Over a month has passed since the head of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, was denied entry to Hong Kong. Mr Roth was to present the NGO’s thirtieth annual review of human rights practices and trends around the world at a news conference in the city, but was denied entry by immigration officials without explanation. The report’s keynote essay, authored by Mr Roth, shines a light on the human rights violations committed under the People’s Republic of China (PRC ) and, in particular, the systematic oppression of Turkic Muslims in the country’s northwesternmost region of Xinjiang.
MEDIA RESPONSE
The international media’s reaction was predictable—a flurry of articles, some more measured than others, and then silence. The reaction of Chinese media came a few days later, but was equally predictable.
Global Times called the criticism “a lie” and stated that denying entry to Mr Roth was a “reasonable decision” because “China decides who’s allowed into the country”, echoing the sentiment of Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman, Geng Shuang, who said “[a]llowing or not allowing someone’s entry is China’s sovereign right” (notwithstanding that Hong Kong’s constitution stipulates that the Hong Kong government, not the Chinese government, shall be responsible for immigration controls).
While China Global Television Network (CGTN) published an article by Rwandan journalist, Gerald Mbanda, which excused the PRC’s actions in Xinjiang as confronting “extremism and terrorism” and accused Human Rights Watch as “serv[ing] capitalistic interests”. Similar accusations of collusion with the US government and a description of Human Rights Watch as part of the “Human Rights Industrial Complex” were also levelled by Alex Lo in an article for South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong based newspaper.
A DEEP DISTRUST OF WESTERN IDEOLOGY
The vocabulary of the Chinese media response, particularly the condemnation of the human rights rhetoric coming from the West, reflects the regime’s deep distrust of human rights concepts in general, but it also reflects the regime’s view that the West is trying to use human rights as an instrument of ideological warfare against it. That view was apparent in the infamous “Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere. A Notice from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China’s General Office” circulated by the General Office of the Communist Party of China shortly after President Xi Jinping’s ascendancy. The document highlighted several “Western Values” deemed dangerous to the Communist Party, including judicial independence and freedom of the press, and urged the Communist Party to protect its “ideological sphere”.
Overcoming this ideological resistance to human rights depends on reemphasising the universality of human rights and distinguishing them from their Western expression. It will necessitate the cultivation of an authentically Chinese expression of human rights, informed by the philosophies of Mencius, Mozi, Lao Tzu and Chinese Buddhism, among others.
But this mission will not be helped by an international media that reports intermittently on China issues and, when it does so, is alarmist to a China that still remembers keenly its humiliations in the 19th Century. It smacks as opportunistic and predatory. The commendable work of Human Rights Watch and other organisations striving to improve human rights in China will be undermined and tarred with the same brush. In fact, they already have been (see here and here).
Samuel is a trainee solicitor and postgraduate at Cardiff University. He is active in several U.K.-based organisations campaigning on behalf of Hong Kong and BNOs. His research interests include transitional justice and the rule of law.