2009 Wilma Dykeman Stokely Memorial Lecture

Lecture delivered by Minky Worden at the East Tennessee History Museum, Knoxville, on March 24, 2009

.

Human Rights, Reform and the Future of China 
By Minky Worden

.

I am honored to deliver the 2009 Wilma Dykeman Stokely Memorial Lecture.

Wilma Dykeman is among Tennessee's best-known writers and chroniclers of this state's colorful history.  As a native Tennessean and writer, I feel a strong bond to her work, and particularly so because she was a trailblazer in every regard.  When Wilma Dykeman began her life's work, there were not many examples on hand in East Tennessee of either female writers or female historians. 

In particular, I think of Wilma Dykeman as embodying the tradition of the strong Southern women whose stories she so often told.  Women who were also like my mother and both of my grandmothers.  Their Tennessee legacy has echoed in my life, and I am grateful to the Friends of the Knox County Public Library and my Webb high school English teacher Ginna Mashburn for giving me the chance to speak to you today. 

Tennessee roots and first exposure to China

As I begin my talk to you about human rights, reform and the future of China, let me put it in the context of Wilma Dykeman's groundbreaking work.  And let me also pay tribute to my own East Tennessee heritage and family, who have been constant companions no matter how far away from home I travel. 

My late mother Betsy Worden, an artist, almost always featured themes from Tennessee and Appalachia in her paintings and weavings-the Smoky Mountains covered in mist, our waterways, old barns and rustic log cabins. 

Indeed, I grew up in not one but two log cabins, and the second one was built by my parents over a period of 20 or so years. 

I was also literally raised in the Tennessee arts community, listening to folk music on hammer dulcimers, dyeing yarn with vegetable dyes, visiting John Rice Irwin in his Museum of Appalachia complex, and learning how to weave on a loom.  My earliest memories are of pottery classes at the Dulin Gallery, and although none of the artistic skills I acquired took, I do think of writing broadly speaking as being part of the Tennessee creative tradition.

So how did someone with this background ever end up living and working in China? 

I can credit my maternal grandmother, Mary Fowlkes, with my first exposure to China.  In 1981, shortly after the country opened to the outside world, she toured China with Mary Ewing, going as far west as dusty Xian. 

This was soon after the astonishing discovery of the underground army of terracotta warriors and their horses, and Grandma brought back indelible stories of a very different culture-and a jade bracelet I have to this day.  She sparked in me a lifelong interest which contributed to my decision in 1992 to move to Hong Kong, where I worked for six years in the 1990s as a writer and adviser for Democratic Party chairman Martin Lee.

"Reverence for life" and human rights

Wilma Dykeman's work often dealt with the interaction of people and the environment.  In her book, Neither Black Nor White, she wrote in 1957 of the "reverence for life" which inspired Albert Schweitzer's humanitarian work in Gabon in the early 20th century and motivated her own work on racism in the South of the United States.

I think of the work I do as a human rights advocate as falling very clearly into this theme. 

Human rights work is relatively new-dating from the passage of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.   The organization I work for, Human Rights Watch, was founded thirty years ago to monitor the Soviet Union's compliance with the Helsinki Accords. 

Since then, Human Rights Watch has worked to bolster brave citizens across the world who are trying to hold their governments to basic human rights standards. 

Today, Human Rights Watch-which began as that small movement of courageous writers, lawyers and advocates-is a truly global organization of 280 professionals, investigating and exposing abuses in more than 80 countries around the world. From Burma to Turkmenistan, from North Korea to Zimbabwe, we work with domestic human rights advocates to raise the cost of abuse, so that governments and others think twice before violating the rights of their people. 

Reflecting the values in Wilma Dykeman's writings, one key theme of my talk tonight will be the work of brave human rights defenders and writers inside China, who clearly took their own government at its word that the 2008 Beijing Olympics would lead to expanded freedoms. 

That so many of them ended up in prison or under house arrest speaks volumes about the repressive environment in China today. 

Many considered 2008 to be the "year of China." From the Tibet crackdown last March to the devastating Sichuan earthquake in May to the Olympics in August, China dominated the world's headlines last year.  A spotlight will again shine on China this June, when rights defenders across the world will commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.  Only in China itself will discussion of this tragic anniversary be banned. 

But to appreciate contemporary China and the aspirations of the country's 1.3 billion people, it is vital to review and understand the upheavals of the last 50 years.   

From Mao to now: Great Leaps

The title of the book I wrote and edited, China's Great Leap, refers to one of the darkest periods in China's long history. 

A campaign launched by Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong in 1958, the Great Leap Forward sought to rapidly industrialize China by collectivizing farms and attempting to turn peasant households into centers of steel production. 

One of the world's worst ever famines followed, with deaths throughout China estimated to be 20-70 million.  When Deng Xiaoping and other party leaders managed to take control and reverse the Great Leap Forward's catastrophic course, Chairman Mao responded by launching the Cultural Revolution.

During the Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to his death in 1976, Mao unleashed a decade of political, social and economic chaos.   Intellectuals, artists, writers and those simply with contacts with the outside world were denounced and sent to the countryside to perform manual labor and "learn from the peasants"-or worse. 

Millions died, were jailed or "purged" as Mao's power struggle took over the entire country. 

Today, every single Chinese family can tell you shocking stories of disrupted education, unhinged careers and shattered lives.  Two years after Mao's death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping, who had been put under house arrest by Mao in his last days, became the country's new "Paramount Leader."  He managed to correct some of Mao's worst excesses through economic opening and other reforms to reduce the Communist Party's near total control of all aspects of life-from where you would live to who you would marry, to the number of children you could have.

In 2008, China did not just host the Olympics, it also marked the 30th anniversary of Deng Xiaoping's historic "Reform and Opening" policy.  Over the three decades since that policy was put in place, China has changed profoundly, with hundreds of millions of ordinary Chinese people able to lift themselves from poverty and regain some measure of control over their lives.  

But increasing economic and personal opportunity has not always compensated for the lack of basic civil liberties and human rights in China.   Flashpoints include the violently suppressed protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989, and uprisings in Tibet at regular intervals including last year and last week. 

Perhaps the most pervasive problem in China today is corruption, because when the Communist Party is above the law, graft and extortion flourish. 

From Tiananmen to the Bird's Nest

In the wake of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the Chinese government needed to find a way to reengage with the world community, sweep away the televised images of tanks in Beijing and boost domestic credibility.

In 1990, paramount leader Deng Xiaoping came up with a plan: he announced that "China will apply to host the Olympics." 

However, when China initially bid for the 2000 Games in 1993, the images of tanks and bloodshed were still relatively fresh.  That first Olympic bid failed-largely due to human rights concerns. 

So, to secure the 2008 Summer Games, the Chinese government came back to the Olympic bidding table better prepared.  Beijing committed to major reforms, such as allowing international reporters unfettered access across the country.  Top officials made human rights improvements a cornerstone of their case to be an Olympic host. 

In official bid documents, speeches and interviews at the time, the specific promises were: 

  • general human rights improvements;
  • "complete press freedom" for foreign journalists;
  • no internet censorship; and
  • to allow peaceful demonstrations during the Games in designated protest zones.

Beijing's empty Olympic promises

By the Chinese government's own self-set yardstick, how were these human rights pledges fulfilled before and during the Olympics? 

In short, it was a major missed opportunity.  

Instead of the promised rights improvements, Human Rights Watch has documented a serious and ongoing deterioration in China's human rights situation.   Among the Olympics-related abuses were:

  • The forced evictions of many thousands of Beijing residents to make way for Olympic venues and infrastructure, often without consultation or compensation.
  • The "sweeps" of undesirables such as rural petitioners, whose settlement in Beijing's Fengtai District once housed 10,000 people prior to its demolition in the fall of 2007.
  • The exploitation of many of the four million migrant workers who literally built the new Beijing. The Chinese government admitted that six workers died working on the National Stadium (Bird's Nest) alone.
  • The stifling of journalists, in violation of Beijing's own pledges on reporting freedom for the 25,000 foreign journalists in China to cover the Games. Many Internet sites were censored. Meanwhile, China remains the world's top jailer of journalists, with nearly 30 writers in prison.
  • The jailing of human rights activists including Hu Jia, who had criticized the Chinese government for seeking to burnish its image by hosting the Olympics while failing to address rights abuses. Hu was found guilty of "inciting subversion of state power," a charge often leveled at critics of the government.
  • The failure to accept any of the 77 applications for official protests during the Olympics, despite the establishment of three protest zones for this purpose. In an Orwellian twist, several of the applicants ended up in jail for their efforts. This January, one Chinese citizen who had legally applied for the right to protest was punished with a three-year prison sentence.

The human cost of China's Olympic success 

The Chinese government invested huge resources in ensuring that the Games were technically perfect with massive new sports venues and spectacular ceremonies.  Beijing also made every effort to produce a positive image of the country for the outside world's consumption.  

As the world watched the fireworks of the Beijing Games' opening ceremony, the seeds of China's latest deadly public health disaster were being sown.  When stories first surfaced of baby formula that was poisoning children, the news of the deadly milk was censored by the Chinese government.  By the time the Olympics were over, at least six babies were dead from melamine and 294,000 children were poisoned.  

Eventually, the tainted milk was revealed to be in every dairy company across China, and some of those products even came to the United States. 

This is not the first time China's censorship has been a global health threat.   In both the HIV/AIDS and SARS health crises, the Chinese government's reflex was to stifle news coverage rather than to assist the victims-allowing the epidemics to expand. The SARS epidemic ultimately spread to 23 countries and killed 774 of the more than 8,000 people it infected.

China's challenges

Despite China's official assurances that hosting the Olympic Games would help to strengthen the development of human rights in the country, the Chinese government continues to deny or restrict its citizens' fundamental rights, including freedom of expression, freedom of association, and freedom of religion.   

This is a fairly grim picture of the range of human rights and other challenges inside China.

But there is also one great source of hope for a freer China: the development over the last decade of a true domestic civil society-lawyers, activists and citizens who look at their own constitution and demand their rights, in court, in the media and sometimes on the streets.  There are some 90,000 so-called "mass incidents" in China every year-this is the government's term for protests on the streets.  

And there are now more than 10,000 non-governmental organizations across the country.  Many are doing essential work on health, the environment, law or education that the government cannot manage, so they are unlikely to be shut down.  And every day they exist, pushing the envelope of freedom, they create more space for public discourse about human rights and the responsibilities of a government. 

These courageous members of civil society and human rights defenders risk harassment, unlawful detention, forced disappearances, and long prison sentences, often on trumped-up charges. 

I would like to tell the story of one person whose life shows the promise, changes and opportunities in China-but also the limitations that are still very real today. 

Liu Xiaobo, a symbol of China's opportunities and limitations

Liu Xiaobo is a writer and former professor of literature who is the President of the Chinese section of the international writers' association PEN.  He spent twenty months in prison after denouncing the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989.  But this did not silence him. In a chapter he contributed to my book, China's Great Leap, he warned of the dangers posed by Chinese authoritarianism.

This warning proved to be sadly accurate. Last December, the police detained Mr. Liu along with other signers of Charter 08, a document which urged the Chinese government to respect the rule of law, guarantee basic freedoms and protect human rights.  Charter 08 is modeled on the Czech human rights manifesto Charter 77, led by Vaclav Havel, and it reminds us that in an authoritarian country, leaders fears writers and those who expose government failings above all. 

Since it was released on the internet last December 10-Human Rights Day-Charter 08 has been signed by nearly 10,000 people in China. 

But Liu Xiaobo, one of the main organizers of the Charter, has not been seen since being taken by the police on December 8. 

Since he is based in Beijing, I had to think long and hard about including him in my book for security reasons.  But China's writers are their own best judges of the dangers their writing poses to the authorities, and I felt it was essential that a book about China included voices from inside the country. 

To bring this talk tonight full circle, I think of Liu Xiaobo and his brave compatriots in China as being very much like Wilma Dykeman: willing to write about and challenge injustices. 

Those who wish to see China progress should remember that there are courageous people inside China who are even now willing to stand up for human rights, and to fight for what they believe in.   

Equally important is to remember that the Chinese government is not monolithic.  External pressures to reform can only help domestic reformers who are striving daily and at considerable personal risk towards a goal that could literally change the world: a China that is rights-respecting at home and abroad. 

Thank you for your time and interest.  I will happily take questions.

 

***************

LINKS of interest: