Guest Comments by Emily Lau



Editor's Note: Following is a condensed version of remarks recently delivered by Lau, a leading politician in Hong Kong’s Democratic Party, at a Sino-Global Discourse, organized by the Institute of Cultural Diplomacy (ICD), in Germany.

BERLIN -- To many people, China's rise in recent decades has been remarkable. Earlier this year, China overtook Japan as the world's second-biggest economy. Economic reforms have improved the lives of many Chinese people. But the fantastic growth also created staggering problems of corruption and social disparity, and led to gross violations of human rights.

China's impressive economic performance and burgeoning market have attracted wide interest. Many people turn a blind eye to erosion of universal core-values like human rights, democracy and rule of law, values they cherish at home.

I wish to discuss China's human-rights situation and why China and the world community would benefit if Beijing improved its human-rights record. The title of my lecture is “Who's Afraid of Ai Weiwei?” For those who don't know, Ai Weiwei is one of China's most prominent and provocative artists. Known for his sharp tongue, he's an outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist regime. He has demanded democracy, criticized government corruption and  supported intellectual Liu Xiaobo, a political prisoner awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

On April 3, the Beijing authorities detained Ai Weiwei as he tried to board a plane for Hong Kong. After three days, the police said they were investigating him for “suspected economic crimes”.

The detention sparked an international outcry. Two days earlier, Ai Weiwei had spoken to German broadcaster ARD. He warned that “people with different minds and voices are being thrown into prison”. He told of surveillance cameras at his gate entrance, his phone being tapped and his microblog messages censored.

“In many ways, China resembles the Middle Ages,” he said. “China's control over the people's minds and the flow of information is like before the Enlightenment. Writers, artists and commentators are detained or jailed when they express their views on democracy, opening up, reform and reason. This is the reality of China.”

After detaining Ai Weiwei for 81 days, the authorities released him due to “a chronic illness and his good attitude in confessing”. Many people believe the release resulted from lack of evidence that he had committed a crime and from the huge international outcry. After all, the Chinese leadership worries about the country's international image.

So it's vital for the international community to speak against human-rights violations in China. Human rights transcend boundaries. Protecting them is everyone's business. Sometimes when overseas organizations criticize China's poor human-rights record, Beijing accuses them of interfering in domestic affairs. I reject this claim and urge the international community to continue to speak. China should know that to become a respected member of the international community means abiding by the code of behavior set out in United Nations human-rights covenants.

The Chinese Government has signed and ratified various human-rights covenants and will accept scrutiny by relevant UN committees. It submits reports on implementation and sends delegations to UN hearings. In 1998, China signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), but hasn't ratified it, claiming it's not yet ready.

In 1997, Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region of China. Back in 1976, the British Government had extended the ICCPR to Hong Kong. To the UN's relief, China allowed Hong Kong to remain a party to the ICCPR. Every five years, Hong Kong submits a report on its implementation to the Human Rights Committee and sends a delegation to a UN hearing. Many times, I've travelled to the UN to observe human-rights hearings and made interventions as a member of Hong Kong NGOs. I do this because I think that international scrutiny of Hong Kong's human rights record is important.

As for the Chinese mainland's human-rights record, it was under UN scrutiny by the Human Rights Council in 2009. Each country's record is scrutinized in a three-hour session. Many countries praised China's economic achievements. A few western nations were critical, but the Chinese delegation rejected their comments.

As depicted by Ai Weiwei, China has grave human-rights violations, and discontent soars. But Hong Kong's situation is different. Under China's policy of “one country, two systems", Hong Kong's seven million people retain the free lifestyles and rule of law they had under British colonial rule. This promise is supposed to last for 50 years until 2047.

Thanks to “one country, two systems”, Hong Kong is the freest city in China. This is possible due to a vibrant civil society, the public respect for freedoms and rule of law, and an independent judiciary and legal profession.

Some pro-democracy Legislative Councilors, like me, are evidence of “one country, two systems”. Although we are Chinese nationals and can live and work in Hong Kong, we're banned from travel to the Chinese mainland. Eleven of the 60 members in Hong Kong's Legislative Council have been banned from such travel for two decades. I can go to Germany or other countries, but not to the Chinese mainland.

Several times, pro-democracy legislators have received special dispensation to visit the mainland for a few days. But that's ridiculous. We're Chinese citizens, and it's our right to freely enter and leave the country. But there's no telling if I'll be able to freely visit the Chinese mainland in my lifetime.

For China to become a respectable member of the international community, it must respect human rights and rule of law. It needs an independent judiciary and legal profession.

As China's economy developed, changes happened – a communications transformation due to the Internet, increasing social disparity and corruption. The human-rights movement is an unintended consequence of a legal-reform process started more than 30 years ago.

From 1966-76, China endured “lawlessness” called the Cultural Revolution. After Chairman Mao Zedong died, new leaders altered the Soviet Union's model for economic development and moved towards a market economy, but resurrected its political-legal system.

In the early 1980s, the legal profession was restored. Legal institutions were re-established. Laws and regulations addressing every aspect of a modern legal system were promulgated. Law schools were created, and “legal consciousness” spread. The government expanded the roles of lawyers to help settle disputes, promote the evolving “socialist market economy”, foster international business co-operation and legitimize the punishment of serious offenders. In principle, lawyers were no longer Soviet-style “state legal workers”, but independent professionals to protect citizens' rights, even if at odds with the government.

The government failed to anticipate how much the laws promulgated. Propaganda-slogans spread through the education system, media and other channels were taken up, interpreted and turned against the government by the law's new experts, like lawyers, officials and academics.

New laws stipulating citizens’ rights were understood as a promise the government would be bound by the rules it created. This meant contracts needed to be fulfilled and property protected. Violations of property or personal rights could trigger claims for damages, even against the government. No one could be falsely accused or mistreated in detention. Officials breaking laws would face criminal punishment.

Sometimes the laws were honored. Important procedural protections, like those for suspects and defendants, began going into practice. Some citizens challenged the authorities for wrongdoing and sometimes prevailed in lawsuits. They even challenged laws not in conformity with the Constitution.

Many people placed sincere hopes in building the rule of law. Some law schools even imitated American ones by opening clinics for students to study the needs of less-fortunate citizens and to understand the legal system's shortcomings.

The trend looked unstoppable and led to the rise of a human-rights movement consisting of uncoordinated actions and appeals against government injustice. The movement has no leaders -- just activists calling themselves “rights defenders". They may be aware of each other through the Internet, but don't co-ordinate their actions. The lawyers involved became known as human-rights lawyers.

Some victims of social injustice received support from the lawyers, who took up cases involving alleged Tibetan or Uyghur “separatists”, democracy organizers and Falun Gong or “house church” worshippers. They pursued cases with claims against the government for misconduct and corruption, birth-control abuses or forced eviction. They helped victims of natural disasters or of malfeasance by state enterprises.

Although Beijing felt alarmed to see human-rights lawyers taking up cases, a greater threat came from human-rights ideas taking hold among ordinary citizens. Petitioners used the term “human rights” with greater fluency.

With human-rights lawyers seen as a threat, the judicial authorities imposed pressure on them. They were warned by their law firms or by Justice Bureau officials not to take up “politically sensitive” cases or else risk losing their professional licenses. Annual registration of professional licenses became a tactic to curb the lawyers' rights to practice.

China has about 170,000 licensed lawyers, but only a few, maybe 100, can be called human-rights lawyers. These courageous people could become multi-millionaires by following the state's advice and avoiding sensitive cases. But they follow their consciences by helping the oppressed. Some have faced grave results, like persecution, imprisonment and torture. To support these brave lawyers, we formed the China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group in Hong Kong in 2007.

A little earlier, the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee passed a resolution trumpeting “harmonious society". This implied that dissonance was unpleasant and unwanted with harmony essential for social stability. The scene is set for confrontation.

As China emerges as a leading economy, its rulers feel deeply insecure, fearing their own citizens. In March, the government announced a whopping 14-per-cent increase in the budget for domestic security, including police, armed civil militia, courts and jails. That's what officials call spending on “stability protection". Some commentators see the huge expenditure as a warning against calls for a “Jasmine Revolution", protests inspired by popular uprisings in the Middle East. It shows the high cost of internal control and signals that crackdowns on dissenting views will intensify. It takes little imagination to realize that more spending instead to improve the lives of ordinary people would reduce street protests and court challenges.