Charter 08: History, politics, and one-party rule
A Manifesto on Freedom Sets China’s Persecution Machinery in Motion
"Liu Xiaobo [is] a writer, philosopher and democracy advocate. On Dec. 10, Mr. Liu and 302 others issued a manifesto, called Charter 08, that urged China’s Communist Party to abandon monopoly rule and establish a multiparty system of government."The police seized Mr. Liu two days before Charter 08 was released. He has been locked ever since in a windowless room about an hour’s drive north of central Beijing. He is denied access to lawyers, to pen and paper and, except for two brief visits, to his wife...
"Increasingly, Liu Xiaobo is no ordinary dissident, but an international cause. And the crackdown on him and his wife shows signs of becoming a public-relations dilemma for Chinese leaders...
"Charter 08 concerns party rulers, some contend, because it posits an alternative to their monopoly just as China is integrating with an overwhelmingly democratic world...
"'Freedom is at the core of universal human values,' the charter states. 'The government exists for the protection of the human rights of its citizens.' And, it states, 'The most fundamental principles of democracy are that the people are sovereign, and the people select their government.'...
"Such manifestos are hardly new. In December 1978, the Fifth Modernization, a proposed liberalization of the political system to go with China’s other moves toward modernity, was posted on Beijing’s Democracy Wall — and its author was handed a 15-year prison sentence. Evidence of the document was wiped from Chinese history...
Yet Charter 08 continues, slowly, to gain adherents... considerably more than 8,000 Chinese citizens have joined the original 303 signers, representing a swath of society well outside the clique of political dissidents..."
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Labels: China, democratization, human rights
posted by Ken Wedding @ 6:54 AM
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