december 18, 2010

Advocate of Humanitarian Imperialism

Where does the human rights rhetoric of the recipient of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize come from?

he Chinese government has been nave in inadvertently making a hero of Liu Xiaobo, human rights activist and president of the Chinese PEN, which is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a quasi-private organi sation supported by the United States Congress that came into being during the presidency of Ronald Reagan in order to strengthen political democracy and neoliberalism where, together, they were deemed to be in need of strong external backing. Liu was detained in December 2008 because of his association with the Charter 08 manifesto, which can be located in the rubric of human rights rhetoric that emphasises individual and political rights. Charter 08 also pitches for wholesale privatisation of public enterprises and farmland in China. This is just the kind of democracy that the NED funds and provides expertise and political backing for. Tariq Ali, writing on the London Review of Books blog, summarises Lius political views as succinctly as one possibly can. One, if only China had been colonised by a western power for at least 300 years, it would have been civilised forever. Two, the US was basically ghting against totalitarianism in the Korean and Vietnam wars, and hence its moral credibility is unquestionable. Three, George Bush did the right thing in going to war with Iraq; 2004 Democrat presidential candidate John Kerrys criticisms amounted to mere slander-mongering. And, four, Liu extends full support to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisations (NATO) war in Afghanistan. Now what does one make of such views? Tariq labels Liu a neocon, of course, adding that he is entitled to his opinions, but rhetorically asks whether the Nobel committee should give him the Peace Prize. We think these views need to be dissected, for colonisation and all these imperialist wars were, after all, justied in humanitarian terms, which is what Liu repeats ad nauseam. Liu is, no doubt, a classic comprador intellectual. But we are simply amazed at his self-righteousness, the one-sidedness and the myopia of the brand of human rights discourse that he has picked up from his imperialist masters. Instead of exposing all of this, the Chinese government acted stupidly by imprisoning and making a martyr of him. After all, the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the US role in the Korean and Vietnam wars blatantly violated international law, entailed a massive abuse of human rights, and demonised the adversaries,
Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 18, 2010 vol xlv no 51

all in the name of democracy and human rights. Liu seems not even politically sophisticated; he does not even make a ritualistic condemnation of colonialism. He still cites the civilising mission of colonialism! In effect, he employs a mixture of the old arguments for colonialism and the humanitarian ones to justify todays imperialist interventions. Perhaps he needs a lesson or two from Human Rights Watch, which closely follows the policies of the US State Department. The employment of human rights rhetoric is the name of the game in legitimising imperialist intervention today. Not long ago a near total silence was maintained over the hundreds of thousands of casualties, including children, of the embargo against Iraq. And, more recently, this brand of human rights defenders did not oppose the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. Earlier, they were enthusiastic about the Kosovo war and they chose to disregard the bloodbath in eastern Congo. And, lest we forget, it was Jimmy Carter later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 who in the late 1970s shifted US rhetoric towards human rights even as the administration he headed extended covert US support in terms of funds and arms to the Islamic fundamentalists ghting the Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan. But let us get back to human rights concerns with regard to China. In the main, the Chinese government and capital, trans national and Chinese, continue to trample over the economic and social rights of millions of working people. One should not forget that the Tiananmen Square student protests of 1989 were crushed only after the workers began to join in the struggle to assert the demands of the Chinese proletariat. The imperialist powers and their transnational corporations, in fact, cared a damn for the social and economic rights of the Chinese workers; all that mattered to them were their assets and prots in China, for their direct investment literally owed and owed into the Chinese economy after 1989, assuming the proportions of a ood. But, like his imperialist masters, Liu Xiaobo, the latest Nobel Peace laureate, does not seem the least concerned about the massive violations of human rights of the social and economic type in China today. Yet, the classic comprador intellectual that he is, he would like to continue lecturing China over a selective set of human rights violations. Surely, these too are important, but no wonder he is little known in his own country.

EDITORIALS

It is no surprise that the Nobel committee for the Peace Prize this year chose Liu. The Nobel awards in peace are as controversial, if not more so than in literature and economics. Political designs and the closed minds of a select group determine who is to be rewarded for espousing the favoured point of view rather than for true work in the greater cause of humanity. In the past half century, in a few years the Peace Prize

has indeed been given to organisations and individuals who have worked for peace and social transformation: Martin Luther King (1967), Nelson Mandela (1993), and Medecins Sans Frontieres (1999) are notable examples. But their honour has been tarred by the likes of Henry Kissinger (1973, for working for peace in Vietnam!) and Menachem Begin (1978, for working for peace in west Asia!).

Violence against Women

How serious are government agencies about dealing with rape in Indias cities?

he aftermath of the abduction and gang rape of a teenage girl in a car in New Delhi on 12 December the fourth in the capital in the last two months set off the usual reactions from the government and the media. The police announced measures which should have actually been in place a long time ago. The chief minister gave instructions which had been issued earlier but had not been followed. The media repeated the many inadequacies in police investigation procedures, shortcomings in the judicial system leading to a low rate of conviction of rapists and offered glib explanations for the increasing rate of urban crime. Neither the police nor the media focused on implementation of existing guidelines and learning from the experiences of past cases of rape across the country. A 30-year-old business process outsourcing (BPO) employee was abducted and assaulted in New Delhi in a moving car on the night of 26 November while she was walking home after getting off an ofce vehicle. Not only were the National Commission for Womens (NCW) guidelines regarding the safety of women in BPOs outed, but the police failed to react quickly though a police control room (PCR) call was made within seconds of the abduction. Following a number of instances of rape and murder of BPO women employees across the country in the past few years, the NCW had directed call centre managements to ensure that women employees are dropped at their doorstep, are not the rst to be picked up and the last to be dropped off and that a security guard accompanies them. The teenage victim too was walking to her mothers factory to pick her up after work. Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit said that the labour commissioner had been instructed to reiterate orders to drop women at their residences in the night.Why were these orders not being followed until now? Are the guidelines being followed strictly in other parts of the country? The other measures announced include deployment of more women ofcers, gender sensitisation and a rapid response of the police, movement of PCR vans in vulnerable areas, setting up citizen panchayats, and establishing fast track courts to try rape cases. The Delhi Commission for Women wants all call centre taxis to have a global positioning system (GPS). The Delhi police has initiated a special drive against vehicles with reective and dark glass (an infringement of the Central Motor Vehicle Rules 1989). Why were all these not already in place? While Gurgaon, Noida and Ghaziabad are information technology (IT) and BPO

hubs, what about the safety of women workers in other industries and indeed all women? And while it is an accepted fact that employers have an obligation to ensure the safety of their employees, does this absolve the police of the duty to patrol the city diligently at night? The police forces capabilities to react quickly to emergency situations are also in doubt despite prompt complaints and the availability of advanced communications techno logy. In the case of the BPO employee, who was raped on 26 November, the PCR van and the policemen from the local station failed to locate the tempo in which she was abducted. Following this, the Delhi police carried out a mock drill and identied the possible routes of escape by criminals. Despite this, in the rape case that followed less than a month later 600 police personnel took three hours to trace the vehicle though they had been provided with the last four digits of its number plate. How seriously did the force take this mock drill? Another disturbing trend that is emerging is the involvement of minors in urban crimes. The case of three young siblings being sexually abused by their senior classmates in Delhis Prasad Nagar for well over a year came to light a few months ago. In the recent rape case too, a minor is among the ve accused. According to the police record, as reported in the media, the involvement of juveniles in sex-related crimes in Delhi has risen from 5%-10% to 27% over the last few years. The issue of rapid urbanisation across the country without an accompanying increase in either civic amenities or resources to deal with this growth has been a part of public discourse for long. While the causes of rising crime in Indias urban areas (the average rate of crime in urban agglomeration centres at 321.8 was much higher than the national crime rate of 181.5, according to the National Crime Records Bureau report of 2008) are complex, migrants and outsiders become handy culprits to blame for rising urban crime. The authorities lack of preparedness in dealing with burgeoning urbanisation are hardly focused on. According to the Delhi police records, more than 83% of people involved in crimes this year were from the city itself, while only 17% were outsiders. There are reams of suggestions as well as ofcial measures already in place on police and judicial procedures to prevent/ deal with rape. The point is whether the government cares enough about the safety of its women citizens to ensure their implementation.
december 18, 2010 vol xlv no 51 EPW Economic & Political Weekly