In recent weeks, the world has witnessed catastrophes of nature in
China and Burma beyond the ability of most of us to comprehend. For
what happened in Sichuan province, the thoughts, sympathies and
prayers of all of us here today and across Canada go unreservedly to
all families of the victims and survivors.
Let me also mention here my strong respect and affection for the
people of China generally. Canadians identify with their history,
including their humiliation by major world powers during more than a
century, with their hard work, patience, arts, language, poetry and
literature, early exploration of much of the world, success with
agriculture and many other accomplishments. We are delighted that more
than a million Canadian citizens today are of origin in China.
People vs. Party-state
No-one should confuse the Chinese people with their unelected
government. The differences many of us have with the latter in terms
of human dignity, good governance, rule of law, freedom of speech and
democracy have nothing to do with our regard for the former. The
party-state of China persecutes large communities of its own citizens:
Falun Gong, democracy activists, ethnic minorities, world religions -
Tibetan Buddhists, Muslim Uighurs and Christians, human rights
defenders, journalists who write the truth, and internet bloggers. The
government of China is among the worst human rights violators. In its
encouragement of 'anything goes" capitalism over three decades,
moreover, it has also allowed the air, soil and water to be polluted
incredibly, against the health and esthetic needs of all Chinese
people.
The Falun Gong community, which began in 1992 as a blend of ancient
Chinese spiritual and exercise traditions, since mid-1999 has been
persecuted more and worse than any other group. David Matas and I
concluded in an independent study after examining 53 kinds of proof
that since 2001 the government of China and its agencies have killed
thousands of Falun Gong practitioners, without any form of prior
trial, and then sold their vital organs for large sums of money, often
to 'organ tourists' from wealthy countries (Our report is available in
nineteen languages at www.organharvestinvestigation.net).
How the International Olympic Committee could award the 2008 Olympic
Games to such a regime is thus difficult to understand. The focus in
this talk is on its close partnerships with some of the most despotic
governments on earth, which enable them to better oppress their own
people and to increase thereby the risk to world peace in various
regions of the world:
SUDAN
The genocide in Sudan's province of Darfur ongoing since April, 2003
has in all probability cost the lives of more than 400,000 African
Darfurians from bombs, bullets and related causes, such as starvation.
Beijing continues to assist Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir in
numerous ways, including, financing and supplying arms in exchange for
taking most of Sudan's oil production at much-reduced prices. It
officially sold about $80 million in weapons, aircraft and spare parts
to Sudan during 2005 alone. This included A-5 Fantan bomber aircraft,
helicopter gunships, K-8 military attack aircraft and light weapons,
all of which are found in Darfur, transferred there in violation of UN
resolutions.
China's government has long used the threat of its permanent veto at
the UN Security Council to block effective UN peace activities in
Darfur. In reality, this veto and many innocent lives are being traded
for cheap oil. Months ago, Bashir appointed Musa Hilal, the one-time
leader of the murderous militia, the Janjaweed, to a position in his
government. Hilal has been quoted expressing gratitude for "the
necessary weapons and ammunition to exterminate the African tribes in
Darfur." Not long ago, the Sudanese military ambushed a well-marked
U.N. peacekeeping convoy in Darfur, later claiming it was a mistake.
Virtually every independent observer says it was a deliberate attack.
Darfur as "Crime Scene"
Bashir's refusal to accept the UN-proposed roster of troops and
civilian police-contributing countries, including an engineering
battalion from Sweden/ Norway, units from Nepal, and a fully-equipped
operation from Thailand, reflect nothing other than his political
decision to deny UNAMID the personnel essential for an effective peace
mission in Darfur. Last week, the chief prosecutor of the
International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-O'Campo, told the Security
Council: "The entire Darfur region is a crime scene", adding that
100,000 Dafurians had been displaced so far this year. Explaining his
comparison to Nazi Germany, Ocampo added, according to the BBC,
"Sudanese officials protect the criminals and not the victims. Denial
of crimes, cover up, and attempts to shift responsibility are another
characteristic of the criminal plan in Darfur." I hope Canada is
supporting the long overdue Costa Rica initiative on Darfur underway
now at the Security Council.
The ongoing support for the Darfur genocide by the government of China
has caused serious doubts among thoughtful people everywhere about the
Beijing Olympics so, as Eric Reeves documents, the party-state has
launched a propaganda campaign to reposition itself as a "friend of
Darfur." In this misinformation effort, no mention is made of China's
tiny humanitarian assistance in Darfur or of the fact that numerous
water sources in Darfur have been destroyed by Sudan's regular forces
and its Janjaweed. Water sources are targeted by Khartoum's bombers;
the Janjaweed have often denied civilian access to water points, and
have raped women and girls as young as eight seeking to collect water
for their desperate families. Darfurians generally seem well aware of
Beijing's role in their ongoing torment and destruction.
Arming Khartoum
China's role as the primary supplier of weapons to Khartoum over the
past decade for use in Darfur was the subject of an investigation by
Amnesty International. Amnesty said in mid-2007: "The bulk [of the
military and related equipment] was transferred from China and Russia,
two Permanent Members of the Security Council. The governments of
these supplier countries have been, or should have been, aware through
the published and unpublished reports of the UN Panel of Experts to
the UN Sanctions Committee on Sudan as well as the detailed report by
Amnesty International published in November 2004 that several types of
military equipment including aircraft have been deployed by the
Sudanese armed forces and militia for direct attacks on civilians and
indiscriminate attacks in Darfur, as well as for logistical support
for these attacks."
There is mounting concern that the Khartoum-Beijing alliance will
cause the UN peacekeeping force in Sudan to be as ineffective as it
was in Rwanda and Bosnia. The ongoing role of the party-state in China
across Darfur remains far from the conduct of a responsible member of
the international community. Mia Farrow and many others are quite
correct in linking its activities to the "Genocide Olympics". All
concerned about this too must continue to 'name and shame' the Bashir
and Hu-Wen governments about their joint inhumanity in Darfur before,
during and after the Olympics. We might also target the accessible
corporate sponsors of these Games, including Manulife, Visa, Kodak,
Samsung, Panasonic, Omega, Johnson & Johnson, McDonald's, General
Electric, John Hancock and Coca-Cola, making the obvious point that
silence about human dignity implies acquiescence with the practices of
the government of the host country.
BURMA
It is easy to forget important realities about Burma, including the
fact that its post-independence fledgling democracy was toppled in
1962 by the military dictatorship of Ne Win, who believed that he and
the military would win the 1960 general election. In 1988, there were
widespread pro-democracy riots and an estimated 3000 students and
monks were killed by the army. A determined and brave Aung San Suu Kyi
made her first speech during the '88 uprising as an opposition leader.
The out-of-touch junta called yet another election two years later in
1990. Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) won 81% of
the seats and 67% of the votes cast in 1990. No-one was allowed to
take their seat by the generals and Suu Kyi has remained under house
arrest for most of the past eighteen years. The UN Special rapporteur
confirmed as a "state instigated massacre" the attack on Suu Kyi's
procession in May 2003 northwest of Mandalay, when about 100 people
were killed, including the NLD photographers, and she was herself
wounded.
In what later became pro-democracy protests last September, junta
troops fired automatic weapons at peaceful demonstrators and entered
monasteries to beat and murder Buddhist monks who had protested. Nuns
and monks who helped lead the demonstrations were caged in barbed-wire
enclosures. A foreign journalist was also killed. The junta had
earlier received a $1.4 billion package of arms from Beijing, so it
seems clear where the fatal bullets and guns were made.
Meanwhile at the United Nations Security Council, the representatives
of China and Russia, who had earlier used their vetoes to remove Burma
from its agenda (after keeping it off continuously since the crises of
1990 and 1988 in the country until late 2005) prevented the Council
from considering sanctions against the perpetrators. The two
governments even managed to keep the Council from issuing a
condemnation of the junta's use of deadly force. China provided no
leadership towards a peaceful resolution of the uprising in what has
become in effect, like Sudan, a client state of Beijing.
Next came the Nargis cyclone in the Irrawaddy delta in early May,
which the junta first pretended had not struck by continuing to
broadcast an opera on government television. The regime newspaper
later suggested that foreign humanitarian aid was unnecessary because
the victims could live on frogs. Its priority was attempting to bully
citizens into making dictatorship constitutional in a referendum on
the military-drafted proposed constitution. A saffron democratic
revolution would be unacceptable to both the generals and to the
party-state in Beijing. Hundreds of thousands of desperate Burmese
have now needed food and other help for more than a month.
"Blood for Oil"
As Dr. Peter Navarro puts the situation in the new edition of his
book, The Coming China Wars, what we have currently in Burma is
another "blood for oil" deal. Beijing protects the generals in
exchange for the lion's share of the country's natural gas, which
measure over a half a trillion cubic meters, and, far more
importantly, it gets to build a $2 billion oil pipeline from Burma's
coast on the Bay of Bengal to China's Yunnan province. This will allow
China to take delivery of Middle East oil without passing through the
narrow Strait of Malacca, which could be shut down in the case of a
serious conflict with the West.
All governments which respect human dignity must push harder and more
effectively to persuade the regime in Burma to show respect for the
lives and well-being of its own people. A special UN rapporteur
reported in 2006 that fully 3000 villages in eastern Burma were
destroyed by the junta. Where is Canada's Responsibility to Protect
(R2P) doctrine, which has been adopted by the UN? Might it not be
applied in some way to the crisis in the delta?
NORTH KOREA
The hermit kingdom of Kim Jong Il rivals that of Robert Mugabe's
Zimbabwe for any "worst governance" award today (It is no coincidence
that Beijing supports both regimes, although its attempt to ship $70
million in arms to Mugabe after he lost the recent first round of the
presidential election was blocked when dock workers in South Africa
refused to unload ships carrying the weapons and were supported by
their national courts.). According to the International Crisis Group
(ICG) in Brussels, China now does about $2 billion in annual bilateral
and investment—approx. 40% of the kingdom's foreign trade—with North
Korea. About 150 Chinese companies operate in North Korea. There are
currently about two million ethnic Koreans living in China and
10,000-100,000 refugees at any point in time.
The ICG asserts that the government of China's priorities with the
government in Pyong Yang currently includes:
- avoiding the costs of an explosion on the Korean peninsula,
- preventing the U.S. from dominating a unified Korea,
- incorporating North Korea into the development plans of its three
north eastern provinces to help them achieve stability,
- achieving credit in China, in the region and in the US for being
engaged in achieving denuclearization,
- maintaining the two-Korea status quo, as long as it can maintain
influence in both capitals as leverage with the US on the Taiwan
issue, and
- avoiding a situation where a nuclear North Korea leads Japan and/or
Taiwan to become nuclear powers.
In mid-October, 2006, after North Korea completed an underground test
on nuclear weapons, the Economist magazine called on the US, China
and Russia to make sacrifices to avoid a nuclear arms race in Asia and
the Middle East. The magazine argued that some response was necessary
because Iran, among other countries, could go nuclear despite the
warnings from the UN and the three other major players. "The Chinese
could, if they wished, starve North Korea's people and switch off the
lights", noted its lead editorial, but added that pressure of any kind
was unlikely to persuade Kim to give up his bomb.
As Peter Navarro notes, nothing is likely to dissuade Kim from his bad
habits, which include counterfeiting U.S. currency, acting as a
conduit for drug and arms commerce, and periodically threatening South
Korea with an invasion of Seoul. Navarro: "North Korea is able to
engage in all this rogue behaviour precisely because of its ability to
hide behind Chinese skirts. China currently provides the Pyongyang
regime with two-thirds of its fuel and one third of its food…The one
certainty in this relationship is its lack of any certainty. This
translates into high risk—the proverbial nuclear joker in the deck.
Should famine, a dictator's whim, or any number of random events
trigger a North Korean military outburst, it would force China to take
sides. The result may well be "the Korean War, Part Deux.". A
cheerless thought indeed!
IRAN
Human dignity abuses by the Iranian government currently include
persecution of ethnic and religious minorities (Arabs, Azeri, Kurds,
Turks, Baha'is, Jews and Christians), women in a species of gender
apartheid (under Sharia law the life of a woman is worth half that of
a man), imprisonment, torture and execution of political prisoners and
prisoners of conscience and complete control over the media.
In trading with Iran, China and other countries doing so legitimize
its government and help to maintain regime officials in positions of
absolute power. Trade and investment from abroad also provide to
Tehran funds that often are not used for the health, education and
general welfare of Iranians but instead for funding terrorist groups
abroad, including Hezbollah and Hamas, under the mantle of "expanding
the Islamic Empire".
China-Iranian trade has grown from $200 million in 1990 to $10 billion
in 2005. This includes conventional arms and ballistic missiles for
Iran despite Tehran's declared hostility to 'godless communism" and
Beijing's continuing severe persecution of its Uyghur Muslims. Beijing
simply ignores theocratic rule in Tehran. A major attraction for
Tehran is Beijing's permanent seat on the UN Security Council, which
is useful for resisting Western pressure on nuclear and other issues.
Ali Hashemi Rafsanjani pushed the relationship while Iran's president
(1989-1997) and became a stakeholder in it. A Chinese contract to
build the Tehran metro has as its local partner a company headed by
his oldest son. He and others in Iran strongly favour the 'China
model' of air tight political control while encouraging economic
growth.
In the mid 1990's, China became the leading supplier of conventional
arms to Iran and has since provided assistance on developing dual use
technology that can be converted to developing nuclear weapons. In
1995, China under pressure from the U.S. did stop the sale of nuclear
reactors to Iran. There appears little doubt that China has since
resumed nuclear weapon technology sales to Iran.
There are also indications that China has helped with Iran's Shahab-3
and Shahab-4 medium range ballistic missiles. Both are capable of
hitting any state in the Middle East; the Shahab-4 could hit
significant portions of Europe. Two years ago, the U.S. imposed
penalties on eight Chinese companies for exporting material that can
be used to improve Iran's ballistic missile capability. China's
nuclear weapons technology exports to Pakistan had a similar
objective, to prevent either a United States or Soviet Union dominance
of the subcontinent along China's southern border. As a result,
Pakistan is now a nuclear power, facing nuclear-armed India. In the
Middle East, China's policy of providing Iran with nuclear weapons
technology is injecting a highly-destabilizing element in the region.
By providing Iran with weapons that could be used in support of
Islamic fundamentalism, the potential for religious conflict becomes
greater. Old hatreds between Iranian and Iraqi religious groups could
flare up in the future. Nuclear weapons would give Iran a strategic
reserve that could allow its regime to act even more aggressively.
Israel could also be unintentionally brought into the scenario,
believing that the only reason an Islamic state would want a nuclear
weapon is to use it against Israelis. China's goal of securing a
reliable source of cheap oil and gas is probably being hindered rather
than helped by its weapons sales to Iran by inserting a destabilizing
element into Middle East domestic affairs, but also encouraging the
United States to continue its extensive military presence there to
deter Iran's use of force.
Canada initiated the successfully-passed UN General Assembly
resolution in late 2007, which drew attention to numerous human rights
abuses in Iran, including confirmed instances of:
- Torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,
Including, flogging and amputations;
- Public executions, including multiple public executions, and of
other executions carried out in the absence of respect for
internationally recognized safeguards;
- Stoning as a method of execution, and the continued issuing of
sentences of stoning;
- Execution of persons who were under the age of 18 at the time
their offence was committed, contrary to the obligations of the
Islamic Republic of Iran under article 37 of the Convention on the
Rights of the Child and article 6 of the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights;
- Arrests, violent repression, and sentencing of women exercising
their right to peaceful assembly, a campaign of intimidation against
women's human rights defenders, and continuing discrimination against
women and girls in law and in practice;
- Increasing discrimination and other human rights violations
against persons belonging to religious, ethnic, linguistic or other
minorities, recognized or otherwise, including, inter alia, Arabs,
Azeri's, Baluchis, Kurds, Christians, Jews, Sufis and Sunni Muslims
and their defenders, and, in particular, attacks on Baha'is and their
faith in State-sponsored media, increasing evidence of efforts by the
State to identify and monitor Baha'is and prevention of the Baha'i
faith from attending university and from sustaining themselves
economically; an increase in cases of arbitrary arrest and detention;
- Ongoing, systemic and serious restrictions of freedom of peaceful
assembly and association, and freedom of opinion and expression,
including those imposed on the media and trade unions, and increasing
harassment, intimidation and persecution of political opponents and
human rights defenders, from all sectors of Iranian society, including
arrests and violent repression of labour leaders, labour members
peacefully assembling and students;
- Persistent failure to uphold due process of law rights, and
violation of the rights of detainees, including the systematic and
arbitrary use of prolonged solitary confinement;
We might all keep in mind too on the issue of Sino-Iranian relations
and their current negative implications for world security that in the
past few weeks alone the Government in Tehran has locked up all seven
senior leaders of the country's 300,000-member Baha'i spiritual
community. Not a word has been heard about them for almost four weeks.
It also fired missiles at the approx 4000 UN-protected residents,
including about sixty Canadians, living in Ashraf city, Iraq. This
second act was clearly an act of war; the first violated a host of
international covenants, including the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, which protects freedom of religion.
Taiwan
It is probably just as well that my time is now up because for various
reasons my comments on Taiwan will be very brief.
Like many others around the world, I welcome the recent signs of good
will expressed by the governments of China and Taiwan towards each
other and would urge those in Beijing to seize a golden opportunity to
improve cross-strait relations. Four ways of doing so would be:
-
Respect the status quo of cross- strait relations and put the
sovereignty issue over Taiwan on hold,
- As the new Taiwanese government has given its pledge to adhere to
the principle of "no unification, no independence and no use of
force", China's government should scale down and then withdraw all of
the more than 1300 ballistic missiles targeted at Taiwan,
- Begin good faith consultations with Taiwan's government over its
international space and wish to play a constructive role in the world
community, seeking a possible cross-strait peace accord, and pledging
that
- The future status of Taiwan will be resolved by peaceful means in
accordance with the will of the 23 million residents of the island.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Mia Farrow, Steven Spielberg, Uma Thulman and many
others have already stood up for human dignity at the 2008 Olympics.
Is Minky Worden of Human Rights Watch not correct when she says that
corporate sponsors, governments and National Olympic Committees should
urge Beijing to improve human rights conditions in China? "Olympic
corporate sponsors are putting their reputations at risk unless they
work to convince the Chinese government to uphold the human rights
pledges it made to bring the Games to Beijing," she said. "Human
rights are under attack in China, and Olympic sponsors should use
their considerable leverage to persuade Beijing to change policy."
The rest of us should too. We are asking the government of China to
honour the promises made when it bid for the Games. If you agree,
please press our own government and our own national Olympic Committee
to urge the government of China to fulfill it commitments.
