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Challenges to human rights

Originally published by The  Post and Courier 30 December, 2010

 

On today’s Commentary page, Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman documents a bad year for democracy. His list could be extended. These are troubled times for human rights.

In recent days the leader of Belarus was returned to office in a fraudulent election, and the leader of Hungary backed a bill to give himself self-censorship powers over the press.

In Russia, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was able to accurately predict that a court would convict his political opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky following a trial described by the White House as “an abusive use of the legal system.”

The United Nations now has what might be called a tyrant’s lobby whose members cheer each other on and hail each new anti-democratic power grab. Robert Mugabe, the virtual dictator of Zimbabwe, voices his support for the would-be dictator of the Ivory Coast, Laurent Gbagbo, who refuses to step down after losing a presidential election.

One nation above all others facilitates this anti-democratic surge, argues Cambridge University Professor Stefan Halper in a new book, “The Beijing Consensus: How China’s authoritarian model will dominate the 21st Century.” China, he says, is the champion of “traditional sovereignty” — or “non-interference in internal affairs” of nations. In other words, China opposes Western efforts on behalf of human rights.

Autocratic regimes around the world, from North Korea and Myanmar to Iran to the Sudan and Zimbabwe, benefit from China’s willingness to veto or water down United Nations sanctions. Scores of other poor nations line up with China because its foreign aid does not come with human rights conditions.

The European Council on Foreign Relations, in a recent study, found that 41 countries that were once allies of the West on human rights issues at the United Nations now support China and Russia. It also found that support for Chinese positions on human rights in the U.N. General Assembly jumped from 50 percent in 2000 to 74 percent in 2008.

China has assembled an anti-democratic bloc of nations through calculated use of foreign aid and access to markets. That has made it easier for Russia and some nations once part of the Soviet empire to join the retreat from democracy.

Russia, in turn, offers aid and comfort to Venezuela and other proto-fascist nations of South America.

President Obama’s efforts to “reset” relations with Russia and to court China have not helped him solve the problems posed by Iran and North Korea. Meanwhile, the anti-democratic bloc of nations is clearly gaining strength.

It is time for the president to reset his foreign policy objectives to give more support to the friends of human rights.

They need it.