Quick Link
for your convenience!
Human
Rights, Youth Voices etc.
For
Information Concerning the Crisis in Darfur
Whistleblowers
Need Protection
|
| |
Human Dignity and the Democratic Revolution
Keynote address by Hon David Kilgour
Member of Parliament, Edmonton – Mill Woods – Beaumont, Canada
First Biennial Conference of World Forum for Democratization in Asia
15 – 17 September 2005
International Convention Centre
Taipei, Taiwan
Some of you might be asking, “Why a Canadian parliamentarian
is talking about Asia?” One reason, perhaps, is that the Asianification of
Canada is continuing briskly. About two million of our nationals are of either
Chinese or Indian origin; there are others from probably all 42 countries
across Asia. In our current House of Commons, we have twelve MPs of family
origin on this continent. Many Canadians feel that one of our personal
identities among others is Asian; in my own family, for example, three of
our children have worked in Asia.
As Secretary of State (Asia – Pacific) for two years until late 2003, it was
my pleasure to visit many of your capitals. It’s easy for visitors to notice
some of the many things Asians do better than in other regions of our
shrunken planet.
Two examples only:
1. Many Asian countries are achieving more education for more people – not
just those from prosperous families - than in too many non-Asian ones.
2. Your businesses wisely do not pay their executives like rock stars. I
recall reading somewhere that an Asian car manufacturer’s chief executive
might be paid up to 15 times what a colleague on the assembly floor
receives, whereas in North America or Europe the difference can be far more
than a hundred times.
In preparing for this talk, I was re-reading Democracy Is Not Enough by John
Scott written in 1960. It lists the per capita income in US dollars and
literacy rates for a number of countries a half century ago. I’ve prepared a
list for some Asian countries along with the best updates I could find for
2003:
|
Per Capita Income US$ |
Literacy Rate Percentage |
|
Mid 1950s |
2003 |
Mid 1950s |
2003 |
Burma (Myanmar) |
$50 |
$1,700 |
80% |
89% |
Cambodia |
$70 |
$320 |
62% |
73% |
Sri Lanka |
$175 |
$948 |
88% |
90% |
China |
$60 |
$1100 |
78% |
90% |
Hong Kong |
$250 |
$22,987 |
99% |
99% |
India |
$60 |
$564 |
49% |
68% |
Indonesia |
$70 |
$970 |
79% |
88% |
Japan |
$260 |
$33,713 |
99% |
99% |
Korea |
$81 |
$12, 634 |
99% |
99% |
Laos |
$50 |
$375 |
56% |
68% |
Malaysia |
$350 |
$4,187 |
80% |
89% |
Pakistan |
$-100 |
$555 |
35% |
92% |
Philippines |
$200 |
$989 |
91% |
92% |
Singapore |
$400 |
$21, 492 |
88% |
92.5% |
Taiwan |
$200 |
$ 12,725 |
65% |
96% |
Thailand |
$50 |
$2,305 |
99% |
92.6% |
Vietnam |
$-100 |
$482 |
90% |
90% |
Mahatma Gandhi probably summed up such data better than anyone:
“Poverty is the worst form of violence.” All governments everywhere,
including Canada’s, must still find better ways to reduce poverty for our
urban poor, farmers, students, children, artists – for everyone. Sadly,
there are more than a few non-elected governments who think that one way to
keep down the pressure from their citizens for better governance and human
rights is to keep literacy and real family incomes as low as possible.
Human Rights
As you all know, modern human rights emerged only after World War II,
largely in response to the conduct of the Axis powers, and included the UN
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, various international covenants, the
Helsinki Accords and other regional agreements. Procedures were established
to monitor the performance of governments in a major departure from the
principle that states could not interfere in each others sovereignty.
The ongoing problem for many victims of human rights abuses is that most UN,
ILO and regional conventions are advisory only. Toothless, in short. This
must be changed if human dignity is to be respected everywhere in Asia and
on every other continent. Many governments with abysmal human rights records
are currently able to block censure continuously at the 53-member UN Human
Rights Commission in Geneva. It appears that many of the same governments
this week in New York are blocking UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s
proposal for a new Human Rights Council, which would require support from
two thirds of the General Assembly for any country to obtain membership on
the Council.
“Cultural Relativism”
Terms like “cultural relativism” or “Asian values” still come up in
discussion on topics such as human rights. Indeed, President Hu Jintao in
Ottawa last week attributed the differences between his government and
Canada’s on human rights to culture and history.
In his 1998 book, East and West, former Hong Kong Governor Christopher
Patten makes a good argument for universal values:
“Why do you need to be authoritarian to deliver a sensible macroeconomic
policy? Which economic modelers can demonstrate a connection between
political repression and GDP growth?…What do torturing people, censoring
what they can read and write, locking them up without due process, hunting
opponents into silence or exile, dispensing crowds with bullets, fiddling
electoral systems - what do these things have to do with sensible management
of a developing economy, investment in literacy and primary health,
encouragement of exporting industries, high savings and investment?... [The
‘Asian values’] argument also conveniently overlooks the extent to which it
is also Asians [not just Westerners] who are campaigning for freedom and
democracy and being locked up for their pains.”
By the way, a survey on values by the World Value Survey Organization
evidently found that the persons surveyed in China, Japan, South Korea,
Singapore and Taiwan were even more supportive of democracy than other
countries, including the mostly democratic OECD nations.
Patten also refers in his book to Confucius and to Simon Leys’ translation
of Analects of Confucius:
“…Leys points out that the greatest writer in modern China, Lu Xun, who died
in 1936, argued that the world has primarily coped with geniuses by trying
first to suppress them, and then, when that failed, to exalt them.
[Ironically, Lu Xun was treated in both ways by the Communist party].
Confucius was largely ignored in his lifetime…and was then placed on a
pedestal by Chinese emperors who promoted his ideas as a convenient official
cult. Leys notes that ‘imperial Confucianism only extols those statements
from the Master that prescribed submission to the established authorities,
whereas more assertive notions were conveniently ignored - such as the
precepts of social justice, political dissent, and the moral duty for
intellectuals to criticize the rulers [even at the risk of their lives] when
he was abusing his power, or when he oppressed the people.‘”
Human Rights Across the Taiwan Straight
As you might know, President Hu Jintao visited Ottawa and Toronto last week,
where there were demonstrations at virtually every one of his stops. At a
joint press conference with Canada’s prime minister Paul Martin in Ottawa,
the Chinese leader made in my view three inaccurate comments:
1. On human rights generally, Hu said: “The Chinese government has
traditionally attached a great deal of importance to human rights. The
progress China has achieved in this area is evident for all to see.”
In fact, human rights have worsened since Hu became Chairman in 2003. His
government appears to be even more oppressive than the one of Jiang Zemin,
as various independent NGOs, including Amnesty International Canada,
continue to point out. Large demonstrations of Taiwanese Canadians, Falun
Gong Canadians, Uyghur Canadians, Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Tibetan
Canadians and democrats generally will continue to shadow any Chinese leader
until human rights improve demonstrably in China.
2. On Taiwan-Canada relations, Hu said, presumably referring to our proposed
Taiwan Affairs Act, “Recently, there have been some noises, discordant
noises, on the question of Taiwan coming from within Canada…”
In fact, the proposed act, whose subject matter is currently before the
all-party Foreign Affairs Committee of our House of Commons, does not go
nearly as far as the Taiwan Relations Act, which was passed by the American
Congress in 1979. Sino-American relations have since soared to the point
that the US trade deficit with China is in the breathtaking $160 billion a
year range [versus $17 billion for Canada, which is equally serious given
that our economy is about one tenth the size of the US one]. The Canadian
bill will not alter our diplomatic relations with China.
3. On Tibet, President Hu invited His Holiness the Dalai Lama, “to renounce
his Tibetan independence proposition.” You will know that the Dalai Lama has
long ago abandoned independence for Tibet in favor of a measure of genuine
autonomy. Unlike Prime Minister Martin, the Chinese leader also failed to
mention at the press conference the recently completed fourth round of talks
between China and Tibet. Approximately 160 Canadian MPs in the last
parliament sent letters to the Canadian prime minister, asking him to
facilitate the talks. Despite the Dalai Lama’s positive overtures, Beijing
remains very hard line.
There is much more to say about the state of human dignity across the
straight - some of which can be found on my website - but I will only add
here the case of Shi Tao, who was sentenced in April in China for ten years
imprisonment for passing details of a censorship order to the Asia Democracy
Forum and the website Democracy News. There is shame enough for all involved
in this case, but I’d be inclined to nominate the internet company allegedly
involved for the “Worst Corporate Social Responsibility Award” if it really
gave Shi Tao’s name and address to the police.
Multi-Party Democracy
Depending on how you define them, I understand there are now approximately
140 multi-party democracies on the planet, although the elections in some of
them appear to be less than fully free and fair at present. This revolution
is one of the great achievements by democrats world wide in the last
century. No one can really say that one model is more authentic than the
others. I’ve often thought that one of the best definitions of democracy is:
“In a democracy, citizens own their government - and not visa-versa.” At a
forum last week in Ottawa on China, a panelist of origin in China gave this
definition an interesting twist: “The CCP swallowed our government in the
late 1940s; the government then swallowed the people.” He quickly added that
to understand China it is fundamental to separate its mostly wonderful
people from the CCP.
McWorld-Jihad
Personally, I strongly support the thesis of the American political
scientist Benjamin Barber, advanced most effectively in his book, Jihad vs.
McWorld, that only the spreading of ‘civic and democratic institutions is
likely to offer a way out of the global war between modernity and its
aggrieved victims, for democracy responds both to jihad and to McWorld.”
For Barber, McWorld is the universe of manufactured needs, mass consumption,
and mass infotainment. Jihad is shorthand for the politics of militant
fundamentalism of various kinds. He states the essence of his book this way:
“By extending the compass of democracy…civic globalization can open up
opportunities for accountability, participation, [good] governance to those
wishing to join the modern world…; by securing cultural diversity, a place
for worship, and faith insulated from the shallow orthodoxies of McWorld
cultural monism, it can address the anxieties of those who fear secularist
materialism and are fiercely committed to preserving their cultural and
religious distinctiveness. The outcome of the cruel battle between Jihad and
McWorld will depend on the capacity of the moderns to make the world safer
for men and women in search of both justice and faith and can be one if
democracy is the victor.”
One further thought of Barber’s on McWorld and globalization: “We have
globalized crime, the rogue weapons trade, and drugs; we have globalized
prostitution and pornography and the trade in women and children made
possible by ‘porn tourism,’ …children have been soldiers and victims in
raging ethnic and religious wars. Children are the majority of the global
cohort that suffers poverty, disease and starvation. Children are our
terrorists-to-be because they are obviously not our citizens-to-come.”
I hope that our conference will agree to recommend initiatives by which a
host of civic and democratic NGOs across Asia can combat, not terrorism per
se, but the social inequalities that terrorists exploit so effectively. Our
democracy banners should be Distributional and Global Justice, not
retributional justice, and Religious Pluralism, not militant secularism.
Conclusion
In short, we democrats in policy making must constantly think of the two
billion people in Asia and elsewhere around the world who live on less than
two dollars a day. This probably means, for example, that we are not
‘privatizing fundamentalists’ who want everything out of the hands of
government so that the shell which remains can do nothing effective about
education, health care, public safety and justice issues, transportation,
defense and social justice. One of our most important goals is that
children, women and men around the world will all be able to live fulfilled
lives and will cease killing themselves in order to murder others.
As the conference theme paper notes, there is a vital relationship between
economic development and democracy in terms of human development. Our
message here must be clear: sustainable prosperity and human dignity occurs
when there is freedom to work gainfully, to choose governments by universal
suffrage, to worship, to speak, to write, to relocate, to practise a
profession, and the right to independent judges and the rule of law for all.
It is highly appropriate that we are meeting in Taiwan, where in an
astonishing period of only 13 years there has been a full transition from
martial law during 38 years to a model democracy without bloodshed and
without force. Human rights and human dignity are respected throughout this
country. As many have said, this country is what China should aspire to be.
Personally, I remain optimistic despite everything that China will join our
democracies far sooner than the skeptics think. The continued rise of one of
the oldest civilizations on earth, the most populous nation and currently
the most dynamic economy is simply not sustainable without adopting the
principles we are talking about at this conference.
I wish that all of you, my dear fellow democrats, continued success
throughout Asia.
Thank you.
Any comments most welcome at the following email: kilgour@parl.gc.ca. My
website is www.david-kilgour.com
-30-
|