The Supreme People's court via WikipediaNevertheless, 2009 is going to be an interesting year and not only because - as here summarized by the Financial Times - China's central government is trying to preempt renewed international criticism on its human rights record. This is really a time for forces inside the country to push their human rights agenda and the failure of the outside world to realize that China's progressive forces are under attack is only too sad.
Let's limit us to two of the main center pieces of international criticism, the death penalty and extra legal arrests, and what has happened over the past few years.
Not so long ago the forces against the death penalty in China were a winning force, a major achievement in a country where a majority of the citizens and the establishment firmly believe in the death penalty as a way to maintain order. Because the capital punishment was not a matter of the central government, but of provincial and local governments, punishment varied greatly depending on who was trying you where. Some white collar crimes were dealt with through fines, while in other parts of the country it could mean the death penalty. By taking back that power to the level of the Supreme People's Court in Beijing, who actually has set up major new chambers to deal with the heavy case load, the capital punishment in China was heading for a watershed. For a few years the number of death penalties actually dropped, until 2008 when the number went up again.
That was a very worrying sign, since it meant that the forces fighting for a more human rights system in China were losing. Security concerns triggered off by incidents in different parts of the country might explain that backlash, but it must have been a major setback for the forces working against the death penalty.
The same goes for the extra legal powers of the security forces. Over the past decades those powers have been limited to a large degree. At the beginning of the 1990s arbitrary forces that could incarcerate people who lived together unmarried, had concubines or were homosexuals lost their power over the populace in a few years time. What remaining up to now were the extra legal detention camps. Despite fierce pressure from the central government, the security forces could never be forced to abolish their last extra legal stronghold. That created many international conviction of the central government when its human rights record would come under scrutiny.
Up to a few years ago, those extra legal camps seemed to be on the way out, just like all those other extra legal powers China's security forces had in the past. In the past year the issue seemed to have moved off the agenda.
Of course, China had major issues last year that would justify its attention for the earthquake in Sichuan, food scandals, the Olympic Games in Beijing and the upcoming economic problems.
What worries me even more is that very few outside observers have ever acknowledged the positive tendencies in China's human rights record, let alone jumped to the rescue when those aspirations went flat over the past year. What China needs is not just outside criticism, although that might help every now and then, but more understanding of how its forces internally work for a better society.
Sorry, just had to get that off my chest.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sjsimc2sSagkWcInuoGrIvQkL0lOpdlgtO0xTZKZkXjIh-Wch0g91ZpxyxY5EryRvWvyDvRz0vP-Rfow3aDp9s1AixxVULTYFjlBHdSUTTqb_lPaLHeNA9uLsweGFQs7k3Sdqkh6hhtRvH8_uVXtCa=s0-d)
No comments:
Post a Comment