Human rights in China | From Tiananmen to Kashgar via Hong Kong

A sad week for human rights in China.

Henri-Paul Normandin
Ex-ambassador, fellow at the Institute of International Studies of Montreal, at the Perry World House of the University of Pennsylvania, as well as at the German Marshall Fund

We commemorate the events in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, when the army rolled over its tanks and opened fire on peaceful demonstrators. A few days earlier, I had ventured into the square to meet these people, especially young people, who were festively expressing their aspirations for more freedom and better governance. Their dreams ended in a bloodbath.

A decade later, I was flabbergasted to find, in conversation with a Chinese student, that she knew next to nothing about what had happened that day. History had been erased.

Then, a few days ago, the visit of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, proved to be a missed opportunity to challenge the Chinese government on the height of the atrocities committed in Xinjiang. The victimization of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities is well documented. We understand that a UN official and diplomat had to maneuver skillfully, but the visit as orchestrated risked playing into the hands of Chinese propaganda. And that’s what happened!

At the turn of the century, in a context of openness and reforms, the Communist Party had let go of some ballast, tolerated a timid emergence of civil society and made some progress in legal matters. Without any illusions, at the time when China showed a dose of respect and friendship towards Canada, we even maintained a dialogue and cooperation on human rights.

Closing

Since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, civic space has closed. Dissonant voices are now systematically repressed, whether those of lawyers, scientists or ordinary citizens who want to express themselves on subjects that affect them on a daily basis, such as the Orwellian confinement in Shanghai. When a person behaves in a way that does not correspond to the party line or the interests of the leaders, they are censored or made to disappear. The Communist Party today exercises a control and a repression which we had not known since the Cultural Revolution.

We are no longer talking about an authoritarian regime that limits itself to repressing protest speeches and gestures, but a totalitarian regime that strives to control people’s thoughts and lives, supported in this by technology.

It is the whole of the Chinese population that is subjected to this monopoly of power and to repression, despite the undeniable progress in terms of material living conditions. Hong Kong, once an enclave of freedom, has come under the yoke. Minorities are particularly targeted. I saw the tensions between the authorities and the people in Xinjiang and Tibet as we worked to develop rural communities. Potemkin visits, they served me, as they certainly served M^me Bachelet. The most memorable is this visit of a more political nature to a prison in Lhasa where, after having replied that Tibetan prisoners could not recite their sutras (Buddhist prayers) out loud because it “disturbed the peace of mind of the other prisoners”, we presented us with an orchestra of so-called inmates playing rock music at the top of their lungs!

The crackdown in Xinjiang, which some are calling genocide, is on a staggering scale. We try to eradicate the culture of a people, whether by the separation of families, the destruction of mosques or that of a part of the old city of Kashgar, at the heart of the Uyghur identity. Detention camps, which China initially denied existed and in which more than a million people ended up, are at the center of this campaign — as is forced labor.

In some ways, Xinjiang’s mass detention camps are in the 21st century.^e century what the Soviet gulags were in the XX^e century.

It is clear that China will evolve at its own pace, and that people will unfortunately continue to be deprived of civil and political rights for the foreseeable future. In the current state of things, the Communist Party is very little permeable to the voices of its citizens as well as to international influence, although the criticisms irritate it. Under Xi Jinping, the Party has moved away from an approach that balances dogmatism and pragmatism, in favor of the former and of keeping the red aristocracy and its privileged classes in power at all costs.

But nothing is immutable. In the meantime, we must be careful not to be complicit in silence. We must continue to highlight the current serious violations of human rights, as well as to commemorate the victims of those of the past. June 4, I remember.