Talking Rights

A student at Duke University, Grace Wang has become embroiled in a controversy stemming from the vigil held last week to bring attention to human rights violations in Tibet. Her story, published today in the Washington Post, underscores the passions involved as well as the dangers of speaking out.

She tells her story beautifully, so I won’t summarize. But I do want to underscore that this is a cautionary tale for anyone who wants to do human rights work. Sometimes, you have a rally, a few people come and then everyone goes homes, feeling that they did a small, good thing. Other times, you have a rally — or write a letter, lead a march or organize a talk — and lives are permanently, irrevocably changed.

I study languages — Italian, French and German. And this summer — now that it looks as though I won’t be able to go home to China — I’ll take up Arabic. My goal is to master 10 languages, in addition to Chinese and English, by the time I’m 30.

I want to do this because I believe that language is the bridge to understanding. Take China and Tibet. If more Chinese learned the Tibetan language, and if Tibetans learned more about China, I’m convinced that our two peoples would understand one another better and we could overcome the current crisis between us peacefully. I feel that even more strongly after what happened here at Duke University a little more than a week ago.

Trying to mediate between Chinese and pro-Tibetan campus protesters, I was caught in the middle and vilified and threatened by the Chinese. After the protest, the intimidation continued online, and I began receiving threatening phone calls. Then it got worse — my parents in China were also threatened and forced to go into hiding. And I became persona non grata in my native country.

It has been a frightening and unsettling experience. But I’m determined to speak out, even in the face of threats and abuse. If I stay silent, then the same thing will happen to someone else someday.

So here’s my story.

When I first arrived at Duke last August, I was afraid I wouldn’t like it. It’s in the small town of Durham, N.C., and I’m from Qingdao, a city of 4.3 million. But I eventually adjusted, and now I really love it. It’s a diverse environment, with people from all over the world. Over Christmas break, all the American students went home, but that’s too expensive for students from China. Since the dorms and the dining halls were closed, I was housed off-campus with four Tibetan classmates for more than three weeks.

I had never really met or talked to a Tibetan before, even though we’re from the same country. Every day we cooked together, ate together, played chess and cards. And of course, we talked about our different experiences growing up on opposite sides of the People’s Republic of China. It was eye-opening for me.

I’d long been interested in Tibet and had a romantic vision of the Land of Snows, but I’d never been there. Now I learned that the Tibetans have a different way of seeing the world. My classmates were Buddhist and had a strong faith, which inspired me to reflect on my own views about the meaning of life. I had been a materialist, as all Chinese are taught to be, but now I could see that there’s something more, that there’s a spiritual side to life.

We talked a lot in those three weeks, and of course we spoke in Chinese. The Tibetan language isn’t the language of instruction in the better secondary schools there and is in danger of disappearing. Tibetans must be educated in Mandarin Chinese to succeed in our extremely capitalistic culture. This made me sad, and made me want to learn their language as they had learned mine.

I was reminded of all this on the evening of April 9. As I left the cafeteria planning to head to the library to study, I saw people holding Tibetan and Chinese flags facing each other in the middle of the quad. I hadn’t heard anything about a protest, so I was curious and went to have a look. I knew people in both groups, and I went back and forth between them, asking their views. It seemed silly to me that they were standing apart, not talking to each other. I know that this is often due to a language barrier, as many Chinese here are scientists and engineers and aren’t confident of their English.

I thought I’d try to get the two groups together and initiate some dialogue, try to get everybody thinking from a broader perspective. That’s what Lao Tzu, Sun Tzu and Confucius remind us to do. And I’d learned from my dad early on that disagreement is nothing to be afraid of. Unfortunately, there’s a strong Chinese view nowadays that critical thinking and dissidence create problems, so everyone should just keep quiet and maintain harmony.

A lot has been made of the fact that I wrote the words “Free Tibet” on the back of the American organizer of the protest, who was someone I knew. But I did this at his request, and only after making him promise that he would talk to the Chinese group. I never dreamed how the Chinese would seize on this innocent action. The leaders of the two groups did at one point try to communicate, but the attempt wasn’t very successful.

The Chinese protesters thought that, being Chinese, I should be on their side. The participants on the Tibet side were mostly Americans, who really don’t have a good understanding of how complex the situation is. Truthfully, both sides were being quite closed-minded and refusing to consider the other’s perspective. I thought I could help try to turn a shouting match into an exchange of ideas. So I stood in the middle and urged both sides to come together in peace and mutual respect. I believe that they have a lot in common and many more similarities than differences.

But the Chinese protesters — who were much more numerous, maybe 100 or more — got increasingly emotional and vocal and wouldn’t let the other side speak. They pushed the small Tibetan group of just a dozen or so up against the Duke Chapel doors, yelling “Liars, liars, liars!” This upset me. It was so aggressive, and all Chinese know the moral injunction: Junzi dongkou, bu dongshou (The wise person uses his tongue, not his fists).

I was scared. But I believed that I had to try to promote mutual understanding. I went back and forth between the two groups, mostly talking to the Chinese in our language. I kept urging everyone to calm down, but it only seemed to make them angrier. Some young men in the Chinese group — those we call fen qing (angry youth) — started yelling and cursing at me.

What a lot of people don’t know is that there were many on the Chinese side who supported me and were saying, “Let her talk.” But they were drowned out by the loud minority who had really lost their cool.

Some people on the Chinese side started to insult me for speaking English and told me to speak Chinese only. But the Americans didn’t understand Chinese. It’s strange to me that some Chinese seem to feel as though not speaking English is expressing a kind of national pride. But language is a tool, a way of thinking and communicating.

At the height of the protest, a group of Chinese men surrounded me, pointed at me and, referring to the young woman who led the 1989 student democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, said, “Remember Chai Ling? All Chinese want to burn her in oil, and you look like her.” They said that I had mental problems and that I would go to hell. They asked me where I was from and what school I had attended. I told them. I had nothing to hide. But then it started to feel as though an angry mob was about to attack me. Finally, I left the protest with a police escort.

Back in my dorm room, I logged onto the Duke Chinese Students and Scholars Association (DCSSA) Web site and listserv to see what people were saying. Qian Fangzhou, an officer of DCSSA, was gloating, “We really showed them our colors!”

I posted a letter in response, explaining that I don’t support Tibetan independence, as some accused me of, but that I do support Tibetan freedom, as well as Chinese freedom. All people should be free and have their basic rights protected, just as the Chinese constitution says. I hoped that the letter would spark some substantive discussion. But people just criticized and ridiculed me more.

The next morning, a storm was raging online. Photographs of me had been posted on the Internet with the words “Traitor to her country!” printed across my forehead. Then I saw something really alarming: Both my parents’ citizen ID numbers had been posted. I was shocked, because this information could only have come from the Chinese police.

I saw detailed directions to my parents’ home in China, accompanied by calls for people to go there and teach “this shameless dog” a lesson. It was then that I realized how serious this had become. My phone rang with callers making threats against my life. It was ironic: What I had tried so hard to prevent was precisely what had come to pass. And I was the target.

I talked to my mom the next morning, and she said that she and my dad were going into hiding because they were getting death threats, too. She told me that I shouldn’t call them. Since then, short e-mail messages have been our only communication. The other day, I saw photos of our apartment online; a bucket of feces had been emptied on the doorstep. More recently I’ve heard that the windows have been smashed and obscene posters have been hung on the door. Also, I’ve been told that after convening an assembly to condemn me, my high school revoked my diploma and has reinforced patriotic education.

I understand why people are so emotional and angry; the events in Tibet have been tragic. But this crucifying of me is unacceptable. I believe that individual Chinese know this. It’s when they fire each other up and act like a mob that things get so dangerous.

Now, Duke is providing me with police protection, and the attacks in Chinese cyberspace continue. But contrary to my detractors’ expectations, I haven’t shriveled up and slunk away. Instead, I’ve responded by publicizing this shameful incident, both to protect my parents and to get people to reflect on their behavior. I’m no longer afraid, and I’m determined to exercise my right to free speech.

Because language is the bridge to understanding.

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Another great editorial from the Fayetteville Observer, which includes the areas that contain Fort Bragg (Army), Camp Lejeune (Marines) and Seymour Johnson:

Just say no: ‘Abstinence only’ is the sole honorable torture policy.

April 18, 2008

The capture of Saddam Hussein, we wrote in December 2003, was a great gift to Iraqis because it meant Saddam could “never again resume his rule of madness and torture.” How far we have drifted from our moral moorings.

Six months later, the spotlight swung to Lynndie England and Charles Graner, whose sick activities at Abu Ghraib their higher-ups dismissed as comparable to a fraternity hazing. It got worse as it became clear Abu Ghraib was no isolated incident.

Yet grim-faced officials said prisoner abuse was spontaneous, not something that originated in Washington. The revelations kept coming, even as President Bush repeated his mantra, “We do not torture,” “America does not torture” — while Vice President Cheney pushed Congress for an exemption to a proposed ban on torture, which is already banned by international law and treaties the United States has signed.

In recent weeks, what have we learned? For two years, the administration acted on what it now concedes is a legally baseless opinion by Cheney’s Justice Department yes-man, John Yoo, who said anything the executive branch does in pursuit of terror suspects is constitutionally OK.

We know Cheney and others high in the pecking order organized meetings that discussed and adopted torture tactics (including waterboarding). We know the president absented himself from those meetings to give himself plausible deniability in case someone blew the whistle and subpoenas started flying. We have his personal admission that he knew of the meetings and the subject matter. “And I approved,” he added last week.

Who is fooled by the pseudo-legalisms and circumlocution?

No one, least of all Iraqis whose misery was supposed to end with the capture of Saddam. It lies about torture, leaving low-level personnel to take the rap for decisions made in or just outside the Oval Office.

When lies don’t work anymore, it insists that all this activity it went to such great lengths to keep secret was perfectly proper all along. It exposes its own troops and diplomats to danger by trying to make torture seem respectable. Then it wonders why others cock an eyebrow when Americans turn the conversation to exhortations about values and human rights.

We can fix this. But not without stopping the torture, and our tortured defense of it.

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Although there were many more counterprotestors than protestors, today’s vigil, organized entirely by students, was a big success.

Some pictures follow. More are available at Flickr.

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Yesterday, Dith Pran died at a New Jersey hospital.

A long-time New York Times photographer, Pran worked with reporter Sidney Schanberg as the Vietnam war spilled into Pran’s native Cambodia. When it became clear that the Khmer Rouge would triumph, Schanberg helped get Pran’s family out. But the two continued working until Schanberg finally had to leave; unfortunately, he could not get his colleague out with him.

Schanberg later won the Pulitzer for his coverage.

Pran lived through the genocide, barely escaping death many times. His experiences were chronicled in the Academy-award winning film The Killing Fields.

Underscoring the power of the story was the fact that the actor who played Pran, Haing Ngor, was also a survivor of the genocide. A gynecologist, he was forced to stop practicing medicine, even when his wife suffered from complications from her pregnancy. Unable to perform a Cesearean (or risk revealing themselves as educated city-dwellers), he had to watch her and their child die in childborth. He escaped Cambodia in 1980, but was killed in what was apparently a Los Angeles street robbery in 1996.

This is the trailer for this 1984 film:

Pran continued working as a photographer after emigrating to the US. But remained a committed human rights activist, founding a project on the Cambodian genocide (Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project) and speaking frequently about his experiences. His anthology of children’s memories of the Cambodian genocide is called Children of Cambodia’s Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors.

A final video interview with Pran is available here.

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For the most part, the Czechs love the US. For the most part, they admire much of what this country has achieved internationally. For the most part, they value US culture.

But what they don’t like any more is to be lectured by the US on human rights. After the Czech republic was mildly criticized in this year’s State Department Human Rights report, this is what Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek had to say:

To the report from the U.S. State Department I can only say that a country that allows torturing of prisoners can hardly teach me about how human rights have been violated here.

So I thought this photo that I took in 2006 at Prague’s Kafka Museum was appropriate for this little tiff!

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Today, the NC Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission approved a final report on HB 1682, the NC “No Place for Torture Act.” Introduced by Rep. Paul Luebke and others, the bill would strengthen the state’s hand in investigating allegations of kidnapping and torture carried out with the collaboration of state residents, in particular the employees of Aero Contractors, which allegedly flies “extraordinary rendition” missions for the CIA (using planes like this one, photographed in Smithfield).

Thanks to Christina Cowger of NC Stop Torture Now for the summary that I’m using to write this post.

During the public meeting, Judge Erwin Spainhour, the chair, was clear in identifying the Smithfield-based company for their work in transporting people out of the US to be tortured in other countries. Sitting on the Commission and voting were representatives of the Governor’s Office, the North Carolina Conference of Superior Court Judges, the NC Department of Crime Control and Public Safety, and the NC Association of Chiefs of Police, among many others. Rep. Alice Bordsen (D-Alamance Co.), who along with 21 other state legislators signed a letter to Attorney General Roy Cooper in January 2007 requesting investigation of Aero, joined the Commission today.

The Commission’s report says:

The Subcommittee noted that the people of North Carolina do not condone torture and that it is contrary to who they are as Americans. They also expressed concern that it betrays American armed forces personnel who might become prisoners of war and be at risk of torture themselves.

The Commission made recommendations on how to classify the offenses of conspiracy to commit torture and forced disappearance (as well as how to shield state law enforcement officials from prosecution when they act lawfully).

In its one substantive recommendation, the Commission proposed an alternative to HB 1682 that would add “torture” and “causing the disappearance of” to the existing state offense of kidnapping (General Statute 14-39). The commission suggested adding “or the action was authorized, directed, compelled, or condoned by a government official” as a basis for elevating kidnapping to first-degree kidnapping.

As Christina wrote, “In this recommendation, the Commission suggested explicitly prohibiting any affirmative defense that the acts were committed at the behest of a government official (i.e., it’s not an excuse that the CIA told us to do it). In other words, the Commission recognized that a program of kidnapping, disappearance and torture is particularly heinous because it is directed and authorized by the government. This acknowledges that Aero Contractors is not a rogue company or an unwitting private contractor, but rather is knowingly helping implement a government-directed program.”

This is really a stupendous and most welcome affirmation by this group.
Final approval of the report was unanimous.

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Spurred by a growing network of activists and ABC’s 20/20 expose, the “Bodies”-style plastination exhibits are under increasing scrutiny nationwide. In Pennsylvania, for example, where the Premier show is housed at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Science Center, state Rep. Michael E. Fleck is preparing a bill that will ban the commercial exhibition of human cadavers without written consent from the deceased or their next of kin that clearly states the person’s intent to be used in a profit-making enterprise.

A similar bill proposed by California state assemblywoman Fiona Ma has been approved by the state Assembly and awaits action in the state Senate.
On February 28, Pittsburgh’s local public television station is hosting a public panel that will be live streamed on the web here. The panel will examine the controversy surrounding these for-profit shows.

Along with the Carnegie’s director, the speakers include the Allegheny County Medical Examiner, the Director of the University of Pittsburgh Center for Bioethics and Health Law, the Pittsburgh police officer who runs the Homicide Division and several religious leaders. Although human rights activist Harry Wu, a former Chinese political prisoner, expressed interest in attending, the organizers declined to include him, saying that it was too late to revise the agenda.

Meanwhile, on the day before the 20/20 expose aired, New York’s Attorney General served subpoenas on Premier, opening an investigation into “whether representations made to the public about the methods used to obtain the bodies exhibited in the U.S. are in fact false.”

Harry Wu’s investigation as well as shocking photos of executed Chinese prisoners, are available here.

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In class yesterday, we were talking about the Cold War. One of the pieces we read was from Anne Applebaum’s excellent Gulag: A History, about the Soviet prison camps that lasted from the Revolution through the 1970s. The two students who led the discussion decided to show this clip from “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” a 1964 satire starring Peter Sellers and George C. Marshall.

I wondered aloud if the appearance of a satire like this one marked a kind of turning point in people’s willingness to accept the political status quo. Once something is mocked and ridiculed in popular culture, as the Cold War was in “Dr. Strangelove,” does it mean that the end of the mass delusion that could lead us into folly?

Certainly, things only got worse after the movie’s release. Ahead lay an escalation of the war in Vietnam, our disastrous interventions in Brazil, Guatemala and Chile, among other places, and the assassinations of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy…

Yet… I wonder if moments like this are part of a gradual, but (in retrospect) identifiable awakening.

On the one hand, we still have a pop culture wedded to an anti-human rights rhetoric. A friend sent a recent article published in the Wall Street Journal about the Fox hit “24,” known for its repeated and positive depictions of torture.

According to Human Rights First, there have been 89 instances of torture on the first six seasons of 24. The overwhelming majority of these torture scenes feature Jack Bauer using violent, physically abusive techniques. The use of these torture techniques is always portrayed as heroic and resulting in saving lives.

Rather than tone down the torture that has characterized the first six seasons of 24, Fox executives say that they will focus the next season around a spirited defense of these tactics. A teaser released by FOX shows that the next season will begin with hero Jack Bauer under investigation by a Congressional oversight committee. By the end of the season the teaser suggests that those that sought to put Bauer on trial will have been won over to his position.
Yet the WSJ also notes that as public opinion about the Iraq War turned south, the show’s depiction of torture came to be seen as glorifying the practice in the wake of real-world reports of waterboarding and other interrogation techniques used on detainees.

Ratings dropped by a third over the course of last year’s sixth season. Producers would later experience trouble casting roles, once some of the most desirable in television, because the actors disapproved of the show’s depiction of torture. “The fear and wish-fulfillment the show represented after 9/11 ended up boomeranging against us,” says the show’s head writer, Howard Gordon. “We were suddenly facing a blowback from current events.”

I guess they think a little more torture will goose ratings.

But I think the tide may have definitively turned against them. My evidence? “Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay,” which will be released soon. While it’s no “Dr. Strangelove,” I think its irreverent attitude and implicit skewering of the War on Terror hysteria mark a change in public opinion that (I hope) will deepen as George Bush’s tenure draws to a close…

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A message board for investors in Premier Exhibitions reveals mounting panic prior to ABC’s 20/20 piece, to be aired tonight.

Here’s one fascinating message. The “woman in Durham” is our very own Sarah, a dynamo who is largely responsible for bringing together people all over the country to voice their objections to the plastination shows.

Knobs,

…I do not know what the 20/20 story will include, therefore I cannot give any sort of impact assessment. What I will say is, the NY Times story a couple years ago was a hack job, and it didn’t even include any factual evidence to say the bodies PRXI had obtained from the Dalian Medical University were an issue. Lotsa assumptions, suppositions, garbage about organ trafficking and human rights violations and pictures from some meat shop.

I also get the feeling the 20/20 story was most likely prompted by those that have taken it upon themselves to build websites and petitions and make all kinds of moral judgements and assumptions on behalf of everyone else. The first bits of leaking information came from the woman in Durham who picketed the exhibit there and took it upon herself to link up with all the other individuals across the country who have voiced their opposition to the exhibit.

I assume PRXI was interviewed for the story. How could they not when on the face of it the story appears to revolve around our exhibit. Of course, editting can be done to skew the story in whatever manner the reporter wants.

Mr Geller’s response to the NY Times chop job:
http://www.prxi.com/pdf/nytimes.pdf

No doubt, the same applies now and I’d expect the response to be exactly the same should 20/20 go the same route.

Amigo Mike

Another poster wrote optimistically that the investigation would quickly fade from people’s minds, and that “perception” — not reality — was what Premier should focus on in defending itself.

But they are, I believe, sadly behind the power curve on this one. That “woman in Durham” has already helped get legislation presented in California regulating plastination exhibits — and much more is to come.

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At 10 pm EST on Friday, February 15, the ABC show 20/20 will be airing an investigation of how plastination companies obtain their bodies. Reported by Brian Ross, the piece is based on a three-month investigation that went “from a body processing factory on the German-Polish border, to Internet sites that offer the plasticized bodies for sale, to a rundown warehouse in northern China where “20/20’s” undercover cameras saw what has, until now, been kept well hidden…”

Can’t wait!

Kudos to No Bodies 4 profit for helping get ABC to do the story…

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