Moments ago, an imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize. In a stinging condemnation of China's human rights record, the Nobel Committee declares China to be in violation of its own constitution.
China’s new status must entail increased responsibility. China is in breach of several international agreements to which it is a signatory, as well as of its own provisions concerning political rights. Article 35 of China’s constitution lays down that "Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration". In practice, these freedoms have proved to be distinctly curtailed for China’s citizens.
But it won't change anything. More below the fold.
Liu Xiaobo's Charter 08 text here.
III. What We Advocate
Authoritarianism is in general decline throughout the world; in China, too, the era of emperors and overlords is on the way out. The time is arriving everywhere for citizens to be masters of states. For China the path that leads out of our current predicament is to divest ourselves of the authoritarian notion of reliance on an "enlightened overlord" or an "honest official" and to turn instead toward a system of liberties, democracy, and the rule of law, and toward fostering the consciousness of modern citizens who see rights as fundamental and participation as a duty. Accordingly, and in a spirit of this duty as responsible and constructive citizens, we offer the following recommendations on national governance, citizens’ rights, and social development:
Sadly, authoritarianism is staging a comeback in modern times, even in the USA. President Obama, the last winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, has only enlarged his war in the back of beyond of Afghanistan, supporting a corrupt autocrat faut de mieux, in violation of his promises, the rules of good strategy and common sense. I will have more to say on this subject in another diary, long in the writing and troublesome.
Liu Xiaobo is an idealist in a deeply corrupt and immorally pragmatic world. His message against emperors and overlords will not be heeded, not now, not ever. There are simply too many of us now, humankind encumbers the earth. Liu is a tiny light in a coal mine. Imprisoned, largely ignored and unknown even within his own country, he may not even know he has won this august prize. Like Aung San Suu Kyi, another such winner of the Peace Prize, his brave witness will change nothing. The countries of ASEAN have only embraced Burma's vile regime. We dare do nothing about China.
Isaiah Berlin once observed:
Conformities are called for much more eagerly today than yesterday... skeptics, liberals, individuals with a taste for private life and their own inner standards of behavior, are objects of fear and derision and targets of persecution for either side... in the great ideological wars of our time.
I am deeply saddened. Liberalism is dying everywhere. We are only talking to each other: not one conservative will ever read this diary. It was a grand idea, while it lasted, but it never changed much. Our hard-won liberties are under assault everywhere. Prizes and headlines, however august and noble, are merely symbols. At some point, Liu Xiaobo's light in the coal mine will ignite the coal gas. There will be a terrible detonation and the light will go out. We shall be in that dark for another thousand years and Jefferson will become as figure as distant as the Magna Carta is to us today before mankind shall know true liberty again. For in those times there will be fewer of us, and liberty will be possible. Crushed against each other, cheek by jowl, conformity has become a virtue, even here, and the nail that sticks up shall be hammered down, a boot stamping on a human face - forever.