Many people regard 2003 as the year the rights protection movement was born in China and since then many rights protection movements have flourished there. Now that three years have passed, Attorney Gao Zhisheng's hunger strike marks the dawn of a new stage in the evolution of these movements. Reflecting over the path taken in the last three years, I make the following predictions about the prospects for this movement.
1. The Rights Protection Movement Will Grow Into a Human Rights Movement
When the U.S. government began to publish its annual white paper on human rights conditions in China, many people disapproved of it and even thought that the U.S. had ulterior motives, and was anti-China. After the June 4 Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, people felt that human rights, democracy, freedom and rule of law were all political ideals far from the reality of their lives. On the other hand, the economic tide [1] turned people's attention from political rights to economic interests. Of course, this is also what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had hoped for and it has meticulously propagandized its position.
The issue that many people have not realized is that human rights are not just any individual's rights. Rather, they are the foundation for upholding social justice, just as is stated in the first sentence of the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" proclaimed in 1948: Human rights "is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world".
There are four major elements restricting modern governments from committing crimes, namely morality, law, public opinions and election. They are reflected in articles 18, 7, 19 and 21 of the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" respectively. In other words, if the conditions of the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" could be guaranteed, it would be impossible for governments to use state machines to do evil.
It is exactly the fact that the populace devotes little attention to and insufficiently protects the value of human rights that leads to the CCP successfully depriving the Chinese people of freedom of belief, speech, publication, assembly, association and protest. In particular, the CCP cult's trampling on the freedom of belief has brought about the degeneration of the social morality, caused societal disunity, and helped the government easily exonerate itself from the responsibilities of its various crimes. As morality, the core virtue, has seriously degenerated, the CCP's evil party culture has gotten its way. It has then twisted the rule of law, public opinion and elections around its little finger.
Then without any checks and balances, the CCP cult has become more and more malignant, pursuing the maximization of self interest and willfully plundering factories, lands, oil fields, mines and houses that people rely on for their living, forcing the populace to finally stand up and protect their basic material rights to make a living.
The long term neglect of human rights has caused an inevitable consequence: people's economic rights have been violated, regular human rights movements have degraded to rights protection movements and violent conflicts have broken out in some areas. This verifies item 2 in the Preamble of the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights," "Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind…" and item 3, "Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law."
Things turn into their opposites when they reach the extreme. Once average people fight for rights protection when their own immediate rights are intruded upon, they certainly will go through a rethinking process — as did attorney Gao Zhisheng. Attorney Gao wrote at the beginning of 2005, "China is different from other countries ruled by law; every small case will eventually reflect deep-rooted institutional problems."
Rights activists will eventually find out that their rights were violated as the result of the Chinese communist regime ganging up on them with mafia-style institutions. In fact, it is the government under the CCP that is committing crimes. If restrictions on the use of governmental power can't be successfully implemented, the rights of average people are in danger all of the time.
However, once one pursues the restraint with respect to the use of the governmental power, or the CCP's power, one has to rely on "morality, rule of law, public opinion and election." Therefore, I predict the following for the first phase of the hunger strike rights protection movement is: it will grow into a human rights movement. This is my first prediction.
2. Without The Disintegration of CCP, The Rights Protection Movement Will Not Be Successful
The Chinese Communist Party will not yield to the slightest request for rights protection, and dares not to agree with it.
Martin Luther King once said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." To the Chinese communist regime, this could be modified to: success in pursuing justice anywhere is a fundamental threat to the Chinese communist regime everywhere.
Any success in the rights protection movement will encourage others to try harder to protect their own rights. In fact, the Chinese communist regime is living by intruding upon people's benefits. From the time of Jiang Zemin, ruling the country by corruption had already become a fundamental national policy. The dedication of party officials was exchanged for "success" of their corruption. If the people's rights are protected, then the fundamental force that unites the communist party members will be gone; this beneficiary group will thus collapse and disappear. Under any circumstance, protecting rights is something the Chinese Communist Party dares not do.
Therefore, the Chinese communist regime had to suppress the minor election of village officials in Taishi Village. The regime is terrified of a potential "showcase" effect of the success of such rights protection. In the case of Shanwei Electric Power Company, using tanks and machine guns was just what the CCP wanted. What the regime had restrained was not only Shanwei itself, more importantly it cemented its means of rule – as "A regime that relies on violence and terrorism to seize and maintain power." (from Commentary One of The Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party. )
Therefore, those dedicated to rights protection and the Chinese Communist Party will enter a phase where both parties will refuse to budge. If the CCP does not give in, those protecting rights will not be able to earn a living. However the CCP's step-by-step collapse will result in its eventual debacle. We will never be able to see a complete and lasting settlement between the two groups.
We can't count on the CCP to resolve such problems. The CCP is the one that created these troubles in the first place. It is also the barrier to resolving these issues. Without the collapse of the CCP, the rights protection movement will not achieve success. This is my second prediction.
3. The CCP Will Resort To Reactionary Methods, Akin to Organized Crime
In response to the human right protection movement, the CCP will resort to reactionary gangland-style techniques, as it has in the past. This is my third prediction.
Exactly as I wrote in one of my articles last year: "Today, as The Nine Commentaries spread more widely, the lies have lost their effect, the CCP has to resort to blatant violence."
The CCP has no way to directly respond to the hunger strike to protect human rights. It can neither promise to meet the request of the human rights defenders, nor can it blatantly arrest those people who protest peacefully at home under the world's gaze. Therefore it can only resort to the measures of surveillance, house arrest, harassment and even assassination, or the framing up of people for tax evasion or for patronizing brothels. Hence, to ensure the safety of those who perform hunger strikes for rights protection, the media should pay close attention to each participant. Even after the hunger strike, we should continue to pay a great deal of attention to their security.
4. The Hunger Strike Will Assist the Movement To Quit the CCP
The biggest difference between this current movement and the previous rights protection movements is that it is no longer simply an appeal to the CCP; instead it is to protest against the CCP. Actually the overwhelming majority of bygone human rights protection movements in China wished that the government uphold justice, and hoped through administrative or legal approaches to gain their rights and interests. While the human rights protection movement initiated this time by attorney Gao is due to China's judicial system being completely exposed as an organized crime syndicate, as well as due to the regime's feigned ignorance of this phenomenon even to the point that it itself has turned into a crime syndicate. It is why attorney Gao says that Chinese citizens are under conditions of no protection and no ability to protect their security.
Therefore, participation in the hunger strikes has clearly illustrated that the participants have completely given up any fantasies they held about the CCP.
Participants are no longer there simply to hunger strike and protest, but through self-suffering to awaken citizens to clearly recognize the evil nature of the CCP. The ultimate goal is to lead to the demise of the CCP via the process of recognizing its evil nature. More and more people will realize that the only peaceful shortcut of disintegrating the CCP, is "spreading The Nine Commentaries, promoting withdrawals from the CCP and peacefully disintegrating the CCP."
"The acme of skill is to subdue the enemy without fighting." [2]
Just as attorney Gao said: "Hence, the most urgent matter is to discard the fantasy. Starting from the people around you, using all the means to encourage the people beside you to withdraw from this murderous group, to no longer act as the murders' accomplice, to no longer be the murders' tools! Peacefully end the murderous group's pathetic life — withdraw from the CCP! Fundamentally get rid of Chinese people's disastrous misfortune!"
We need to continually remind ourselves, and tell our fellow citizens: the CCP is the root of all evil. As long as this evil cult exists, our nation's road to ruin will continue, and our human and other rights won't be safeguarded. The hunger strike rights protection movement should develop even more broadly: let more people understand and participate in this movement. More importantly, the movement should develop in more depth, and spread The Nine Commentaries, promote withdrawal from the CCP and its associated organizations, help Chinese people extricate themselves from the Communist evil cult, and regain their life.
If the fast movement of rights protection can be combined effectively with The Nine Commentaries and "Quitting the CCP," the nature of the movement will be transformed from the protest of the weak against the strong into the judgment of good upon evil.
Notes:
[1] During China's economic expansion, millions of people in the whole country went into commerce, attempting to gain huge profits.
[2] From the Sunzi Bingfa, written by Sunzi during the end of the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 B.C.). It comprises a total of 13 chapters on the art of war.
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