The Diplomat » Human Rights

The Great China Exception

diplomat_admin — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 01:32:12 +0000

The magazine Commentary once published an article titled, “Has There Ever Been Anything Like the Soviet Union?” The title was meant to convey the message that in the sordid annals of despotism, the USSR was unique – in the completeness of its totalitarian scheme, in the staying power of its mechanisms of control, and in its determination to assemble a terrifying arsenal even as its domestic economy lay in ruins.

If today we were to pose an updated version of the Commentary question, we would no doubt ask, “Has There Ever Been Anything Like Communist China?” As with the Soviet Union, China today is sui generis. Its leaders have erected a flexible structure of control, combining repression of select targets with the openness that has enabled China to grow into an economic powerhouse. Having set aside policies that caused decades of isolation, the regime has been able to integrate itself into the global economy without abandoning the principles that enshrine the guiding role of the Communist Party.

It’s this calibrated economic integration that has allowed China’s government to evade opprobrium for its domestic repression. To be sure, the regime’s crimes aren’t ignored. Human rights organizations denounce the jailing of dissidents, the mistreatment of minorities, and the lack of the rule of law. But in an age when Ukraine and Turkey are chastised for breaches of democratic standards, China gets a pass for policies that have brought misery to millions. The separate category that China has carved out for itself goes beyond the usual double standard that has historically been applied to “progressive” dictatorships – Cuba, for example. Instead, there’s a kind of stand-alone China Exception, under which repression is acknowledged but actual objections are seldom voiced.

There are many examples of this China Exception. I’ll mention just two of the more egregious cases – egregious because of the ugliness of the policies and because of the world’s decision to ignore or condone Beijing’s actions.

The first example is the one-child policy. The fact that I take issue here will itself draw furrowed brows. The policy, most agree, is a settled issue, a hard but justified measure required by Chinese circumstances.

But why should the world treat the one-child policy with such tolerance? I’m not aware of any scheme of universal values that justifies the state’s intrusion into the most personal and important decisions of human life. Regimes that prevent their citizens from travelling abroad are routinely criticized as oppressive, not to say anachronistic. Is the denial of travel abroad as outrageous as a law that imposes limits on reproduction?

There’s no shortage of evidence of forced abortions and compulsory sterilizations of women who became pregnant in violation of the law. Regulations in more than half of China’s provinces endorse mandatory abortions, and officials risk disciplinary action if they fail to meet birth and sterilization quotas. And, of course, it’s well established that the one-child policy has led to an epidemic of sex-selective abortions and infanticide by parents who prefer boys. The central authorities sometimes blame overzealous local officials in order to deflect criticism. Indeed, the Communist Party leadership seems more focused on the public image of the population control policy than on its implementation. For example, it recently urged officials to use less menacing slogans, phasing out “old fashioned” examples like “If you don’t receive the tubal ligation surgery by the deadline, your house will be demolished!”

Thailand’s Human Rights Crisis

diplomat_admin — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 19:26:26 +0000

Thailand’s human rights situation has set alarm bells ringing, as the space for freedom of expression becomes frighteningly constrained. Indeed, open discussion of the much revered monarchy risks becoming a taboo in the country as groups aligned with the royalists continue to exploit lèse-majesté laws to silence political dissent.

Since the military coup in 2006, cases of lèse-majesté have multiplied. In 2005, 33 charges came before the Court of First Instance, which later handed down 18 decisions in these cases. By 2007, the number of charges increased almost fourfold, to 126. This number jumped to 164 in 2009, and then tripled to 478 cases in 2010. The most dramatic increases occurred under the Democrat Party-led government of Abhisit Vejjajiva, which adopted a royalist line strongly backed by the military.

But it has been a number of recent high-profile cases that have really underscored the misuse of lèse-majesté law and the gross violations of human rights taking place in Thailand today. The arrest of a 62-year-old Thai-Chinese man, Amphon “Akong” Tangnoppakul, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison, shocked many Thais. He allegedly sent four text messages insulting the Queen and the Crown Prince. Amphon has always maintained his innocence.

Joe Gordon, or Lerpong Wichaikhammat, a Thai-born American, was jailed for two and a half years in Thailand after posting online excerpts from banned book, The King Never Smiles, while living in the United States. The U.S. government criticized the lèse-majesté law, but was taken aback by the response of Thai hyper-royalists, who called for the expulsion of the U.S. ambassador to Bangkok.

More staggeringly, Abhinya Sawatvarakorn, nicknamed Kantoop, or “Joss Stick”, a 19-year-old student at Thammasat University, will be charged with lèse-majesté over comments she made on Facebook two years ago. Kantoop was accused of committing lèse-majesté in April 2009 while she was still in high school.

She will be one of the youngest ever to be charged under the law, and has already been through a catalogue of “social punishments.” For example, she was reportedly refused admission into Silpakorn University, where some professors painted her as an anti-monarchy figure. She also had a shoe thrown at her by a student at the esteemed Thammasat University, where she currently studies, and has been forced to change her name to avoid being recognized – and possibly attacked.

Recognizing the unprecedented surge of charges under the lèse-majesté law, young law professors from Thammasat University, who formed the group called Nitirat, or “law for the people,” have been campaigning for amendments to the law. But an even more important objective for them has been to create a more equal society, in which people are not forced to live in fear simply because they disagree with the role of the monarchy in politics.

In essence, Nitirat has proposed relaxing penalties, and only allowing the Office of His Majesty’s Principal Private Secretary to deal with complaints regarding lèse-majesté cases to prevent misuses of the law. But the group is now being accused by hyper-royalists of attempting to overthrow the monarchy.

Being accused of trying to overthrow the monarchy is a serious claim in Thailand, and the process of branding political enemies of being disloyal to the royal family serves to justify the elimination of such enemies through the most vicious means.

Canada Plays its China Card

diplomat_admin — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 23:54:30 +0000

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has announced that he will visit China next month, in a further sign that despite a slow start, his government is increasingly interested in the Middle Kingdom.

The visit will be his second since he took office in 2006, the first coming in December 2009 when he was chided by Premier Wen Jiabao for waiting so long to visit. Harper’s minority Conservative government had been slow to warm to China, putting concerns over human rights before trade and economic development. But all that is changing, driven in large part by China’s insatiable thirst for access to resources – and some hiccups in Canada’s economic relations with the United States.

Over the past several years, Chinese resource companies have moved aggressively to take stakes in Canada’s oil sands play; in 2010 Sinopec purchased a 9 percent stake in Syncrude Canada, the biggest oil sands project, for $4.65 billion, while rival CNOOC recently closed a $2.1 billion deal to acquire heavy oil producer Opti Canada Ltd. It has also recently been revealed that Sinopec is amongst a group of investors providing early-stage funding for the $5.5 billion Northern Gateway pipeline which, if ever built, will take Alberta oil sands bitumen across northern British Columbia to the west coast for shipment to Asia.

China’s appetite for resources isn’t unique to Canada, of course, but an interesting series of events in the United States has strengthened China’s hand, and led Harper to look more favorably on China and Chinese investments in the resource area. Back in 2004, under the previous Liberal government, MinMetals made an aborted bid for the Canadian mining giant, Noranda. The deal wasn’t completed reportedly owing to other business dealings that Noranda undertook. But the threatened takeover aroused much controversy and soul-searching in Canada regarding the wisdom of letting a state-owned Chinese corporation take such a large role in a Canadian resources sector. China got the distinct impression that its interest wasn’t welcome.

Yet those considerations seem secondary now that the Obama administration has announced that it will reject the application by Trans-Canada Pipeline to extend the Keystone XL from Alberta through sensitive ecological areas in Nebraska to Texas (although it has said the company can reapply, and Trans-Canada has confirmed that it will do so using a new route). The completion of this pipeline would help lock in the U.S. market for Alberta heavy oil, but opposition from environmentalists in the United States has forced the Obama administration to take the decision to disallow the application.

Obama would have preferred to delay any decision until after this year’s presidential election, hoping to offend neither environmentalists nor those who support gaining greater access to Canadian oil as a way of weaning the U.S. off reliance on other less reliable foreign suppliers. However, it was forced to issue a ruling given a February deadline imposed by Republicans through a rider on an unrelated piece of legislation.

The original Obama decision to delay the Keystone review, delivered at the APEC meeting in Honolulu at the same time as Canada was clamoring to be allowed to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade negotiations, led Harper to announce publicly that Canada needed to seek out other markets if the Americans don’t want Canadian oil, and the decision on January 18 to reject the application further strengthened his determination to diversify Canada's markets. Thus, China’s ambitions nicely dovetail with Canada’s need to introduce a third party into its dealings with the Obama administration.

All this comes at a time when the Harper government is finally rediscovering Canada’s Asia-Pacific dimension. The decision to publicly throw Canada’s hat into the TPP ring is one concrete demonstration of this belated initiative. The rebuilding of Canada-China ties is another. Canada used to enjoy “privileged” relations with China going back to the 1970s, but that legacy was squandered. Still, bilateral trade is relatively strong and growing (although China enjoys a 3:1 trade surplus with Canada). In addition, an investment agreement with China is being finalized, ostensibly to promote Canadian investment in China, although the real effect will be to accelerate Chinese investment in Canada’s oil, gas and mining sectors.

Harper’s visit to Beijing will be one of the last to be hosted by the “old guard” given impending leadership changes this year, but clearly his “China card” needed to be played quickly, so a February visit has now been confirmed. Doing the next round of their minuet clearly suits both parties right now. Let the dance begin.

Hugh L. Stephens is a former senior official in the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. He is currently Principal of Trans-Pacific Connections/TPC Consulting, based in Vancouver, BC, Canada (www.tpconnections.com).

China’s Parallel Online Universe

diplomat_admin — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 21:05:57 +0000

As the showdown escalated between Chinese security forces and residents of Wukan, where villagers revolted against the Chinese Communist Party, you didn’t find as much discussion of the incident in Chinese social media as you might expect. And it wasn’t only because the internet was shut off in the town.

It was also a result of China’s development of a set of “social media clones” that ably mimic the functions of the most popular, internationally recognized social media applications, such as Facebook and Twitter. The replicas, however, come with a major catch: they systematically comply with the Chinese Communist Party’s strict censorship requirements.

This innovative approach embraces, rather than resists, technological advances. It satisfies the growing demand of hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens for social media tools, reducing incentives for them to circumvent the “Great Firewall,” while still enabling the Communist Party to control what they say to each other on matters of political consequence.

Here’s how this critical piece of China’s modern censorship mosaic works.

First, the big transnational social media players – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube – are blocked in China. This clears the playing field for homegrown firms, such as Renren, which provides Facebook-type functions, Youku.com, a YouTube-like video sharing service, and Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like microblogging service.

These services are then required to have automated or manual monitoring and censorship mechanisms in place to quickly identify and delete user-generated postings or disable accounts that run afoul of the Communist Party’s ever-changing censorship red lines. It’s a daily reality for Chinese bloggers, academics, activists, and even ordinary users to discover a posting deleted, their account locked, or their “friends” unable to view what they have just shared.

The case of Sina Weibo, which boasts some 250 million registered users, is instructive. Launched in 2009, it’s similar to Twitter in that it allows users to post 140-character “tweets” and gather followers. Since coming on the scene, the company has enjoyed explosive growth and the service’s millions of users have become an important audience for a diverse range of interests.

But in the same way this microblogging service can enable commerce, entertainment and personal communication, it’s also increasingly used to share information and commentary unwelcome to the ruling Communist Party. To keep pace, Sina Weibo reportedly employs some 700 people to perform around the clock monitoring of millions of tweets.

Despite Sina Weibo’s vast user base, it represents just a small corner of China’s parallel social media universe. Instead of MSN messenger, there’s QQ, which downloads automated keyword filtering upon installation. Instead of Wikipedia, there is Baidu’s Baike. Instead of Blogspot, every major web portal has its own blogging service.

China Fears ‘Toxic’ Rumours

Minxin Pei — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 17:19:05 +0000

No governments have ever succeeded in banning rumours. But that hasn’t stopped many from trying. The latest to do so is Beijing. Irked by what it deems as malicious rumours spread through the Internet, and microblogs in particular, the Chinese government has recently announced a crackdown on the so-called ‘toxic’ Internet rumours.

The immediate triggers of China’s latest crackdown were most likely related to the outpouring of public outrage on the Internet over the crash of two high-speed trains in late July, and to the role played by the Internet in mobilizing the protest by residents of Dalian that forced the local government to promise to relocate a (truly) toxic petrochemical complex.

But the Chinese authorities also seem to have good reason to attempt the impossible – the advent of the Internet and microblogs has now greatly amplified the impact of rumours. On occasion, rumours have led to tragedies and riots. In one incident that occurred in the early hours of February 10 this year, for instance, rumours that a chemical plant in Xiangshui county in Jiangsu Province was about to explode sent more than ten thousand local residents into a panicked flight. Four people died and many were injured in the resulting traffic accidents.

Based on previous records of rumour-suppression, China’s latest crackdown doesn’t look promising. The reason isn’t that Beijing lacks the muscle or resolve – Chinese censors are hardworking servants of the state and can be counted on to devise ingenious measures to combat rumours. But fighting rumours in the Chinese social and political contexts requires much more than relentless censorship. First and foremost, Chinese leaders worried about the harmful effects of rumours must understand that the influence of rumours is directly and positively correlated with the lack of press freedom and the decline of government credibility. In other words, in a society ruled by an authoritarian regime that tolerates little freedom of the press, but which has an incentive structure that encourages its officials to fabricate critical data (such as GDP growth, inflation, and housing prices) and cover up accidents and communicable diseases, rumours are bound to flourish.

Indeed, when we compare how rumours fare in autocracies and democracies, the difference is huge. To be sure, rumours are concocted and spread in all societies. But those ruled by autocratic elites are far more vulnerable to their impact because these societies have no independent and free press that enjoys public confidence and can quickly discredit rumours through their fact-based reporting. In democracies, rumours can seldom cause mass panic or riots because a free press quickly acts as an antidote.

So a long-term and more effective measure to contain the harm of rumours in China is to allow greater press freedom. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be in the cards.

An interesting question is why rumours in China have grown more potent these days. Although many Chinese officials blame the Internet, the real culprit is the crisis in government credibility. One of the most worrisome trends in China in recent years is the erosion of social trust, caused largely by the prevalence of cheating and dishonesty. The symptoms include fake official rhetoric, fake goods, fake diplomas, fake data, and even fake Apple stores. While many perpetrators are private citizens intent on making a fast profit, others are government officials who use dishonest means to get ahead. Some understate their age (because younger officials have a better chance for promotion); others embellish their resumes and educational achievements (to make themselves more competitive). A very peculiar phenomenon in China is that many officials claim to have earned advanced degrees. But when you look more closely at how they received their graduate degrees, nearly all of them got their masters or doctorates through dubious part-time programmes. For these individuals, cheating may have helped advance their personal careers, but the damage done to the credibility of the Chinese state is irreparable: citizens find it hard to trust a government whose officials shamelessly sport fake academic credentials and get promoted.

A second cause of the crisis in government credibility is embedded in the political system of a one-party state. In addition to suppressing the freedom of the press, such a political system is notoriously opaque. Information is tightly controlled by the state. Eager to maintain its image as a competent regime, a one-party state habitually conceals its shortcomings.

Unfortunately, attempts by government officials to cover up accidents and disasters can endanger the lives and well-being of ordinary citizens. In the infamous case of the outbreak of the SARS epidemic in 2003, Chinese officials hid the truth from the Chinese public for months and therefore greatly exacerbated the destructive effects of the outbreak. In 2008, to cite another example, government officials were aware of the deaths and illness caused by melamine-tainted milk powder produced by Sanlu, a state-owned company, but decided to suppress the information out of fear that the scandal would tarnish the Beijing Olympics. The result was more deaths, consumer panic, and public outrage.

The Sanlu case actually shows that if the public paid attention to ‘true’ rumours, more tragedies could be avoided. Before the official media belatedly acknowledged that Sanlu’s milk powder contained melamine, a Chinese consumer in May posted online his complaints about the harmful effects caused by Sanlu formula. For unknown reasons, the posting didn’t go viral or attract enough public attention to ignite a public firestorm. To the Chinese public, the Sanlu scandal must have been a poignant reminder that they would fare better believing in rumours than trusting government officials.

So it seems that Beijing is fighting the wrong battle again. Instead of launching a costly and ultimately futile campaign against Internet rumours, the Chinese government would better serve itself – and the Chinese people – by freeing the Chinese press and trying to improve its own credibility.

Burma’s Leadership Tries Plan B

diplomat_admin — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 08:43:28 +0000

In May, I wrote in The Diplomat how Burma’s new dictator had experienced a tough start to his presidency. Rigged elections held last November, and then the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, were part of a plan by the dictatorship to gain acceptance by the international community. When Burma’s new parliament opened and Thein Sein made a grand speech promising change, he was undoubtedly hoping that his government would finally gain the legitimacy it craves.

But things didn’t go according to planned. First, the United States, the European Union, and Canada refused to relax economic sanctions. Then came the blow that must have hurt most of all: the Association for Southeast Asian Nations delayed a decision on whether Burma could assume chairmanship of the organisation when its turn comes in 2014.

Now Thein Sein is back with Plan B, a new charm offensive designed to create the impression of change, while so far not making any actual changes at all. A flurry of new initiatives took place over the summer. Talks were held with Aung San Suu Kyi, first with Aung Kyi, a specially assigned liaison minister, and then with President Thein Sein himself. Slogans attacking exiled media organisations were dropped from state-owned newspapers, Aung San Suu Kyi was allowed to travel outside Rangoon, political exiles were told they could return home, and there was an offer of a ceasefire to armed ethnic political groups.

Then, last week, the UN Special Rapporteur was allowed back into Burma, after effectively being banned after calling for the United Nations to establish a commission of inquiry into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Burma. In a masterstroke, he was taken to the new parliament, a move seen by many as conferring legitimacy on that powerless rubber stamp affront to democracy.

These series of initiatives have generated great excitement in diplomatic circles and in the media. But if one goes through them one by one, two extraordinary things stand out. First, not one of these initiatives is substantive, and, second, not one of them is even new.

Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma’s democracy movement have identified three top priorities for change: the release of political prisoners, a nationwide ceasefire and genuine dialogue. Despite all the recent initiatives, and all the positive attention they’ve received, not one political prisoner has been released, and indeed two more were sentenced last week. Thein Sein’s government has been breaking ceasefire agreements, not making new ones, and there have been talks but still no dialogue process.

For those of us who have followed Burma for many years, there’s also an eerie sense of déjà vu. Thein Sein hasn’t taken any steps that his predecessors Than Shwe or Ne Win hadn’t already taken. They didn’t lead to change then, and they should be treated with scepticism now. The only thing that is new is that these initiatives have come so close together.

This haste could be explained by Thein Sein’s desperate desire to win the ASEAN chairmanship. Plan B appears to be presenting the impression of change, without doing anything at all different.

In May, I argued that ASEAN could use the chairmanship as an opportunity to force Thein Sein to make small steps toward real reform. That opportunity is still there today. ASEAN didn’t accept the elections and release of Aung San Suu Kyi as substantive change and it shouldn’t accept this charm offensive as substantive change either.

ASEAN must hold its ground and force Thein Sein to resort to Plan C, namely actual substantive steps, such as the release of political prisoners. ASEAN can offer Thein Sein what he wants, and that’s far too much leverage to be given away cheaply.

Baroness Glenys Kinnock is Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Democracy in Burma, in the British Parliament. She is a former minister in the British Foreign Office and a former MEP.

ASEAN Stands Up to Burma?

diplomat_admin — Wed, 18 May 2011 04:26:25 +0000

Burma’s hard-line new dictator, President Thein Sein, has suffered a series of setbacks in his attempts to persuade the international community that there has been real change in Burma.

First the United States and Canada ruled out relaxing their economic sanctions, saying they wanted to see substantive change first. Then the EU followed suit, maintaining its economic sanctions, and only temporarily relaxing diplomatic sanctions on a small number of government officials.

These setbacks alone would have been disappointing for Thein Sein—as someone in the top circle of the dictatorship for 14 years, he was one of the architects of the new Constitution, which was designed in part to persuade the international community to relax pressure against the regime.

But now he has received another blow, one that will hurt even more because it was dealt to him by a friend. Association of Southeast Asian Nation leaders have delayed a decision on his request for Burma to assume the ASEAN chairmanship in 2014. This isn’t just a public humiliation for Thein Sein, but also a major diplomatic miscalculation.

So why didn’t he sound out fellow ASEAN members before making his bid?

ASEAN has long provided protection to the dictatorship. But although it may still approve the chairmanship, comments from an Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesperson were unusually blunt, stating that Indonesia expects a ‘genuine democracy and reconciliation that involves all parties in Myanmar.’

ASEAN has also laid the groundwork for its get-out clause for refusing the request, while avoiding the real political reason, stating that Burma must have the physical infrastructure required for becoming chair.

If even ASEAN, one of the Burmese junta’s closest allies, doesn’t accept that there has been genuine change in the country, what hope do they have of persuading the rest of the world?

Perception and reality have often been distant bedfellows in Burma. A few fine words and vague promises from the dictatorship are enough to get diplomatic pulses racing. Throw in the token release of a high-profile political prisoner and the generals know that diplomats and the media will be talking about change being on the way. They know this because they’ve pulled the same trick repeatedly over the decades.

Last year, after blatantly rigging elections, the dictatorship played its trump card, again. For the third time, they released Aung San Suu Kyi, and initially at least, the tactic worked. The rigged elections were forgotten or ignored, as were the 2,000 political prisoners still in jail, and the increased attacks against ethnic minority civilians in eastern Burma.

Why China’s Crackdown is Selective

Minxin Pei — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 03:15:58 +0000

For a one-party state that tolerates practically no open defiance of its authority, Beijing’s gentle handling of hundreds of striking truckers in Shanghai who had paralyzed operations at one of China’s largest container ports seems an anomaly. Instead of sending in riot police to break up the blockade last week, the authorities in Shanghai agreed to reduce fees levied on the truckers, who were angry over the charges and rising fuel prices.

The outcome of this incident couldn’t be more different from another recent event: the arrest of Ai Weiwei, one of China’s most prominent political activists. Ai has repeatedly defied the ruling Communist Party and, despite his international stature, Beijing decided to put him behind bars, ignoring widespread international condemnation.

The contrast between these two incidents raises an intriguing question: why does Beijing tolerate certain forms of protest, but represses others?

One obvious reason is that it depends on the nature of the protest. As a rule, a frontal challenge to the authority of the Chinese Communist Party, as Ai’s activities embodied, practically guarantees a harsh response from the government. But protest inspired by specific economic grievances, such as truckers’ ire over excessive fees, seems to fare better. In the eyes of the ruling party, the former constitutes an existential threat and so no concessions are seen as able to appease political activists rejecting the very legitimacy of the regime.

In contrast, the discontent generated by well-defined economic grievances can be treated with specific concessions. One quote, allegedly from a sitting senior Politburo member, says it all: ‘What are the contradictions among the people?’ the Politburo member supposedly asked. ‘(These contradictions) can all be solved by using renminbi.’

But things are a little more complicated than this. The reality is that even when dealing with protests or riots fuelled by specific socioeconomic grievances, the behavior of the Chinese authorities isn’t always consistent. Sometimes, government officials pacify protesters through the use of the renminbi, while other times they mercilessly crush such protest.

So how do we make sense of such apparent inconsistencies?

It seems that the type of response to social protest—harsh or soft—depends on a complex mix of factors such as who the protesters are, the resources and organizational capacity at their disposal, the economic sectors in which they are located, and the social repercussions of their protest. Generally speaking, highly organized protesters (such as truck drivers, discharged soldiers and officers of the People’s Liberation Army, and taxi drivers) tend to fare better. They also possess resources that can be easily and effectively deployed. Taxi and truck drivers, for example, can use their vehicles to paralyze traffic and produce instantaneous and widespread social and economic disruptions.

Cambodia’s NGO Blues

diplomat_admin — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 01:24:25 +0000

‘This isn’t right at all’, says Mr Ponlok, owner of a waterfront cafe at Boeung Kok Lake in Phnom Penh. ‘People are being forced out and the compensation is way too small’.

Lakeside residents are being driven from their homes as developers try to fill the landmark lake in Cambodia's capital with earth and sand, prior to turning it into a residential and shopping complex. In deal signed between Shukaku Inc. and the Cambodian government, a 99-year lease to the 103-hectare lake site was granted to the developers, a location that sits under the noses of the nearby British and French Embassies.

The lake is now about one-third of its former size, wafting a lingering odour from the pollution and ubiquitous rubbish strewn along the narrowing lakeshore. In Phnom Penh’s overcast and breezeless humidity, the smell wraps itself round the visitor like an unseen—and certainly unwanted—shroud.

Maybe half of the lakeside residents have already been evicted, and the 2,000 or so families still there have been given a take-it-or-leave-it offer of $8,500 to vacate their homes and properties.

Land rights are a complex and controversial issue in Cambodia, where under the brutal Khmer Rouge regime, cities were emptied as part of a forced ruralisation scheme. The regime nationalised all private property and gutted ownership records. In a bid to settle the confusion and laythe bedrock for some sort of property rights and legal framework for ownership, a 2001 law said that people who could prove five years of continuous occupancy could apply to formally own the land, but that does not seem to apply to the lakeside residents.

NGOs based in Cambodia have played a crucial role so far in lobbying for the lakeside residents’ rights. However, the Cambodian government has tabled a new NGO law that threatens to undermine the independence of organisations and make it much more difficult for voluntary associations to be formed in the country. This in turn will hamper citizens from taking action against perceived rights violations, activists say.

According to Naly Pilorge, Director of LICADHO, the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defence of Human Rights, there are many technical problems with the law. ‘Key provisions are vague and open to arbitrary interpretation,’ she says. ‘In many circumstances, the government has carte blanche to shut organizations down without appeal.’

The complex and mandatory registration process will close many organisations, and the law is in breach of Cambodia’s Constitution and its obligations under international treaties, according to LICADHO. Overall, there are around 3,000 NGOs operating in Cambodia, ranging from international brands such as Oxfam to village level organizations.

Why China Is Cracking Down

The Diplomat — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 01:32:04 +0000

Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei was detained Sunday at Beijing airport. He’s been a thorn in the side of the authorities for a while, so why would he have been arrested now?

This is part of a broader crackdown, and I think it’s the typical ‘kill the chicken to scare the monkey’ tactic that the Chinese government uses. They are rounding up lots of prominent people who previously had been harassed, but hadn’t been taken into custody. Or some had been briefly detained, but then quickly let go. So this is part of a broader trend.

So is Ai’s detention likely to be one of these detain and release scenarios or do you think the authorities might be planning to press charges?

As you say, they’ve had their eye on him for a while. But I think that the co-ordinated raid on his studio, the detention of his assistant, the seizure of equipment – this looks like part of a serious investigation. And I think there are some very worrying signs about the way he was taken into custody and about what has happened since. The fact that he hasn’t been allowed to contact his family and that his lawyer hasn’t been allowed to see him all point to a secretive investigation that’s very serious.

You mention this is part of broader crackdown. Is it connected to worries about the kind of unrest seen in the Arab world spreading to China, or does this crackdown predate that?

Certainly there has been a surge in detentions over the past two months, since the call went out for a ‘Jasmine Revolution’ in China. There has been a massive uptick in the number of detentions of lawyers, bloggers, and dissidents and particularly with some prominent cases such as Ai Weiwei.

But I think going back further, although it has been more intense in the past two months, I think it has been part of a broader crackdown that started in the period before the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, which was then followed by a post-Olympics tightening – which included the detention of Liu Xiaobo. When someone speaks out calling for political reform that they feel threatens one-party rule, such as with Charter 08, the authorities tend to freak out and clamp down. So in late 2008, when Charter 08 was published, there was a surge in detentions. And since Liu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, there’s been another surge in detentions.

So in some sense, these things are event driven in terms of the detention of certain groups of people. But they are also part of a continuum, with the Communist Party unable to manage dissent in a way that isn’t coercive. It’s part of a continuum of the Party’s insecurity on a certain level about its domestic legitimacy. There’s an absolute obsession with stability within the Party, and it sees the detention of people like Liu Xiaobo and Ai Weiwei as critical to maintaining its vision of stability.