The 2008 Beijing Olympics: Supporting an Enemy of Democracy

The most basic human rights of the Uyghur people of East Turkistan (also known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region or XUAR) have been denied by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). After September 2001, China has used the “war on terror” as an excuse to crackdown on peaceful Uyghur human rights protesters and supporters of democratic reform in East Turkistan, labeling them as “terrorists.”  Uyghurs face arrests, torture, and executions for all forms of protest against government policies, no matter how peaceful. Even holding religious beliefs outside of the government’s control is illegal. People who pray at home, instead of attending mosques established by the government, can be severely punished. 

In his famous book Development as Freedom, Nobel Award-winning economist Amartya Sen argued that the “crucial obstacles of democracy come from the system of government, not the culture.” A recent speech by Wang Lequan, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and the Secretary of the XUAR Party Committee, in which he exposed the Chinese Communist Party’s hostility to democracy, confirmed the truth of Sen’s words.  On August 5th and 6th of 2007, at an official government meeting, Wang delivered a speech illuminating the Central government’s policy on “national separatists” and “illegal religious activities.”  During this speech Wang expressed his hostile feelings towards Western democracy, directly attacking Western nations on the issue of human rights, and, in the process, exposing the real fear of the Chinese Communist Party.

“To Westernize and divide are a criminal conspiracy of a reactionary nature,” Wang claimed in the speech. “Western, U.S.-led hostile forces use human rights, ethnic, and religious issues to ‘Westernize’ and ’divide’ our country. The ultimate aim of these hostile forces is to overthrow the Chinese Communist Party's leadership and the socialist system, to turn our country from a socialist country into a capitalist country, from a unified country into a fragmented country, from an independent country into a client of the Western powers. They would like China's sovereignty and human rights to be completely abandoned.”

Wang’s speech expresses the Chinese Communist Party’s fear of democracy and its fear of losing its monopoly on power.  The speech clearly opposes the universality of human rights by equating human rights with Westernization, as though basic human rights are reserved only for those in the West.  If Westernization leads to the loss of “Chinese” human rights, why would imposing the policies of the PRC regime on the Turkish-speaking Muslim Uyghurs, who reject the CCP’s ideology, not lead to a loss of Uyhgur human rights?

These extremely hostile words against internationally recognized human rights norms, just one year before the Beijing Olympics, reminds the world of the PRC authorities’ broken promise to the International Olympic Committee to improve the country’s human rights situation before the 2008 Olympics. Wang’s speech also demonstrates that the hope that the Olympics would encourage human rights reforms in the PRC was a miscalculation by the international community. Nothing of the sort has happened. Instead, Wang Lequan has unveiled the PRC as an enemy of democracy.