boeung kak lake

The Mirror, Vol. 14, No. 694

During the last week, there was one of the fiercest public debate going on globally, in the media, and in the form of government statements, and in the form of certain symbolic actions: participating or not participating in the award ceremony for the Nobel Peace Prize in the Norwegian capital Oslo. The fact that the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on the International Human Rights day – a remembrance day established and recommended by the member countries of the United Nations, commemorating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – provided an additional challenging context. That this happened one day after the International Anti-Corruption Day, provides a very complex background for looking back.

Therefore, first a background reminder about the Nobel Prizes.

A Swedish industrialist – he owned a company producing weapons – who was also an inventor – the most famous of his inventions is the explosive dynamite – Alfred Nobel, read in a newspaper an (erroneous) report about his own death: “The merchant of death is dead.” A newspaper had reported his death wrongly when his brother died. This emotionally shocking experience motivated him to write in his will that 94% of his assets should be put into a foundation, and from the interest of this capital prizes for persons who achieve the “greatest benefit on mankind” in the fields of physics, chemistry, peace, physiology or medicine, and literature (later economics was added) should be awarded, every year; there is no fixed amount for these prizes, but they stand, at present, mostly in a range about US$ one million. – The Peace Prize is awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, while the other prizes are awarded by academic institutions in Sweden.

In 2010 the following persons have been honored in their respective fields in Sweden

• The Nobel Prize in Physics: Andre Geim, Konstantin Novoselov
• The Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Richard F. Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi, Akira Suzuki
• The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: Robert G. Edwards
• The Nobel Prize in Literature: Mario Vargas Llosa
• The Prize in Economic Sciences: Peter A. Diamond, Dale T. Mortensen, Christopher A. Pissarides

The major controversy developed, however, about the decision of the Norwegian Nobel Committee responsible for the Peace Prize, to award it to a Chinese professor of literature, Liu Xiaobo, who is at present in prison for 11 years – so he was not able to attend the ceremony – neither his wife, Liu Xia, who is kept in house arrest, not any known Chinese friends, who were not allowed to travel abroad at this time.

But this is not the first time that Nobel Prize laureates are prevented from receiving the prize in person. Those who could not attend in the past:

• 1935 German journalist and pacifist Carl von Ossietzky, imprisoned
• 1975 Russian writer Andrei Sakharov
• 1983 Polish trade union activist Lech Walesa
• 1991 Elected political leader Aung San Suu Kyi from Burma

The government of the People’s Republic of China accused Liu Xiaobo for “subversion against the power of the state. – Liu has been engaged in agitation activities, such as spreading of rumors and defaming of the government, aimed at subversion of the state and overthrowing the socialism system in recent years.” On the other hand, Liu Xiaobo maintains that what he was writing and doing was within the range of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, a permanent member of UN Security Council.

The Charter 08 – co-authored by Liu Xiabo – is a document originally signed by 300 people requesting constitutional reform; specifically that the Chinese government respect human rights, implement political reforms, and ensure the independence of the judiciary. It attracted later 9,000 supporting signatures – but persons who had signed it became subject to police investigations and pressure.

June 1989 was the major turning point in my 50 years on life’s road. Before that, I was a member of the first group of students to take the newly restored college entrance examinations following the Cultural Revolution; my career was a smooth ride, from undergraduate to grad student and through to PhD. After graduation I stayed on as a lecturer at Beijing Normal University.

On the podium, I was a popular teacher, well received by students. I was also a public intellectual: in the 1980s I published articles and books that created an impact. I was frequently invited to speak in different places, and invited to go abroad to Europe and the US as a visiting scholar. What I required of myself was to live with honesty, responsibility and dignity both as a person and in my writing.

Subsequently, because I had returned from the US to take part in the 1989 movement, I was imprisoned for “counter-revolutionary propaganda and incitement to crime”, losing the platform I loved; I was never again allowed to publish or speak in public in China. Simply for expressing divergent political views and taking part in a peaceful and democratic movement, a teacher lost his podium, a writer lost the right to publish, and a public intellectual lost the chance to speak publicly. This was a sad thing, both for myself as an individual, and, after three decades of reform and opening, for China.

Thinking about it, my most dramatic experiences after 4 June 1989 have all been linked with the courts; the two opportunities I had to speak in public have been provided by trials held in the people’s intermediate court in Beijing, one in January 1991 and one now. Although the charges on each occasion were different, they were in essence the same, both crimes of expression.

Twenty years on, the innocent souls of 4 June are yet to rest in peace, and I, who had been drawn into the path of dissidence by the passions of 4 June, after leaving the Qincheng prison in 1991 lost the right to speak openly in my own country, and could only do so through overseas media, and hence was monitored for many years; placed under surveillance (May 1995 – January 1996); educated through labor (October 1996 – October 1999), and now once again am thrust into the dock by enemies in the regime.

But I still want to tell the regime that deprives me of my freedom, I stand by the belief I expressed 20 years ago in my hunger strike declaration – I have no enemies, and no hatred. None of the police who monitored, arrested and interrogated me, the prosecutors who prosecuted me, or the judges who sentence me, are my enemies. While I’m unable to accept your surveillance, arrest, prosecution or sentencing, I respect your professions and personalities. This includes the prosecution at present: I was aware of your respect and sincerity in your interrogation of me on 3 December.

For hatred is corrosive of a person’s wisdom and conscience; the mentality of enmity can poison a nation’s spirit, instigate brutal life and death struggles, destroy a society’s tolerance and humanity, and block a nation’s progress to freedom and democracy. I hope therefore to be able to transcend my personal vicissitudes in understanding the development of the state and changes in society, to counter the hostility of the regime with the best of intentions, and defuse hate with love.

I firmly believe that China’s political progress will never stop, and I’m full of optimistic expectations of freedom coming to China in the future, because no force can block the human desire for freedom. China will eventually become a country of the rule of law in which human rights are supreme. I’m also looking forward to such progress being reflected in the trial of this case, and look forward to the full court’s just verdict – one that can stand the test of history.

Ask me what has been my most fortunate experience of the past two decades, and I’d say it was gaining the selfless love of my wife, Liu Xia. She cannot be present in the courtroom today, but I still want to tell you, my sweetheart, that I’m confident that your love for me will be as always. Over the years, in my non-free life, our love has contained bitterness imposed by the external environment, but is boundless in afterthought. I am sentenced to a visible prison while you are waiting in an invisible one.

Your love is sunlight that transcends prison walls and bars, stroking every inch of my skin, warming my every cell, letting me maintain my inner calm, magnanimous and bright, so that every minute in prison is full of meaning. But my love for you is full of guilt and regret, sometimes heavy enough to hobble my steps. I am a hard stone in the wilderness, putting up with the pummeling of raging storms, and too cold for anyone to dare touch. But my love is hard, sharp, and can penetrate any obstacles. Even if I am crushed into powder, I will embrace you with the ashes.

Given your love, my sweetheart, I would face my forthcoming trial calmly, with no regrets about my choice and looking forward to tomorrow optimistically. I look forward to my country being a land of free expression, where all citizens’ speeches are treated the same; where different values, ideas, beliefs, political views … both compete with each other and coexist peacefully; where, majority and minority opinions will be given equal guarantees, in particular, political views different from those in power will be fully respected and protected; where all political views will be spread in the sunlight for the people to choose; where all citizens will be able to express their political views without fear, and will never be politically persecuted for voicing dissent.

I hope to be the last victim of China’s endless literary inquisition, and that after this no one else will ever be jailed for their speech.

Freedom of expression is the basis of human rights, the source of humanity and the mother of truth. To block freedom of speech is to trample on human rights, to strangle humanity and to suppress the truth.

I do not feel guilty for following my constitutional right to freedom of expression, for fulfilling my social responsibility as a Chinese citizen. Even if accused of it, I would have no complaints.

The English text is from here, the whole original text is available here.

In addition to the sad fact that there is obviously deep disagreement about the role, function, and interpretation of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the public discussion about how to resolve this showed that this is an almost impossible task, because some of the arguments – proposed by official and personal voices – are far away from actual realities. I will mention only two frequently found examples:

One – the institutional level

It is claimed the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize for a Chinese dissident was the result of a conspiracy of “the West.” Efforts to put pressure also on the government of Norway brought their response: that the government does not have any voice and influence on the decisions of the Nobel Committee. But it was reported that the Chinese embassy in Oslo had written to the embassy there not to attend the ceremony. However, 44 embassies did not heed such a warning and accepted the invitation to attend the award event; 19 embassies refused the invitation for “for various reasons;” two had not replied.

It is obviously a task which will take many years to tackle, before a general understanding can be approached what a state, and what a society is – especially with it civil elements – and how they relate..

When some voices from China rejected the decision of the independent Norwegian Nobel Committee as an intervention into the internal affairs of China, this meant obviously it is an interference into the affairs as handled by the Chinese government. But there are now more and more news surfacing from among the 400 million Internet users in China, where a number of them is now making efforts to make information about the Nobel Peace Price available to a larger number of people in China, from whom information had been withheld by the public media.

Two – on the ideological and personal level

The concept of Human Rights is said, mostly by authoritarian governments or their followers, to be a Western – capitalist – imperialist – imposition. Any historical study on the origin of the United Nations reveals, however, that the UN was conceived during the fight against Nazi Germany and the aggression committed against its neighbors. The Soviet Union was a major victim of this war, and one of the major players to create the United Nations in 1945. When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948 by the General Assembly of the United Nations, the target was still clear: to find an order which would help to prevent atrocities committed by state organs, as experienced in the recent past.

Are human rights a foreign, imperialist, Western, imposed idea? Maybe the people who have been forced from their homes in Phnom Penh, where they used to live for many years, in Dey Krahom and around the lake – Boeung Kak – to make place for “local development” could make also a contribution to this discussion.

Was the goal achieved, which was set with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Yes and no. At least the direction was laid out towards which to proceed.

That this remains to be an extremely arduous way could be seen again during the past week, where fundamental questions appeared to be unsolved: what is the role of the written UN Conventions – what is the role of the state in a conflict, where individuals find themselves in a situation requesting the state to protect them, based on the law – but the state has a different understanding and interpretation of the very same law.

The struggle continues.

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