, and human rights would gain the ascendancy and the world would leave behind holocausts, genocides, invasions, and wars of extermination. None of that has occurred. New forms of barbarism flourish, incited by fanaticism, and with the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, we cannot overlook the fact that any small faction of crazed redeemers may one day provoke a nuclear cataclysm.”[3]
The French philosopher, André Glucksmann, in his essay “The Velvet Philosophical Revolution” described both how Western intellectuals had believed that the world was “fated” to be Communist but when it imploded intellectuals abandoned their belief in the inevitability of communism and replaced it with other inevitable visions “the triumph of universal democracy” and “the end of history” in a “peaceful postmodern promised land.”[4] There is nothing inevitable about the course of history because human beings have free will. This is demonstrated by the life of Mario Vargas Llosa, who as a young man was a Marxist and sympathizer of the Cuban revolution who later became disillusioned with communism and dictatorship recognizing the desirability of democracy. Vargas Llosa had been free to choose and also to change his mind when observing the results of the model he sympathized with.
Mario Vargas Llosa went on to explain in the Nobel Lecture that his struggle against the Peruvian dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori was based in his “conviction that a dictatorship represents absolute evil for a country, a source of brutality and corruption and profound wounds that take a long time to close, poison the nation’s future, and create pernicious habits and practices that endure for generations and delay democratic reconstruction. This is why dictatorships must be fought without hesitation, with all the means at our disposal, including economic sanctions. It is regrettable that democratic governments, instead of setting an example by making common cause with those, like the Damas de Blanco in Cuba, the Venezuelan opposition, or Aung San Suu Kyi and Liu Xiaobo, who courageously confront the dictatorships they endure, often show themselves complaisant not with them but with their tormenters. Those valiant people, struggling for their freedom, are also struggling for ours.”[5]
Centralizing power into international structures after they failed at the national level has not brought about the results desired.
The Historical Context
In the aftermath of WWII with the horrors of the Holocaust in Germany still fresh; Josef Stalin still in power in the Soviet Union having butchered millions of civilians in peacetime and allying with Adolph Hitler to divide Poland and start the war; and Mahatma Gandhi recently assassinated a few months earlier on January 30, 1948 while on a walk at Birla Bhavan by Hindu nationalist Nathuram Godse. The middle of the twentieth century was in the midst of a profound spiritual and moral darkness.
It was in the aftermath and in the midst of these horrors that the Latin Americans took the lead in pressing for an international bill of rights. Led by Chileans, Panamanians, and Cubans representing democratic and constitutional republics, they wrote the first drafts of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Latin American region led the efforts to produce a universal human rights declaration. The final document was recognized by Cuban diplomats as one that would have been “accepted by that generous spirit who was the apostle of our independence: Jose Marti, the hero who -- as he turned his homeland into a nation -- gave us forever this generous rule: ‘With everyone and for the good of everyone.’”[6]
The nations of the world horrified by the horrors of the holocaust and the brutality of war achieved a consensus and signed the thirty articles that would make up the Declaration on December 10, 1948. Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School said that “it is fair to refer to Latin America as the forgotten crucible of the universal human rights idea.”[7]
Nevertheless, since the signing of the Declaration six decades ago in 1948 genocide and political mass killings have not ended but continued in huge numbers. More than 72 million have died as a result of government organized mass killings. Two members of the UN Security Council (China and the Soviet Union) alone accounted for 57 million of the dead post 1945. Ironically the 1936 Soviet Constitution offered a long list or rights and freedoms that were completely ignored in practice.
Not lived up to its utopian promise
Mary Robinson who was United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in 1998, when the 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was celebrated and now co-chairs the new organization, Agenda for Human Rights funded by the Swiss government says the world has not lived up to the promise of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “A reality that shames us frankly, that is not acceptable. If the world had taken seriously the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we would have a world where no parents would see their children waking up in the morning crying of hunger, dying from preventable diseases," said Robinson.[8] "There would not be more than half a million mothers dying giving birth. We would have a different world and it would be a much more secure world, of course."[9] Can a utopia be achieved where no child would ever go hungry or die from a preventable disease from a document that lists human rights?
Economic rights as a siren call to government control
Louise Arbour, the UN high commissioner for human rights from 2004 to 2008 is quoted in the December 22, 2008 edition of The Nation magazine article “The Battle for Human Rights” by Barbara Crossette stating: “[The West] has been the champion of civil liberties--of freedom from fear--but freedom from want was meant to be achieved by a healthy marketplace not a place for governments to play too large a role. The developing countries--and whether they are doing that in bad faith or good faith is not for me to pass judgment--are doing exactly the opposite.” Both Louise Arbour and The Nation argue that the West is mistaken in this emphasis but it was not always so.
In the 1920s and 1930s Europe sought leaders to address economic problems and made the same argument that many are making again today that economic development should take precedent over civil and political rights. The answers were to be found in Stalin’s industrialization and agricultural collectivization programs in the Soviet Union and Hitler’s fascist economic program which dramatically reduced unemployment, a government guaranteed minimum standard of living and the government directed building of the first freeway system in the world: the autobahn. In Italy Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship claimed that by 1935 three quarters of Italian businesses were under government control. Nevertheless ignoring civil and political rights to accelerate or focus on economic development left Europe a burnt out cinder as these totalitarian regimes murdered tens of millions and plunged the continent into another world war.
There is also ample evidence that to achieve sustained economic and social development over the long run depends on a system based in the rule of law and respect by government and the citizenry for fundamental rights and duties within a sound moral-ethical framework. There can be a huge explosion of economic growth in the short term as was seen in the German example but in the long run it is not sustainable unless backed up with an engaged and responsible citizenry and a sound political base as was the case for Germany under Konrad Adenauer and the economical miracle that saw Germany’s economy rise out of the rubble of WWII.
The continuing call for more government
The call for more laws and more government to address these problems from the League of Nations following WWI to the United Nations following WWII and now the International Criminal Court in light of the continuing genocides today has led to another round of new laws and new institutions to attend to old evils. Manfred Nowak, the UN Special Investigator on Torture, makes the case for an international human rights court stating: “We would go beyond the powers of regional courts, by in particular taking into account that in a global world, we have global responsibilities that go beyond State responsibilities but also holding accountable intergovernmental organizations or transnational corporations or others that violate human rights.”[10]
The argument is being made for world government. Thomas Fleming in The Morality of Everyday Life asks: “If rights are claims to be enforced by government, then what are ‘international human rights’ if not the theoretical justification for world government?”[11] It has been demonstrated that governments have a history of mass killing. Why should one think that a world government would be any better? Mahatma Gandhi looked upon an increase in the power of the State with the greatest fear because, although it appeared to be doing good by minimizing exploitation, it did the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality.[12]Furthermore Gandhi believed that: “Centralization as a system is inconsistent with [a] non-violent structure of society.”[13] One can draw the conclusion that world government would be taking that inconsistency to its greatest extreme.
Civil Society and Individuals
Gandhi feared the expansion of the state and with good reason, but he also believed in the power of individuals, families, and local communities to live in freedom and expand freedom. Over the past sixty years we have seen how individuals and non-governmental organizations have defended human rights and exposed the crimes of the State. This has been carried out in a decentralized and non-violent fashion. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Human Rights First, Reporters without Borders, and other non-governmental organizations have operated at the international level in collaboration with national human rights organizations. At the national and local level groups of individuals organizing and challenging brutal and murderous regimes such as the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina against a military junta that disappeared 30,000 Argentines in 1970s and early 1980s and today in totalitarian Cuba the Ladies in White demand freedom for their imprisoned relatives with open non-violent displays of defiance pressuring dictatorships to meet their demands.
The road to making human rights a reality
Prior to his assassination Mahatma Gandhi responded to the 1948 United Nations Committee charged with drafting what would later become the human rights charter stating: “All rights to be deserved and preserved come from duty well done. Thus the very right to live accrues to us only when we do the duty of citizenship of the world. From this fundamental statement perhaps it is easy enough to define the duties of man and woman and correlate every right to some corresponding duty to be first performed. Every other right can be shown to be a usurpation hardly worth fighting for.”[14]
Gandhi’s idea on liberty and license is in sync with traditional Christianity that you do not have a right to do anything you want but to do what is good: “Liberty cannot be secured merely by proclaiming it. An atmosphere of liberty must be created within us. Liberty is one thing, and license another. Many a time we confuse license for liberty and lose the latter. License leads one to selfishness whereas liberty guides one to supreme good. License destroys society, liberty gives it life. In license propriety is sacrificed; in liberty it is fully cherished."[15]
Furthermore Gandhi’s experiments with truth and obtaining true freedom are similar to catholic moral teaching and impact his concept of what are rights: “Fundamental rights can only be those rights the exercise of which is not only in the interest of the citizens but that of the whole world… Rights cannot be divorced from duties. This is how satyagraha was born, for I was always striving to decide what my duty was.”[16]
Obtaining real freedom is within you denying vices, resisting temptations, and engaging in self denial a person obtains liberty and avoids what Gandhi described above as license which Catholic teaching below describes as resulting in slavery: “In proportion as a man habitually yields to intemperance or some other vice, his freedom diminishes and he does in a true sense sink into slavery. He continues responsible in causa for his subsequent conduct, though his ability to resist temptation at the time is lessened. On the other hand, the more frequently a man restrains mere impulse, checks inclination towards the pleasant, puts forth self-denial in the face of temptation, and steadily aims at a virtuous life, the more does he increase in self-command and therefore in freedom.”[17]
Judith Brown in Gandhi and Human Rights: In Search of True Humanity quotes Gandhi’s response to a list of human rights sent to him by H.G. Wells where he countered that it would be better to: “Begin with a charter of Duties of Man…and I promise the rights will follow as spring follows winter. I write from experience. As a young man I began life by seeking to assert my rights and I soon discovered I had none not even over my wife. So I began by discovering performing my duty by my wife, my children, friends, companions and society and I find today that I have greater rights, perhaps than any living man I know.”[18]
Brown concludes that: “This tradition could produce something that superficially looks like a ‘right,’ such as the apparent right to resist an unjust king. On deeper exploration it is clear that this resistance is not a right but application of duty, the duty of subjects to remove a ruler who is failing in his particular duty to guard his people and uphold the moral order."[19]
Resistance to evil, although it may appear as an act of rebellion when dealing with an unjust ruler, it is in reality engaging in one’s duty. In the same manner that battling your own vices and appetites may appear to be self-denial but in reality is an act of self-liberation. .The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a guideline that can help us on our path toward justice and truth but it is not the road itself.[20]Although this guideline terrifies dictators because it allows individuals a chance to read in a succinct format a basic outline of their fundamental rights and challenge whatever unjust paradigm the regime is trying to impose. Article 29 of the declaration informs that all have duties to the community but without further defining the rights and freedoms of their family, friends, countrymen, and fellow human beings it can easily be manipulated as a call to obedience to the governmental authorities. The misery experienced over the past sixty years serves as a challenge to due one’s duty in defense of what is right and a warning of what awaits if it is shirked.
There are choices to be made: freedom or repression; empathy or apathy; compassion or cruelty and they will have a profound impact on human existence. During the 1990s in the heart of Europe the world saw that a country that chose freedom, empathy and compassion could have a “velvet divorce” and both new nations would continue along a path of development and freedom while at the same time in the Balkans others chose repression, apathy and cruelty as policy and old communist apparatchiks became ultranationalist war criminals.
Erazim V. Kohák in his book Jan Patočka: philosophy and selected writings refers to Patočka’s “solidarity of the shaken” as a community freed “from the preoccupation with the pursuits of peace and prosperity that inevitably lead to war and turn it instead to the pursuit of the Good, the care of the soul” that is “living with a clear conscience, living in truth, or in far older terms, seeking first the Kingdom of God.”[21]
Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma, Liu Xiaobo in China, the Ladies in White in Cuba and the student movement in Venezuela have all demonstrated this “solidarity of the shaken.” Their respective commitments to pursue the good and living with a clear conscience have led them all to suffer great persecution but that is the price they are paying in “assuming the responsibility of freedom” and in exercising that responsibility challenging tyrannical regimes.
Liu Xiaobo has no guns, bombs, or weapons and he does not recognize the Chinese regime as an enemy but nevertheless the Chinese communist leadership fears him. They have sentenced him to 11 years in prison because of his writings in favor of democratic reforms within the system and are now expending both economic and political capital in an effort to diminish this Chinese dissident’s international stature. The same kind of reaction has been observed against these other leaders and movements mentioned in the previous paragraph in their respective countries. These fearful reactions by despotic regimes to non-violent adversaries “living in truth offers a measure of what former Czech dissident and play write Vaclav Havel has referred to as the “power of the powerless.”
[18] Brown, Judith M.“Gandhi and Human Rights: In Search of True Humanity” Parel, Anthony J. editor Gandhi, Freedom, and Self-Rule Lexington Books 2000 pg. 89
[19] Brown, Judith M.“Gandhi and Human Rights: In Search of True Humanity” Parel, Anthony J. editor Gandhi, Freedom, and Self-Rule Lexington Books 2000 pg. 89
[20] Fleming, Thomas The Morality of Everyday Life pg. 234
[21] Kohák, Erazim V.Jan Patočka: philosophy and selected writingsUniversity of Chicago Press, 1989 pg. 131
Amnesty International is today calling on the Chinese government to end its intensifying crackdown on Chinese human rights activists ahead of the Nobel Peace Prize awards ceremony in Oslo on 10 December.
Amnesty International and Chinese human rights groups have documented hundreds of cases of people being detained, interrogated, or arrested in advance of the event honouring jailed Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo.
“The Chinese government’s travel restrictions target not just human rights defenders, but also ordinary travellers who somehow trigger the government’s suspicion,” said Salil Shetty, Amnesty International’s Secretary General. “This reaction violates Chinese law as well as China’s international obligations and constitutes a serious breakdown in the rule of law.”
Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo is currently serving an 11-year sentence for “inciting subversion of state power" for his part as the leading author behind “Charter 08”, a manifesto calling for the recognition of fundamental human rights in China.
Liu Xiaobo has consistently maintained that the sentence violates both China's own constitution and basic human rights, but, like many others in China who have chosen to speak out, he has been severely punished.
He is just one of thousands of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience currently being held in China. Among the recent cases that Amnesty International has highlighted are:
Liu Xianbin, a prominent Sichuan democracy activist detained since 28 June 2010 on suspicion of “inciting subversion of state power”.
Gao Zhisheng, named one of China’s “top 10 lawyers” by the Ministry of Justice in 2001, he was later arrested and tortured for his human rights activities and has been “missing” since being taken by police from his home in Shaanxi Province on 4 February 2009.
Tan Zuoren, an environmental activist critical of the high death rate in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake due to substandard construction, he was later convicted of “inciting subversion of state power” for commemorating the Tiananmen Square massacre and sentenced to a five-year prison sentence.
Hairat Niyaz, a Uighur journalist convicted on charges of “endangering state security” in the wake of the 2009 Urumqi riots, he is now serving a 15-year sentence and being held incommunicado.
Dhondup Wangchen, a Tibetan filmmaker arrested, tortured and held without charge for more than a year before being sentenced in a secret trial to six years’ imprisonment for “inciting separatism”.
“The Chinese government should release Liu Xiaobo and all the other prisoners of conscience,” said Salil Shetty. “They should uphold internationally recognised human rights standards, many of which are enshrined in their own constitution.”
The recent crackdown also coincides with a concerted campaign by Chinese authorities to disrupt the Nobel awards ceremony.
Nobel rules require the winner or his or her immediate family to personally accept the prize. Liu Xiaobo’s enforced absence means that for the first time since 1938, the peace prize will not be awarded at the ceremony.
Liu Xiaobo’s wife, Liu Xia, could have collected the award for him, but she has been detained by Chinese authorities and is currently under house arrest in Beijing. She is unable to move about freely and has not been allowed to be in contact with friends or family for nearly two months.
Chinese authorities have also pressured other countries to boycott the ceremony. However, despite a campaign of political and economic pressure, only 18 countries have declined the invitation to the ceremony.
“The Chinese government should be celebrating this global recognition of a Chinese writer and activist,” said Salil Shetty. “Instead, the government’s very public tantrum has generated even more critical attention inside and outside China – and, ironically, emphasized the significance of Liu Xiaobo’s message of respect for human rights.”
ENDS/
Public Document **************************************** For more information please call Amnesty International's press office in London, UK, on +44 20 7413 5566 or email: press@amnesty.org International Secretariat, Amnesty International, 1 Easton St., London WC1X 0DW, UK
Thomas Yocum Asia-Pacific Press Officer
Amnesty International International Secretariat 1 Easton Street London WC1X 0DW
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