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#2 - JRL 6587
Commentary: Human rights and empire
By Ed Lanfranco
BEIJING, Dec. 3 (UPI) -- The joint declaration signed by the presidents of China and Russia this week in the Chinese capital points to a shared commitment to a policy in which development of human rights remains a distant second to the demands of maintaining territorial integrity.
The statement contained two thinly veiled criticisms against the West, especially the United States, concerning what the Russians and Chinese see as double standards.
In the declaration, Vladimir Putin and Jiang Zemin attached great importance to "international cooperation on protection and promotion of human rights" with the two leaders saying, "No double standards should be adopted in this area."
They then took a stance "against the use of human rights problems for imposing pressures in international relations."
As the declaration went on to explain, "National independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity are the basic elements of the international law, the essential principles of international relations and the necessary conditions for each nation's existence."
Few can argue with the legitimacy of this logic from the nation-state point of view. However the key issue facing Western governments is how to recognize valid claims from groups in cultures seeking political autonomy, if not outright independence, against pressure to label them terrorists.
A case in point is a problem best described as the legacy of empire. Both modern Russia and China have inherited control over peoples who, if left to their own devices, would likely opt for independence.
Putin and Jiang maintain it is "the legal right of every nation to firmly condemn and strike against any attempt or activity that sabotages such principles," with their communique issued on Monday stating, "China and Russia firmly support each other's policy and actions on maintaining national unification and territorial integrity."
And therein lies the difference between China, Russia and the West. Governance respected by the West includes a responsibility to accept and address dissent within the polity as well as the right by use of sheer force to ensure territorial integrity.
The joint statement goes on to say explicitly "that both Chechnya and East Turkistan terrorists are parts of international terrorism, which should be jointly condemned and cracked down upon by all countries of the international community."
Chechens and Uighurs are peoples who came under armed alien dynasties, Romanov and Manchu, in which control was firmly established more than a century ago. The time of czars and emperors may have passed, but these former empires today still lack mechanisms of government and civil society capable of handling irredentist aspirations in ways understood and acceptable to the West.
What has changed in the post-Sept. 11 age is the way in which we view acts of violence, which brings to the fore the second "double standard" mentioned in the joint statement.
The Sino-Russian announcement said "the crimes of international terrorism committed in New York, Moscow, Bali and other regions of the world show that terrorism, splittism and extremism have become serious threats to the safety of sovereign states, as well as to world peace and stability. ... Double standards should not be adopted in addressing these problems," to which Jiang and Putin added that the anti-terrorism campaign must depend on efforts in concert by all countries.
Herein lies the West's second dilemma: how to establish a clear delineation between right and wrong, or, where to stand when one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. If we lived in a black and white world, deciding whether nation-states such as China and Russia are victims of terrorism would be much easier.
The best means of dividing terrorists from freedom fighters is often the violence and the targets of their efforts. But in countries that have inherited the autocratic code of empires, walking the line of that distinction this poses a genuine challenge for those who seek freedom or who support such ideas.
Ironically, the second pronouncement on double standards depending on the "joint efforts of all countries" within the Sino-Russian statement points toward a significant contradiction within U.S. human rights policy in China of the current administration.
Now that China has signed off on a nominal FBI presence in the Chinese capital and provided the United States with tacit support in the United Nations on Iraq, one cannot help but wonder what such bargains cost America in political horse-trading.
The Chechen willingness to target civilians -- the broad definition of terrorism -- is documented. But U.S. inclusion of China's ETIM (East Turkistan Independence Movement) as a terrorist group with ties to al Qaida remains dubious despite a handful of Uighurs captured in bordering Afghanistan and their continued incarceration in Guantanamo Bay Cuba.
The possibility of China and Russia's warning about a double standard might be correct, but not in the way they intended for those listening.
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