Australian terrorists captured!

As you'd already know, ASIO, AFP and state police raided several homes over the past 2 days in Sydney and Melbourne. (If you were stuck on a ship attacked by pirates or battling avian flu and somehow missed it all, you can read about it here)

I can understand how Muslims as a minority feel they have no voice and that they are being oppressed, but how did this anger progress from simply an emotion, to the action of conspiring to murder thousands of people? Especially since those arrested were mostly Australian citizens, I just can't get my head around it. My thinking is, how would they feel if someone they loved died as a result of a terrorist attack? To any reasonable person this should be enough to stop whatever it is they were planning to do. But no, apparently, these people are fanatics, extremists, unreasonable people who care about nothing but their cause, their jihad or holy war.

How does one become a fanatic then, I wonder. These people who were arrested look like normal people to me, does one have to be one to recognise another? Mind you, I've had destructive thoughts before, but I'd never act on them. (AFP officers, please note the emphasis on NEVER)

*sigh*... I guess I'll never get it.

Notice on word verification

Just a note that I had to turn on word verification to avoid comment spamming.

Politics exam!

Just had my politics exam today (Yay!) and I think I went alright. First essay was on human rights in China, second essay on women in China (which unfortunately I didn't have enough time to finish). Here's a what I think I wrote on the human rights one:

Does China have a poor record on ‘human rights’?
With the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games fast approaching, China has commanded much of the international community’s attention. Fuelled by massive economic growth, some even claim that it will become the next superpower. Locally, Australia is negotiating a Free Trade Agreement that is expected to boost our economy and transform our current political and economic climate.

Yet even with all this exciting progress – or perhaps because of it, the criticisms to the Chinese government for its ‘human rights’ abuses continues, the most widely-publicised being the Tiananmen massacre in 1989 and the occupation of Tibet. Less well known but just as controversial are the oppression of workers, restrictions on freedom of speech and inadequacies of the law. Proving that it was not insensitive to foreign pressure, the Chinese government’s Information Office of the State Council published a lengthy and defensive argument, popularly known as the ‘white paper’, in 1991. In it, the government emphasised that the practice of ‘human rights’ differs from country to country, depending on their historical and cultural background. They argued that, “the issue of human rights falls… within the sovereignty of each country” and as such, foreign countries should not judge China based on their own circumstances. Additionally, the government declared that with the influence of ‘Asian values’, the rights of the individual will never be more important than that of the collective good. Furthermore, the paper maintained that China has progressed substantially in the past century and that the current government has done remarkably well in improving the protection of ‘human rights’ (Information Office of the State Council, 1991).

Nevertheless, independent, non-governmental organisations, such as Amnesty International, are outraged that anyone who speaks out for their rights in China is likely to suffer violations of their human rights. Some are punished under sweeping legislation that virtually outlaws any expression of dissent. Others are victims of officials who abuse the law and their authority, to silence or intimidate those who try to defend their rights. Authorities have demonstrated that they are willing to use any means, whether legal or illegal, to ‘maintain stability’.

This ‘stability’ was feared to be under threat when student demonstrations sparked by Hu Yaobang’s[1] death gathered momentum. The students protested against corruption and the slowness of political reform, they were also worried about inflation and the effects it has on fixed incomes. The People’s Liberation Army was ordered to halt these demonstrations, and their clash with student demonstrators in Beijing became the infamous ‘Tiananmen massacre’, where at least 1000 people were killed and thousands more injured (Mackerras et al, 1998). In April 1991, officials estimate that nearly 800 people had been tried and sentenced in Beijing alone in connection with the 1989 protests. They did not say what happened to the thousands of others who were detained. In fact, many were tried in provincial cities and others were held for long periods without trial. In the years since 1989 repression has continued, with many dissidents detained annually. In January 1991 Chen Yanbin and Zhang Yafei, two young unemployed men, were sentenced in Beijing to 15 and 11 years’ imprisonment respectively for carrying out “counter-revolutionary propaganda and incitement” and forming a “counter-revolutionary group” (Amnesty International).

Similarly, workers who have attempted to organize independent labour groups or to stand up for workers’ rights have been imprisoned or detained. Only one official trade union exists in China, the All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). It is the only trade union allowed to represent workers. In May 1989, during the pro-democracy movement, groups of workers in various cities formed Workers Autonomous Federations (WAFs) as an alternative to the ACFTU. The WAFs were short-lived: following the 4 June 1989 crackdown, the authorities banned them and their organizers were arrested and prosecuted on “counter-revolutionary” charges (ibid). In early 1992, another new group, the Preparatory Committee of the Free Labour Union of China (PCFLUC), distributed leaflets in Beijing encouraging workers to form free trade unions. Three or four of the organizers were secretly arrested by plain-clothed police officers without warrants in May and June 1992 during large-scale arrests of pro-democracy activists. After the arrests, a letter of appeal from the group reached the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Geneva. The letter said that workers in China are deprived of their rights of free speech and assembly, and their right to strike. It also spoke of the deterioration of workers’ rights since the start of the economic reforms in the late 1970s (Amnesty International). In 1993, some 2 million workers lost their jobs in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang. In March, about 100,000 workers took to the streets in the province’s two major cities, Harbin and Quqhaer, to protest pay cuts (Chan and Sanser, 1997). However, the government has resisted strikes all over China that demand decent wages and better working conditions such as these.

Just as infamous as the Tiananmen massacre is China’s occupation of Tibet. Despite claims by the Chinese government that Tibet has always been a part of China, the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s rightful leader, is still living in exile since China’s military invasion. According to the Australian Tibet Council, the boy identified by the Dalai Lama as the reincarnation of the previous Panchen Lama[2] is still in captivity after more than ten years of imprisonment. Furthermore, the government has been sponsoring many Han Chinese[3] to migrate to Tibet, and it is now difficult for native Tibetans to find jobs in their own homeland. Groups of people and individuals have been jailed in Tibet for circulating information about human rights issues, and those who exhibited rebellion are accused of trying to split the country.

Although in the white paper the Chinese government claims that China has no political prisoners, the justice ministry admits to holding 2,700 people in jail for “counter-revolutionary offences” (Wilson, 1997). The government had described at length the guarantee of human rights in China’s judicial system, however all trials concerned with “counter-revolutionary activities” may be held in secret. The judicial system in reality permits sentencing before the actual trial, the concept of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ is considered a “bourgeois western aberration”. Conviction rates were extremely high; in 1997, about 99 percent of tried suspects were found guilty (Mackerras, op cit). At one stage, China had some 2000 labour camps with a total population of 10 million. The government’s figures show that there is an average of 200,000 new admissions to labour camps each year (Amnesty International).

Even though the Chinese government declares that “strict control is exercised over the use of capital punishment in China” and that it is only applied to “criminals who are guilty of the most heinous crimes”, according to Amnesty International, China executed at least 4,367 people in 1996 – more than all other countries combined. The judicial process was reported to be fast and brutal, in spite of the government’s denials. In one case, a man was arrested, tried, sentenced and executed in the space of six days (The Economist, 1997). People have been executed for, among other things, hooliganism and stealing.

The Chinese government has stated that it recognizes the universality of UN human rights standards, but it also argues that states must be free to implement these standards according to their specific cultural, historical and political circumstances. In practice, such freedom has amounted to state violations of basic human rights. To their defence, other Asian countries such as Singapore and Malaysia also believe in the ‘Asian values’ theory. In addition, the popularity of Confucianism in China does explain the absence of the notion of individual rights. In fact, the dominant feature of Confucianism is “a pervasive hostility to the notion of personal autonomy and individualism” (Pye, 1991).

So would it be fair to say that the assertion of ‘Asian values’ is simply a cloak, created by an arrogant regime whose newly-gained confidence from rapidly growing economic power makes it all the more resistant to outside criticism? Does it have any intellectual substance? Though academics have explored the understanding of human rights in various Asian contexts, the assertion of ‘Asian values’ gains political prominence only when it is articulated in government rhetoric and official statements. In asserting these values, the Chinese government find that they have a convenient tool to silence internal criticism and to fan anti-Western nationalist sentiments. At the same time, cultural relativists, cultural supremacists, and isolationists alike welcome the concept as fresh evidence for their various positions against a political liberalism that defends universal human rights and democracy. Thus, the ‘Asian values’ debate provides an occasion to reinvigorate deliberation about the foundations of human rights, the sources of political legitimacy, and the relation between modernity and cultural identity.

The Chinese government has made the following claims about the so-called ‘Asian view’ of human rights:

Claim I: Rights are ‘culturally specific’. Human rights emerge in the context of particular social, economic, cultural and political conditions. The circumstances that prompted the institutionalization of human rights in the West do not exist in Asia. However, international human rights law is not the product of one cultural tradition. It has emerged over the past 50 years from the UN, which at present has 185 member states. Most international human rights instruments, starting with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), have been accepted by the General Assembly where all member states speak and vote.

Claim II: The community takes precedence over individuals. The importance of the community in Asian culture is incompatible with that of the individual, upon which the Western notion of human rights is based. The relationship between individuals and communities constitutes the key difference between Asian and Western cultural values. Human rights and the rule of law, according to the ‘Asian view’, are individualistic by nature and hence destructive of Asia’s social mechanism. Increasing rates of violent crime, family breakdown, homelessness, and drug abuse are cited as evidence that Western individualism (particularly the American variety) has failed. On the other hand, international human rights law is not solely concerned with civil and political rights, nor does it deal solely with the rights of the individual. Many of its provisions stress social, cultural and collective rights, and there is recognition of the duties individuals have towards others and the community at large.

Claim III: Social and economic rights take precedence over civil and political rights. The Chinese government rank social and economic rights and the right to economic development over individuals’ political and civil rights. The Chinese government stated, “To eat their fill and dress warmly were the fundamental demands of the Chinese people who had long suffered cold and hunger” (Information Office of the State Council, 1991). To them, the primary human right is subsistence, with which China has done very well in improving. Political and civil rights, on this view, do not make sense to the poor and illiterate masses; such rights are not meaningful under destitute and unstable conditions. It is important to note here of the promise that once people’s basic needs are met – once they are adequately fed, clothed, and educated – and the social order is stable; the luxury of civil and political rights will be extended to them. In the meantime, Chinese citizens are led to believe that economic development will be achieved more efficiently if the leaders are authorized to restrict individuals’ political and civil rights for the sake of political stability. According to the Vienna Declaration, however, “while development facilitates the enjoyment of all human rights, the lack of development may not be invoked to justify the abridgement of internationally recognized human rights” (Amnesty International). The need to feed the hungry cannot justify committing torture and there should be no hierarchy of human rights.

Claim IV: Rights are a matter of national sovereignty. The right of a nation to self-determination includes a government’s domestic jurisdiction over human rights. Human rights are internal affairs, not to be interfered with by foreign states or multinational agencies. The Chinese government contend that the West’s attempt to apply universal standards of human rights to developing countries is disguised cultural imperialism and an attempt to obstruct their development. In effect, they are rejecting one of the most remarkable and enduring developments since the founding of the UN: the recognition that there are universal minimum human rights guarantees, which all states must abide by, and that the international community has a right and duty to hold all states to account if they fail to respect these rights. It is a principle reflected in the development of international human rights law and practice, a principle that was reaffirmed when all UN member states agreed to the Vienna document, which proclaimed “...the promotion and protection of all human rights is a legitimate concern of the international community” (ibid). While supporting human rights scrutiny in some other countries, the Chinese government maintains its stance of ‘non-interference’ in its own internal affairs.The government has frequently accused its critics of exploiting human rights issues for political ends. With some justification, it has also accused other governments of hypocrisy, pointing out that they too are guilty of human rights violations. Such accusations, however, do nothing to lessen the gravity of China’s poor record and suggest that the authorities are seeking to avoid responsibility. In its report, Amnesty International slammed China for preventing independent domestic or international scrutiny of its human rights record. According to them, China is giving the impression that it has much to hide. Even so, the secrecy has not prevented accounts of gross human rights violations from reaching the international arena, although it does indicate that the scale of human rights violations may be far worse than what is acknowledged. This secrecy also suggests that Chinese authorities may still believe they can “do what they like to people and are not accountable for their actions” (Amnesty International).

[1] Hu Yaobang was General Secretary of the CCP, dismissed from his post in 1978 and died on 15 April 1989. He was a hero to many students because he stood up for the kinds of reforms they wanted.
[2] The Panchen Lama is the Dalai Lama’s right hand man. Tibetans believe that like the Dalai Lama, the Panchen Lama will reincarnate; his most important responsibility is to identify the next Dalai Lama.
[3] The Han Chinese makes up about 95% of the Chinese population, with the other 5% comprising of over 50 different ethnic minorities.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose - the movie

Saw it the other day - really good movie. Won't say much about it, except that I believe it can and probably did happen.

Digweed pix - Blogger didn't work so had to use hello. Thanks again to www.ellway.com.au!

A friend, my fiancee and I @ Digweed

Us @ Digweed

Me @ Digweed

John Digweed @ QBH 31/10/2005

We went to Queens Bridge Hotel (next to Crown in Melbourne) to see John Digweed and check out their new renovations. Absolutely fantastic. You can see a review here (inthemix review). QBH has always had an excellent sound system, but now it's even better. A couple of large LCD monitors now grace the stage to complement the projector screens, and it's great to see they kept the laser lights that always dazzles the crowd. The renovations have opened the main room up a bit so there's more space and the acoustics seem to have improved, they filled out the dance floor too, making it safer for people who previously had to negotiate steps when mentally incapacitated and physically squashed by thousands of dancers (not that I've experienced it first hand - he he...)

The crowd was a bit older (as you'd expect) but generally not as friendly as other gigs we've been to, which was a surprise because usually older crowds are much better. We saw some old friends and other familiar faces though, it made the night that much more memorable (if you're reading this, you know who you are).

Digweed himself turned the packed crowd into dancing puppets, his 5-hour set could only be described as pure genius. He took us on a journey of progressive/electro sounds, mixing heart-thumping rhythms with brain-melting melodies. No one wanted to leave until he finished his set (at 6am!), when we got out it was already morning.

Anyways, I'll stop blabbing on and upload some pics for yas :)
(PS: Thanks to www.ellway.com.au for these pics, he's always at gigs taking pics so we don't need to take our own cams - his prints are pretty cheap too)