Quote:
Originally Posted by AzTeK
Basic human rights such as the right to life, liberty, freedom of expression cannot be taken away by anyone under any circumstances in any place of the world. That is a main pillar of my beliefes and I will not ever discriminate any human being nomatter of what culture by "altering" what rights he has.
However, first of all thnx Luke for the explanation, I guess that if a person consciously says he shall not demand those rights, then I guess that is a personal choice that shall be respected. No action can without explicit approval of the person, forfeit their basic human rights, but a conscious decision, like many Chinese are appearently making, to willingly "reduce" the importance of these rights is, I guess, fair game.
However, you said that MOST Chinese are OK with this, not all. If anyone, including the government, forces these "separatists" to give up their basic rights than they shall and always will be harshly criticised by me and the West and hopefully also tried under international law, rightfully so.
That's why I'm asking how "bad" human rights abuses in China are, from a Western perspective. I thank you for your insight, Luke, but this basic question is still kind of hanging in the air  |
I said repetitively that there are cultural differences here. In China, a developing country, basic human rights are the rights to feed themselves, feed their parents and other senior family members, improving living conditions, such as air conditioning, automobiles. Speech Freedom based on Western Individualism has never been for thousands of years, and is not considered "basic human rights" in China.
In China, it is ACCEPTABLE that a small group of people's interests being sacrificed for the benefits of the majority, as long as the selection process is relatively fair. China is a developing country, and China DOES NOT have the luxury to guarantee that each one of the 1.3 billion people ALL have air conditioning and automobiles. Some people are going to be LESS TALENTED and relatively poor. When they are poor, they have less resources to further compete with others.
EVERY MAJOR COUNTRY, when they were changing from POOR to RICH, ALL rely on the sacrifice of other people. Britain and France exploited the massive people in the colonies to get rich. America relied on Native Indian Extinction and Black Slaves. Japan, Russia and Germany have massive military aggressions. Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore were all in dictatorships and have human rights abuses when they were getting rich.
British Hong Kong constantly suppressed left wing journalists in 1960s. Taiwan had serious suppressions between different groups. Singapore still has legal torture to punish those who are not disciplined.
For any developing country that is developing their economy and society, sporadic "human right abuses" defined by western standards are necessary evils. Actually, NO MAJOR COUNTRY can go from an agricultural society to a fully developed society without "human right abuses". Every major rich country partially relied on the "human right abuses" to get from poor to rich. I don't see it reasonable to ask China to do something that no other country ever achieved in the history.