Powerful message on China resonates with free Cubans

“The cause of human rights is a single cause, just as the people of the world are a single people. The talk today is of globalization, but we must state that unless there is global solidarity, not only human rights but also the right to remain human will be jeopardized.” - Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, December 17, 2002, Strasbourg, France

 

Oswaldo Payá spoke prophetically 18 years ago and unfortunately was murdered by the Castro regime eight years ago, together with a youth leader in his movement, for speaking truth to power and advocating non-violent change. He was right about the need for global solidarity, and this truth did not die with him, but continues to be expressed by others of good will, but too often ignored by those motivated by narrow self-interest and greed.

Westerners had been warned for years that if Communist China did not change, the rest of the world would be changed, but cheap labor and big profits dulled the conscience of those who should have known better. This has now come to pass with the COVID-19 pandemic, and although it took the shut down of the world economy, it appears that finally a new bipartisan consensus has emerged that recognizes the threat to life and liberty by the Chinese Communist Party. This is why on November 4th the following tweet was sent out.

Message to @TheDemocrats & @GOP: The Castro regime is a brutal communist dictatorship hostile to both American interests and the aspirations of the Cuban people. Their should be a bipartisan consensus in the same manner that one has now formed on China. https://t.co/hjiBX7LPW1 pic.twitter.com/ljqyQMHHCe

— John Suarez ن (@johnjsuarez) November 4, 2020

However it appears that my optimism about the new bipartisan consensus on China was premature. In The Hill today, Bradley A. Thayer and Lianchao Han, wrote an OpEd titled "Why Biden must beware of accommodating China again." It is a must read, and it resonated with Cuban pro-democracy activists confronting another totalitarian dictatorship with a long reach, the Castro regime in Cuba. "China is working to change — not embrace — the status quo in international politics." 

This also true of Cuba under the Castro brothers that have remade parts of Latin America in its image with the ongoing horror shows in Venezuela and Nicaragua as powerful reminders. The two regimes have also worked together at the United Nations to undermine international human rights standards with much success.

Below we reprint the opening remarks at the 15th InterEthnic/InterFaith Leadership Conference of Dr. Jianli Yang, of Citizen Power Initiative for China, a Chinese dissident who has spent years advocating for human rights and freedom in China, and Tibet. His call to solidarity becoming a verb resonates with free Cubans, and also join his call.

  

Opening Remarks at the 15th InterEthnic/InterFaith Leadership Conference

By Dr. Jianli Yang

Washington, D.C.

Dear Friends from around the world,
 

Good morning! Good afternoon! Good evening!
 

I cordially welcome all of you to participate in the 15th InterEthnic/InterFaith Leadership Conference.
China has been one of the campaign issues in the 2020 US election, but we have found a remarkable degree of consensus among the candidates. 

It was a bipartisan fantasy to believe that, as the PRC integrated into the global economy, the CCP would naturally loosen its grip on power. Both parties rightly recognize this as a problem, and there has been little partisan disagreement over, for example, targeted sanctions relating to CCP abuses in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Tibet. 

Nor have prominent Democrats criticized the current administration’s aggressive responses to the threats to national security posed by the success of PRC-based technology companies beholden to the CCP. 

By now, the need for principled solidarity should be obvious. Regardless of the election’s outcome, we should urge everyone who cares about democratic values to deepen that sense of solidarity in the months and years to come.

Standing alone, even the United States has difficulty preventing the PRC from eroding democratic values. Dependence on the PRC, combined with financial incentives, bends everything – from domestic policymaking, to the behavior of private institutions like Disney or the NBA, to the tenor of discussions occurring in American universities – away from democratic principles.

In response to economically coercive statecraft the CCP is practicing, a new kind of alliance, like NATO, marrying economics with democratic principles, is needed. It is the best response to the CCP’s own pursuit of a decades-long strategy of maintaining a united front with its allies and dividing-and-conquering its opponents.

What should members of a united, democratic front commit to doing? At a minimum, among many other things which I do not have time now to enumerate, they should credibly promise to assist each other economically if any member is retaliated against by the PRC — or any other country, frankly — for mere non-violent advocacy.

Regardless of whether one favors Trump or Biden, regardless of whether a particular democracy leans center-left or center-right, so long as one claims to believe in ideals like the rule of law, human rights, and free speech, one should recognize that advancing those ideals requires putting aside our lesser differences. 

The CCP and other autocratic regimes would like nothing more than to continue dividing us along ethnic, religious, partisan, national, or various other solidarity-weakening lines. If we fall for it, those who will suffer most in the long run are the citizens of those regimes, few, if any, of whom really want to live in societies dominated by lies, fear, and violence. 

And, while lasting democratic change ultimately depends on the organic efforts of those citizens, those of us lucky enough to live  in freedom would do well to not undermine such efforts by letting increasingly powerful dictators play us against each other, to the detriment of democratic values everywhere.
 

Our solidarity must become a verb.

Source: https://www.citizenpowerforchina.org/our-solidarity-must-become-a-verb/