10 December: Day to Remember

10 december 2010

Today Liu Xiaobo, a jailed Chinese dissident, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. It took me back to the ceremony I attended, 21 years ago in 1989, when the Dalai Lama received the Nobel Peace Prize. The rhetoric of the Chinese government objecting to the peace price being awarded to a person struggling non-violently for democracy and human rights in China, was much the same. The peace price is an interference in internal affairs.

 

A popular assertion nowadays is that China offers a new model: combining autocratic rule with impressive economic growth and poverty alleviation. The implication being that human rights and political freedoms are western concepts that do not apply in China, superfluous, unnecessary luxuries that only complicate things.

 

This idea is as attractive as it is simplistic. China needs economic growth and will do anything to ensure it. Not as an end in itself, as in most countries, but as a means to an end. China is by no means a stable country. It suffers tens of thousands of demonstrations in rural areas a year. Most demonstrations are about social abuse, lack of accountability of local leaders and lack of transparency about, for instance, the cause of the earthquake and the collapse of schools in Sichuan. China tries to maintain social stability by providing economic growth and jobs. But what people demand is justice, accountability and human rights.

 

Economic growth and social stability are aimed at guaranteeing the continuation of the power of the Chinese Communist Party. Freedom in China is a relative concept. A lot is allowed and possible in China, as long as you don’t challenge the primacy of the Communist Party. Human rights, ideas about individual development and calls for democracy, challenge the one-Party rule of the Chinese communist Party. That’s why the reaction is so strong. And seems so out of proportion to us.

 

So what did Liu Xiaobo do to upset the Chinese so much? He wrote a pamphlet, the Charta 08, which calls for reform of China's human rights. It was issued on 10 December 2008 to mark the 60th anniversary of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is inspired by Charter 77, the Czech manifesto that called for reform in communist Czechoslovakia. When Charter 08 was issued it was signed by 303 Chinese intellectuals and dissidents. Since, it has been signed by several thousand people inside and outside China.  

Maxime Verhagen, our former minister for foreign affairs, emphasized human rights as central to our foreign policy. Uri Rosenthal, our minister since June this year, emphasizes security over human rights. Foreign policy is predominantly about serving our self-serving national interests. But human rights are part of the security equation as China clearly demonstrates. Human rights, social justice, accountability and transparency are the ultimate bearers of stability, not economic growth at any cost.

 

A tell-tale sign of what’s to come is the Human Rights Tulip, awarded today by our Minister of Foreign Affairs. While it used to take place in the ‘Ridderzaal’ (the venue where the Queen inaugurates the parliamentary year), Uri Rosenthal moved it to a room in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Word has it that he even demanded the award-winner, Ms. Bertha Oliva de Nativí uit Honduras, to change her acceptance speech. It should be about human rights, not politics. That would make a travesty of human rights and free speech.

 

The idea that you can pursue national security without human rights is a fallacy and frankly, naive.