Anomaly or real change in political culture?
Sometimes events appear to have significance, but time proves they were just anomalies. Like yesterday's (11 December) protest in Tehran by students when President Ahmadinejad spoke. Is that a portent for the future? Was a sophomoric stunt? Or did a group of undergrads just put their names on a Basiji enemies list?Rule of law may be coming to China from the grassroots up. Then again, could this be a reporter's misinterpretation? Or an isolated exception to the rule? Perhaps it's only Shenzhen's proximity to Hong Kong that's the cause. We'll have to wait and see.
Here are excerpts from a Washington Post account of the reaction to recent law enforcement activities in Shenzhen, one of the first Special Economic Zones (next to Hong Kong).
Public Shaming of Prostitutes Misfires in China
"To local officials combating Shenzhen's reputation as a den of vice, it seemed like a good idea, the perfect way to dissuade provincial girls from turning to prostitution in the big city and frighten away the men who patronize their brothels.
Yellow Club in Shenzhen, photo by Christine"So after raiding the karaoke bars, saunas and barbershops where prostitutes often ply their trade, police officers in the southern Chinese boomtown paraded about 100 women and their alleged johns in the street, using loudspeakers to read out their names and the misdeeds they were accused of committing.
"News photographers snapped away while thousands of residents lined up to take in the show... it recalled the Great Cultural Revolution... when Chinese accused of being intellectuals or reactionaries were routinely paraded in front of jeering crowds that found entertainment in ridiculing them, insulting them and sometimes beating them.
"But times have changed... the Futian police came under a hail of criticism for violating the right to privacy of those who were paraded about in public.
"The swift outcry, in newspaper interviews and on the Internet, provided a dramatic illustration of the distance this vast country has traveled since the Cultural Revolution, when many people embraced such tactics and even those who opposed them were afraid to speak up for fear of retribution...
"Xu Desen, the Futian district Communist Party secretary, endorsed the parade as a good way to discourage prostitution. Speaking to local reporters, he praised police for the crackdown and said it would continue...
"But many Chinese citizens thought the police went too far this time. Over the past week, they have spoken out -- with relative anonymity -- on the Internet...
"'Even while carrying out the law, police should well respect human rights,' one commentator said. 'Is there any article in Chinese law saying that police can parade people in front of the public? If there isn't, then who empowered you to do that?'...
"Focusing on the law, another contributor noted that prostitution is usually considered a violation of the social order and is punished by administrative detention rather than a criminal conviction and formal prison time. 'These are legal citizens, enjoying dignity endowed by the constitution,' the writer said, 'so it is unlawful for the police to parade them in front of the public.'"
posted by Ken Wedding @ 8:48 AM
3 Comments:
News reports on the protests in Tehran on 11 December.
From the Boston Globe:
Students try to disrupt leader's talk
"Dozens of Iranian students burned pictures of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and threw firecrackers in an effort to disrupt his speech at a university yesterday, a presidential office spokesman said..."
The Iran Press Service reported:
“Dictator, Symbol of Discrimination, Get Lost” Students Told Ahmadi Nezhad
"While the spokesman claimed “50 to 60 students were involved”, eyewitnesses said hundreds of students chanted “Death to the dictator” as basiji students and forces as well as units of presidential guards clashed with anti-Ahmadi Nezhad students at the Amir Kabir University in Tehran. At least two students had been wounded and taken to hospital, sources said..."
and UPI reported
Iran students rebel over Holocaust denial
"Scores of students at Amirkabir University in Tehran marched Monday as Ahmadinejad opened a conference of Holocaust deniers for some 70 people. A Times of London correspondent said the students burned pictures of Ahmadinejad and called the conference 'shameful.'
"One unidentified student told the newspaper the gathering 'has brought to our country Nazis and racists from around the world.'
"In response, Ahmadinejad called the protesters 'Americanized' and said he was 'prepared to be burned in the path of true freedom, independence and justice.'..."
New York Times reporter Howard French confirms the reactions of some people to the public shaming of sex workers in Shenzhen.
If he's right about the significance of the Internet creating an important avenue for the expression of public opinion, there could be greater changes in store for the Chinese system.
As Vice Dragnet Recalls Bad Old Days, Chinese Cry Out
"For people who saw the event on television earlier this month, the scene was like a chilling blast from a past that is 30 years distant: social outcasts and supposed criminals... paraded in front of a jeering crowd, their names revealed, and then driven away to jail without trial...
"But the event has prompted an angry nationwide backlash, with many people making common cause with the prostitutes over the violation of their human rights and expressing outrage in one online forum after another...
"That this event took place in Shenzhen, the birthplace of China’s economic reforms and one of its richest and most open cities, seems to have added to its shock value...
"'With the development of human civilization and law, this kind of barbaric punishment with its strong element of vengeance has been abandoned,' Yao Jianguo, a Shanghai lawyer, wrote in a public letter addressed to the National People’s Congress, China’s legislature...
"The parading of the arrested prostitutes in Shenzhen came after a provincial television station broadcast a report about prostitution in the city’s Futian district, where sex is openly traded by streetwalkers and pimps and in bathhouses and karaoke clubs.
"The local news report was followed by a nationally broadcast report about the district, which appears to have shamed the local authorities into starting their campaign...
"In recent years the Internet has served as an important barometer of the public mood in China, and increasingly it functions as an outlet for criticism.
"In that light, some commentators said the online reactions reflected a real evolution in public opinion. Show trials and shaming thrived from a spirit of conformity, and even in the recent past, they said, few would have stepped forward to defend prostitutes. [Emphasis added]
"'For a long time there was only one voice on a subject like this,' said Zhu Dake, a cultural critic at Tongji University in Shanghai. 'People have broken into camps and are willing to overturn the traditional morality in favor of a more universal notion of human rights. The fact that people came out defending these women shows a real maturity.'
Instead of jumping on the bandwagon against prostitution, which is illegal but omnipresent in China, many commentators aimed their criticisms at the government for its hypocrisy in not acting against the rich underworld that operates the sex trade or even arresting the prostitutes’ customers."
More to think about.
Dan Harris on the China Law Blog compared the public reaction to the public shaming of prostitutes in Shenzhen to the responses of American's to Sherrif "Bull" Connor's attempts to stop civil rights demonstrations in Alabama.
China Sex, Prostitutes, Rule of Law, Lines of Power, Unintended Consequences and Bull Connor: A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words
"'Bull' Connor tried to stop the growing demonstrations, and gained lasting infamy when he resorted to using the water hoses and dogs. Televised reports of police dogs lunging at African-American citizens and people being washed down the streets by water from powerful fire hoses dramatized the plight of African-Americans in segregated areas. The events in Birmingham helped mobilize the administration of President John Kennedy to begin efforts leading to the most far-reaching civil rights legislation in history, the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The name "Bull" Connor thus came to symbolize hard-line Southern racism. Ironically, Connor's heavy-handed defense of segregation in 1963 Birmingham actually hastened the passage of America's Civil Rights Act..."
He quotes the Wall Street Journal as saying, "The majority see the shaming incident for what it was: a feeble attempt by the government to exercise moral authority. The sex trade is one of the blots on modern China, but it will take more than public humiliation to curtail it..."
And Harris concludes with, "Something like this has to have an impact, however small. China's government is obviously not a democracy, yet it still both wants and needs its people to view it as legitimate. Its people generally viewed the Shenzhen shaming as illegitimate. Because of this, the power to parade prostitutes has probably been taken from the government and that means new power lines have been drawn. Whether this line will extend beyond just this one thing remains to be seen. But this incident ought to at least give the Chinese government a little more pause before trampling on the rights of its people."
Post a Comment
<< Home