Taking a leaf from Vladimir Putin’s playbook China sentenced jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo’s brother-in-law to 11 years in prison on a trumped-up up financial fraud charge. Liu’s wife was briefly allowed out of house arrest to see her brother sentenced. No doubt the party line will be that Liu Hui is an ordinary criminal rather than a political prisoner. Fools, knaves and apologists may repeat this line. Perspective is important. Terrible as the human rights situation is in the PRC it is much better than it was under Mao (or under Stalin) when the entire family would simply have disappeared. At the other end of the spectrum is today’s Taiwan -- perhaps the liveliest democracy in East Asia. Each hotly contested election in Taiwan embarrasses the Chinese Communist Party with proof positive that there is nothing about human rights and democracy that is incompatible with Chinese history and culture.
Posted on: Sun, 09 Jun 2013 17:04:53 +0000
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