President Obama has chosen to revert to the failed policies of the past...

In a commencement speech given at the United States Military Academy at West Point on May 22, President Obama concluded by telling the cadets, I have no doubt that we will have prevailed in the struggles of our times. I have no doubt that your legacy will be an America that has emerged stronger, and a world that is more just, because we are Americans, and our destiny is never written for us, it is written by us, and we are ready to lead once more.
The quest for justice, both at home and abroad, seemed manifest.
In his remarks dealing with America’s foreign policy and place in the world, the President vowed to lead a strategy of national renewal and global leadership.
For President Obama, influence abroad is conditioned by strength at home.
In turn, a strong America, will depend on the nation’s resolve and ability to promote education, and research. American innovation must be the foundation of American power, he asserted.
That entails developing and sustaining a strong and vibrant economy spurred by innovation and fostering the means to advance US interests abroad.
Unlike the Bush administration, he stressed the need to avoid acting alone, and vowed to strengthen existing alliances and build new ones to promote peace and development around the world.
Success, added the President, depends on who we are.
The wars of our time are not the ones we were accustomed to because they are waged and spearheaded by terrorist organizations the likes of al-Qaeda that have limited means and resources.
As such, they pose no existential threat to the nation.
They do represent a real danger however, in the sense that they may lead us to succumb to our fears and take inconsiderate measures curtailing our fundamental freedoms in the mistaken belief that ultimate victory demands such sacrifices.
That would be a mistake, the President considers, because they cannot defeat us, but only provoke us into betraying our values and thus defeating ourselves.
The US, founded on the universal values of freedom and equality must not only do its utmost to protect them at home, but also disseminate them abroad.
That effort is also a major policy priority, for promoting these values abroad can only further enhance America’s security at home.
Hence, America will foster these values because that is who we are, a nation founded on humanistic values that loathes war.
America does not fight for the sake of fighting, the President claimed. We fight because we must.
In addition, he predicted victory in the war in Afghanistan.
We will adapt, we will persist, and I have no doubt that together with our Afghan and international partners, we will succeed in Afghanistan, he asserted.
Mr. Obama claims that the US only fights reluctantly.
Is it true?
The nation has been continuously at war for nine years.
Its total defense spending approaches $1.2 trillion a year, or 8% of its GDP, more than the rest of the world put together…
This is simply the reflection of the US’s current military and foreign policy posture, spawned by the collapse of the USSR and the simplistic conclusion that we won and they lost, and the world was now ours to shape as we saw fit.
After 1990, and the subsequent decade and a half of national hubris, as Chas Freeman recently put it, the primary objective was clear: preserve America’s unchallenged global military hegemony.
Furthermore, the militaristic approach to foreign relations led the Bush administration to launch two wars in three years, including the disastrous Iraq war, though that Arab nation posed no threat to America or any one else, in order to demonstrate American resolve and military prowess. The US was determined to impose its democratic values unilaterally, by military means if necessary.
That was its unique and hallowed mission.
All potential foes were now warned of the fate that would befall them should they not heed American injunctions.
The events that followed, including the civil war in Iraq and the reemergence of Iran in the region, including inside Iraq itself, were a deep disappointment for the ideologues in the Bush and Cheney Whitehouse.
Americans are learning the hard way that armed evangelism and the diplomacy-free foreign policy associated with it gave birth to more enemies than they kill, wrote former ambassador Chas Freeman.
Has President Obama forsaken this dangerous and failed policy?
Though an early and prescient critic of the Iraq war (and now determined to withdraw all combat troops by this summer), he has made the Afghan war also launched by his predecessor his own.
There, after a lengthy policy review, the President decided to escalate the war effort, and inject a further 30,000 troops in Afghanistan after an initial 20,000 increase shortly after his inauguration instead of heeding the lessons of history and not succumbing to what John Burns of the NYT called the folly of foreign military adventures in Afghanistan.
The USSR abandoned a similar enterprise to subdue this proud nation after ten years of futilely trying, at the cost of 14,000 dead and billion of Rubles.
The Afghan mujahidin did more to hasten the demise of the USSR than Mr. Reagan’s policies ever did…
Their ancestors waged a war of insurrection against the British in the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-1842).
In 1842, as the British were withdrawing a force of 18,000 towards Kabul, the Afghans attacked them.
Of the original force, only fifty were left to make a last stand at Gandamak: one sole Briton, Thomas Souter, survived, in one of the most humiliating defeats ever suffered by the British army…
Ironically, the largest British base in the country is called Camp Souter…
The British had to face another rebellion in the 1870s, in what is known as the Second Anglo-Afghan War…
The Afghans and particularly, the Pashtun majority (which today dominates the Taliban insurgency) have never tolerated a foreign military presence on their soil.
This has led many observers, including John Burns, to conclude that the war against the Islamic militants may ultimately be unwinnable.
A former Taliban commander now fighting on the Afghan government’s side, Haji Ghulam Mohammed Hotak, commander of the Afghan Public Protection Force, told The National that peace will not come. Never.
The US effort to turn the war around began in Marjah last February.
After initial gains, the Taliban have returned and are forcing many locals to flee.
Every day they were fighting and shelling. We do not feel secure in the village and we decided to leave. Security is getting worse day by day. We thought security would be improving, a farmer told the NYT.
The Taliban are everywhere, they are like scorpions under every stone, and they are stinging all those who get assistance or help the government and the Americans, another said.
In spite of the troop increase approved by Mr. Obama, and which will soon be completed, progress is fleeting at best.
The insurgency is by no means faltering. Its operational capabilities and organizational reach are qualitatively and geographically expanding, according to a Pentagon report quoted by the NYT. The strength and ability of shadow governance to discredit the authority and legitimacy of the Afghan government is increasing, it added.
Progress, where there has been any, has been slow, and time is running out, as General McChrystal himself acknowledged during a recent visit to Marjah… How many days do you think we have before we run out of support by the international community, he asked one of his Marine commanders?…I'm telling you. We don't have as many days as we'd like, reported McClatchy Newspapers.
According to the President’s own timetable, troops should begin withdrawing in July 2011.
Yet the military demands more time. "The vast majority of people are going to be on the fence, and they're going to wait," said the U.S. official, who asked not to be identified because the meeting was meant to offer candid advice to McChrystal.
"The hard question for us is: Can we push them off the fence or do we have to wait for them? It will take time, and even if you throw two more battalions in there, it is still going to take months and months."
"It was a long way gone; therefore I think patience is necessary," said Mark Sedwill, NATO's senior civilian representative in Afghanistan. "But I can quite understand why the sheer amount of attention created a sense of expectation that is hard to fulfill, wrote McClatchy Newspapers.
There aren't enough U.S. and Afghan forces to provide the security that's needed to win the loyalty of wary locals. The Taliban have beheaded Afghans who cooperate with foreigners in a creeping intimidation campaign. The Afghan government hasn't dispatched enough local administrators or trained police to establish credible governance, and now the Taliban have begun their anticipated spring offensive, concluded Dion Nissenbaum, of McClatchy.
The situation has not evolved very favorably since last year, though there are ever more troops on the ground, and yet we are told more troops are needed…
As in Vietnam, it seems we never have enough ressources to complete our civilizing mission…
Moreover, the much more complex Kandahar operation has not yet even begun…
Will the President once again heed the calls of those who advocate escalation, or cut his losses and withdraw on schedule?
We will then have been in Afghanistan for ten years…
Over 1000 US troops have already died there…
As in Iraq during the early years, more and more are being killed by ever more powerful IEDs…
Moreover, President Obama is currently escalating the war across the border as well.
More and more drone attacks are being launched in Pakistan’s border region.
If 30 attacks occurred in 2008, the last year of the Bush administration, 53 were initiated last year, and already 34 in 2010.
The CIA is now even authorized to target unknown, suspected militants.
Previously, only those appearing on an approved list could be hit.
This escalation has led some critics to question the moral legitimacy of the entire program. There are a lot of ethical questions here about whether we know who the targets are. The danger is that it could spawn new terrorists and increase resentment among the Pakistani public, in particular where these strikes are taking place, Loch Johnson, an intelligence scholar at the University of Georgia, told the LAT.
Indeed, 64% of Pakistanis consider the US as an enemy, and only 9% as a partner, according to recent polls quoted by Tom Engelhardt of tomdispatch.
President Obama has also seen fit to escalate America’s covert war in the Middle and Greater Middle East as well.
According to the NYT, General David Petraeus, Commander of the US Central Command, and thus responsible for operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan, issued a secret directive last September authorizing the sending of American Special Operations troops to both friendly and hostile nations in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa to gather intelligence and build ties with local forces.
US military activity intensified in Yemen following the directive, and the failed Christmas bomb attack.
In short, the Afghan war is not going well, US attacks in Pakistan are increasing, as well as covert military actvity in Yemen and elsewhere...
The British precedent of the Nineteenth century, the USSR’s costly failure of the1980s can only lead us to one conclusion, one many believed and hoped the young African-American president would already have reached by himself: there is no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan: only escalation and further mayhem and violence, or negotiations with the Taliban, a political and ideological current part and parcel of Afghan society and that we can never hope to eradicate. Elsewhere, development aid and promotion of democracy would better serve our interests.
America’s success at home and abroad depends on affirming American values, the President said.
It is high time to assert them in Afghanistan.
Only by doing so can the US hope to preserve any influence there, and more importantly, allow the Afghans to finally live in peace.
For there will be no peace as long as foreign forces occupy the country.
In the end, it is for Afghans to decide what is best for Afghanistan, not for us.
Once they have chosen their government according to rules of their own choosing can we then seek to promote our own security interests with the new Afghan leadership…
Yes, we are clear-eyed about the shortfalls of our international system. But America has not succeeded by stepping out of the currents of cooperation -- we have succeeded by steering those currents in the direction of liberty and justice, so nations thrive by meeting their responsibilities and face consequences when they don’t, the President said in his West Point speech.
Yet, the US reaction to the Brazilian-Turkish brokered deal on the Iran nuclear issue left many wondering what had happened to the Obama who had urged dialogue and cooperation in America’s dealings with the outside world.
Last fall, the US and its allies had supported an agreement, then rejected by Teheran, stipulating that Iran’s LEU (low enriched uranium) was to be sent abroad and in one shipment, and that the fuel rods obtained in exchange would be delivered ten or twelve months later.
Iran finally agreed to these conditions, following the Brazilian-Turkish mediation.
What was Washington’s reaction to the deal?
The United States continues to have concerns about the arrangement. The joint declaration does not address core concerns of the international community. Iran remains in defiance of five U.N. Security Council resolutions, including its unwillingness to suspend enrichment operations, was all the US State Department spokesman could find to say.
Was the US still interested in a negotiated solution to the crisis?
Many were indeed baffled.
The Turks, for their part, were disappointed, we have delivered what they were asking for and if we fail to get a positive reaction it would be a real frustration, the Turkish ambassador in Washington told ABC News.
The Americans were visibly annoyed at what they perceived as an unwarranted foreign intervention in a matter of signal importance to the US.
The US had been working diligently on a UN sanctions resolution against Iran, and the agreement was seen as undermining these efforts.
President Obama had hoped to render Congress’ own sanction plan superfluous by reaching an agreement on sanctions at the UN Security Council.
Indeed, there seems to be little support in Congress for a deal with Iran on its nuclear program.
Yet, the absence of leadership on the part of Obama on this issue is dispiriting.
But the reaction to the Brazilian-Turkish deal may undo some of the progress the Obama administration has achieved with the international community. Washington's lack of appreciation for the breakthrough may fuel suspicions of whether sanctions are pursued to achieve success in diplomacy, or whether diplomacy was pursued to pave the way for sanctions and beyond, concluded Trita Parsi, President of the National Iranian American Council on ABC News.
A much more constructive and pragmatic approach was expected from President Obama.
Instead, he preferred to revert to the antagonistic and failed policies of his predecessor.
This presumptuous, aggressive approach has failed to change Iran’s nuclear strategy, while the Turkish-Brazilian approach has been more successful. The coming days and weeks will clarify if the US-Israel-led side finally grasps the important political lessons of the Turkish-Brazilian mediation: Drop the arrogance and double standards, negotiate fairly and realistically, and accept that Iran is a power that is at once strong, technically proficient, and proud of its sovereignty; and on that basis agree to lock in its respect for existing nuclear non-proliferation standards and conventions, wrote Rami Khouri in The Daily Star.
It is not too late for Mr. Obama to heed his own words and seek accommodation and agreement through cooperation.
The decade-long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the covert ones waged in much of the region have had pernicious effects.
America’s pursuits have been perceived by many Muslims in the region and some in the US, as a war on Islam.
Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni-American imam born in the US, and who is now on the CIA’s list of targets that it is authorized to assassinate, the only American on that list, initially condemned the 9/11 attacks. We came here to build, not to destroy. We are the bridge between Americans and one billion Muslims worldwide, he said in a sermon, according to the NYT.
Yet, nine years later, after the invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, Mr. Awlaki now sees America as an enemy of Islam. The harassment and arrest of Muslims in the US in the aftermath of 9/11 infuriated him, so this is not now a war on terrorism, we need to all be clear about this, this is a war on Muslims! Not only is it happening worldwide, but it’s happening right here in America that is claiming to be fighting this war for the sake of freedom, he told the NYT.
Now in hiding in Yemen, Mr. Awlaki is suspected of actively planning attacks against his country. America as a whole has turned into a nation of evil. I eventually came to the conclusion that jihad against America is binding upon myself, just as it is binding on every other able Muslim, he wrote on an extremist website last March, according to the NYT.
Other Muslims-Americans, fortunately very few, have come to the same conclusions and been spurred to attack targets inside the US.
Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-American, pleaded guilty to planning attacks on New York subway stations.
Bryant Neal Vinas, an American who converted to Islam and traveled to Pakistan, pleaded guilty to the charges of aiding al-Qaeda and plotting to blow up New York’s Penn Station.
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an army psychiatrist alienated by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is charged with the murder of thirteen people in a mass shooting that occurred at a military base at Fort Hood in November 2009. Hasan apparently had been in email contact with Mr. Awlaki (incidentally, the man charged with the Christmas Day attack on an airliner, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, also had contacts with Mr. Awlaki, the authorities believe).
Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American charged with planning the Times Square attack, is said to have been infuriated over drone attacks in his former country of Pakistan.
Let us be quite clear here: we are not suggesting that America‘s foreign policy, however deserving of criticism it may be, somehow justifies the planning and execution of revenge terrorist attacks against innocent civilians in New York or elsewhere..
Nothing and certainly no cause will ever justify such vile enterprises.
Nevertheless, we must come to realize that US foreign policy has alienated a great many around the world and radicalized an unstable few to the point where they decided they needed to retaliate, with the feeble means at their disposal.
In most cases, luckily, these attempts were poorly planned and executed, obviously the work of dilettantes. The intent to harm and kill definitely did exist however.
It is also important to recognize that a number of these alienated and radicalized Muslims live in America, were well assimilated there and were American citizens.
Jihad is becoming as American as apple pie and as British as afternoon tea, Mr. Awlaki wrote in statement last March, according to the NYT.
The Jihadists may be among us. They may not necessarily have even traveled to Pakistan or Afghanistan, but are incensed at the violence unleashed in Iraq, Afghanistan or Gaza.
An urgent tasks await us, namely to discover why disillusionment led to hatred and the desire to strike and kill. In addition, a more benign and enlightened policy towards the Muslim world certainly would not hurt either.
A decade of invading Muslim countries is having its radicalizing effects here at home. We can no longer afford to be smug, wrote H.D.S. Greenway, in a NYT op-ed piece entitled American-Born Jihad.
We must similarly come to the realization that the killing of thousands of Muslims this decade alone has had disastrous consequences on how the Muslim world perceives us. In Iraq alone, between 95,000 and 104,000 Iraqis have been killed since 2003, in Afghanistan between 13,000 and 33,000. The vagueness of the figure shows how much of a priority the issue of civilian casualties has been…
We need not give in to fear every time a terrorist tries to scare us. We should not discard our freedoms because extremists try to exploit them, the President urged in his speech
Yet, an ominous and unintended consequence of this new development (homegrown terrorism) has been the temptation on the part of the authorities to curtail fundamental civil rights.
The failed Times Square plot has led to a flurry of proposals to restrict even further the rights that protect all Americans
Some suggested that Mr. Shahzad should be designated an enemy combatant, so that he could be interrogated as long as need be, and detained indefinitely…
Others, particularly senator Joseph Lieberman, are considering passing legislation that would strip US citizens of their nationality should they be involved in terrorist activity.
Many also criticized the FBI’s decision to read Mr. Shahzad his rights to remain silent after several hours of interrogation.
A week later, the Obama administration indicated that it would seek congressional authorization to interrogate terrorism suspects without having to read those rights at all.
We’re now dealing with international terrorists, and I think that we have to think about perhaps modifying the rules that interrogators have and somehow coming up with something that is flexible and is more consistent with the threat that we now face, Attorney general Eric Holder said on NBC‘s Meet the Press.
Yet, Mr. Shahzad continued to cooperate with the FBI, as did Mr. Abdulmutallab, even after having been read his rights.
Why then must the rules regarding the Miranda rights be eroded?
Today, we are told it is to facilitate and render more efficient the fight against terrorism. Who will be targeted tomorrow?
Furthermore, the Obama administration is also asking Congress to grant the government an additional delay before it is obligated to present a suspect for an initial hearing. The government believes that the obligation to present in a timely fashion a suspect in court could interrupt the interrogation process, and thus might staunch the flow of vital information.
However, if a suspect is cooperating, why should he stop doing so after having seen a judge and been notified of the charges he is facing?
And if he is not, what difference will an additional delay make?
The irony is that this administration supposedly stands for the rule of law and the restoration of America’s legal standing, Virginia E. Sloan, president of the bipartisan Constitution Project, told the NYT when asked to comment on the proposals.
Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, was equally dismayed.
It’s highly troubling that the Obama administration might propose to lengthen the time in which a potential defendant would come before a judge. Both proposals would severely undercut the Obama administration’s assertion that they believe in the rule of law, he told the NYT. Even the Bush administration had not gone this far!
Furthermore, the Obama administration, like its predecessor, has been doing its utmost to prevent detainees held in Bagram, an Afghan jail, from enjoying the same habeas corpus rights as those held in Guantanamo.
Two Yemeni detainees and one Tunisian had contended that they had been apprehended outside of Afghanistan, and only later transferred to Bagram, and were not terrorists. A lower court had ruled that they did benefit from habeas corpus, since they were not captured in a war zone, namely Afghanistan.
The Obama administration appealed the decision, refusing to grant them these basic rights, as had the Bush administration.
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia reversed this decision.
Tina Foster, an attorney for the detainees regretted the court’s decision, according to the NYT, stressing that it clearly authorized the government to kidnap people from other parts of the world and lock them away for the rest of their lives.
The government would never be compelled to present its evidence in court…
We can only conclude with dismay that Mr. Obama is chipping away at basic freedoms while stressing in his speeches that they need to be preserved.
At least, the Bush administration made no such claims…
Though Mr. Obama is a fine rhetorician, and his speeches impressive pieces of eloquence, his policies on the issues examined above speak an altogether different, much more brutal language. Contrary to what we expected, he has not forsaken his predecessor’s aggressive, militaristic approach to foreign policy.
Indeed, under Mr. Obama’s direction, the US is escalating its wars in Afghanistan and beyond…
Cooperation and diplomacy have been sidelined in favor of a more muscular approach that shows no more signs of success than it did during the Bush and Cheney days.
Where has the Obama of the Cairo speech gone?
Yet, it is the gradual erosion of basic rights that the President not only has not reversed, but intensified that is the most disappointing aspect of his policies.
Not only has he refused to investigate and prosecute the abuses committed by the previous administration, but his own Justice Department is now contemplating further restrictions that not even the Bush White House contemplated…
Has this President misled us, or were we naïve to believe he would do what he claimed he would do?
In the end, it matters little.
Those who believe in peace, justice and democracy will simply have to fight this president as they did his predecessor.
That is an unexpected and therefore disappointing prospect, but so be it…
(the photograph above can be found here)

Injustice unites us...

Initially, he was only prevented from leaving the country.
He discovered that he was a prisoner in his own land when he tried to cross the border into Jordan.
Last month, the Israeli government notified Israeli-Palestinian civil rights activist Ameer Makhoul that his foreign travels pose a serious threat to the security of the state.
Then, on May 6, at 3:10 am, agents belonging to the GSS (the General Security Services, or Shin Bet) stormed into his Haifa home, confiscated documents, lap tops, the hard drives of his daughters’ computers and arrested him.
They then proceeded to search the offices of Ittijah, a Palestinian NGO headed by Mr. Makhoul, and also seized documents and computers.
The activist was charged with espionage, but since the gag order preventing public discussion of the case has only been partially lifted, it is not clear whom Mr. Makhoul is alleged to have met, though it seems to have been a member of Hezbollah.
In fact, the evidence against Ameer Makhoul remains secret.
As director of Ittijah, Mr. Makhoul meets with many militants and activists from the Middle East and elsewhere.
The NGO was founded in in 1995 to promote the development of Palestinian civil society, particularly in Israel.
Coordinating the activities of some eighty other Palestinian NGOs, it cultivates ties with the outside world to publicize the plight of the Palestinian people.
It achieved international recognition during the 2001 Durban World Conference Against Racism where the NGO denounced Israel’s treatment of its own citizens of Palestinian origin.
The accusation of espionage is thus a particularly vague, though useful one to level at any militant whose cause the Israeli government does not approve.
Israel does keep a list of individuals and organizations it is illegal to have any dealings with, yet the list is regularly amended.
An individual it was once permissible to meet can become an official enemy of the state over night. The conferences he (Ameer Makhoul) attends around the world are not like the Israeli ghetto. There are also Iranian, Lebanese, and Iraqi lobbyists present there. Naturally conversations are started and even friendships. No one checks whether the people we speak to are on some Israeli blacklist, Jafar Farah, director of the Israeli-Arab NGO Mossawa Center told ynetnews.
Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, considers the charge of meeting a foreign agent as a loose charge that allows the GSS to criminalize almost any Arab who establishes legitimate relations with political and social activists in the Arab world.
It was only after Mr. Makhoul’s attorneys threatened to boycott Tuesday’s remand hearing that they were finally authorized to meet their client, twelve days after his arrest.
After their first meeting with him, Makhoul’s attorneys, Hassan Jabareen and Orna Cohen, told ynetnews that some of the interrogation sessions lasted days, sometimes without any sleep. During those days, he complained about pains and dizziness. He was examined by a doctor on behalf of the Shin Bet. We understood from him that just like in Omar's case, the interrogations are very intensive with various investigation teams.
Dr. Omar Saeed, a political activist and director of a firm specializing in natural medicine, was arrested on April 24, and also charged with espionage.
Human rights activists consider the arrest of Makhoul as an additional sign that Israel is determined to criminalize all forms of Palestinian activism, even non-violent and legal ones. Ameer Makhoul is a key human rights defender, well known for his civil society activism on behalf of the Palestinian citizens of Israel. His arrest and continued detention smacks of pure harassment, designed to hinder his human rights work. If this is the case, we would regard him as a prisoner of conscience and call for his immediate and unconditional release, declared Philip Luther of Amnesty International.

It feels like there is an atmosphere of de-legitimization against Arab political and social organizations in Israel, and we are all concerned about this. The claim that we are trying to create a state within a state is one which belongs to those who want to shut up the voice of Arab society, Jafar Farah, of the Mossawa Center, told ynetnews.
Human rights activists have come to such conclusions due to the fact Ameer Makhoul’s arrest is by no means an isolated case.
Protests against the occupation and the separation wall are nothing new, but it is Israel’s response that has evolved and become harsher and less tolerant.
In the West Bank town of Bil’in, peaceful protests against the wall have taken place every Friday since February 2005, though some youths do throw rocks at the Israeli army and police.
Although the International Court of Justice (in 2004) declared that the construction of the wall was a violation of international law and that it should be demolished, the Israeli authorities have refused to do so and done their utmost to prevent even peaceful demonstrations against the wall.
The wall cuts the town of Bil’in in two, and prevents Palestinians from reaching their fields.
The police and army have killed six Palestinian during the weekly demonstrations these last eighteen months, including a ten-year-old boy, and hundreds of others have been injured.
Israel has also resorted to night raids in the West Bank in order to arrest those it considers the leaders of the protests.
One of these organizers, Abdallah Abu Rahma, leader of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall, was arrested December 10, 2009, on International Human Rights Day…
He has been charged with incitement, stone throwing and possession of weapons.
This last charge rests on the fact that the activist collected Israeli tear gas canisters and bullet casings shot at the demonstrators that he then gave to the local museum as part of an exhibition. He has yet to be tried…
Mohammed Othman, a leader of the Stop the Wall campaign was arrested last September upon his return from Norway, where he had denounced the wall and its adverse effects on the lives of Palestinians.
He was held for four months, without being charged under administrative detention.
Finally, last January, he was freed, but the conditions imposed for his release are clearly intended to prevent him from resuming his militant activities.
He is banned from traveling outside the West Bank, and must immediately report to the Police every time the authorities see fit to summon him.
Jamal Juma’, leader of the Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, was also arrested last December, another victim of Israel’s attempt to intimidate the Palestinian civil rights movement.
Detained without charge, he was released a month later.
Without international pressure I would not be out today.You can tell that there is pressure from abroad from how the guards behave with you inside. Yesterday I was released without charge and I thank everybody for their efforts and support.However, many others are still in detention and there are more arrests of activists every day. The authorities must stop this harassment, he told Amnesty International upon his release.
Weekly demonstrations are also held in Sheikh Jarrah, in Arab East Jerusalem.
There, activists denounce the gradual takeover of Arab homes by Jewish militants.
Last Friday, the police arrested fourteen activists, four of which then required medical attention. The protesters were incensed that the police had allowed right-wing activists to enter the neighborhood on Jerusalem Day, but were preventing them from doing likewise…
It remains to be seen whether the Israeli campaign to crack down on legitimate forms of protest and those that organize them will be successful.
Until the rights of Palestinians are acknowledged and respected however, the civil rights campaign will continue unabated.
I know that Israel's military campaign to imprison the leadership of the Palestinian popular struggle shows that our nonviolent struggle is effective. The occupation is threatened by our growing movement and is therefore trying to shut us down... What Israel's leaders do not understand is that popular struggle cannot be stopped by our imprisonment, Abdallah Abu Rahma told hour.ca.
There are other dismaying indications that Israeli society is no longer a tolerant one.
A recent poll commissioned by the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research at Tel Aviv University indicated that if 98% of Israelis support the idea of free speech, 76% considered that human rights organizations should not have the right to expose Israeli abuses.
More than 50% were of the opinion that there is too much freedom of expression.
Furthermore, 82% believe that whistleblowers that obtain information illegally and expose the unethical conduct of the Israeli army should be vigorously prosecuted…
Israelis have a distorted perception of democracy. The public recognizes the importance of democratic values, but when they need to be applied, it turns out most people are almost anti-democratic, Daniel Bar-Tal, a professor at Tel Aviv University‘s school of education told Haaretz. Faith in democratic values was not measured abstractly, but rather was put to the test regarding specific cases. Then, it turns out the Israeli public is not tolerant or pluralistic. The education system teaches students about government authorities and election procedures, but there is no in-depth discussion about democratic values and [how to] instill them. The whole subject of values is perceived as something left-wing, he added.
Foreign critics of Israeli policies are not welcome either.
Noam Chomsky, the 81-year-old MIT professor and prominent left-wing critic of both Israeli and American policies, and who happens to be Jewish, was denied entry into Israel last Sunday, after having been questioned for three hours…
He was to give a lecture at Birzeit University, a Palestinian establishment located in Ramallah, and also visit Hebron and Bil’in. His daughter was denied entry as well.
The official asked me why I was lecturing only at Bir Zeit and not an Israeli university," Chomsky recalled. "I told him that I have lectured a great deal in Israel. The official read the following statement: 'Israel does not like what you say.'"
Chomsky replied: "Find one government in the world which does."
"The young man asked me whether I had ever been denied entry into other countries. I told him that once, to Czechoslovakia, after the Soviet invasion in 1968," he said, adding that he had gone to visit ousted Czechoslovak leader Alexander Dubcek, whose reforms the Soviets crushed, according to Haaretz.
For the legal affairs journalist Boaz Okon, the decision to bar Chomsky from entering Israel is a foolish act in a frequent series of recent follies. Put together, they may mark the end of Israel as a law-abiding and freedom-loving state, or at least place a large question mark over this notion…However, in Israel our government has already started to threaten the freedom, or at least the freedom of those perceived as “others.” We are no longer interested in what “others” have to say, let alone in their right to live here normally. We want them to get out of here. We persecute “others” based on generalizations, suspicions, bias, or just because they annoy us, he wrote in ynetnews.
Last month, a famous Spanish clown, Ivan Prado, who wanted to establish an international clown festival in Ramallah, was also denied entry on security grounds. He was suspected of having ties to terrorist organizations.
Since its war on Gaza in January 2009, and the release of the Goldstone report that severely criticized Israel’s conduct during the conflict, Israel has been on the defensive and now views criticism emanating from human rights organizations, Palestinian civil rights groups or any other source as simply the latest attempt, and the most potent to date, to undermine the state of Israel and its right to exist.
As a result, it has responded harshly and shrilly. It is determined to place limits on free speech, questioning the loyalty of domestic critics, and the motivations of foreign ones.
Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of waging a propaganda war to discredit the organization, according to the NYT.
Last year, an Israeli official told the NYT that Israel was going to dedicate time and manpower to combating these groups.
Israel also considers Arab-Israelis a strategic threat, presumably because of who they are, non-Jewish, and supporters of the Palestinian cause.
Hence, all initiatives designed to promote Palestinian society and enhance Palestinian rights will not be tolerated, even if they are law abiding and peaceful. The Shin Bet security service will thwart the activity of any group or individual seeking to harm the Jewish and democratic character of the State of Israel, even if such activity is sanctioned by the law indicated a letter sent by the Prime Minister’s Office to the editor of a publication of the Israeli-Arab Balad party in 2007.The authorities clearly perceive Palestinian political activity the aim of which is to promote and protect their civil and human rights as a threat to Israeli democracy.
But what kind of democracy is it if it deems it can only survive by denying the rights of a minority of its citizens?
In essence, can Israel be both Jewish and democratic?
The Shin Bet clearly prefers to protect the Jewish character of the nation at the expense of its democratic character. Moreover, those whose actions may lead to the dilution of the Jewish essence of the state of Israel will be harassed, arrested and denied their fundamental human rights.
In short, Israelis fear that tolerating dissent within and views that weaken the government of the country, no matter how legitimate and accurate those views may be, will embolden the Israeli-Arabs, the occupied Palestinians, reinvigorate their efforts to assert their fundamental rights, and thus amounts to an existential threat that could possibly destroy Israel as it is currently constituted, Jewish and thus undemocratic.
Democracy is Israel’s real enemy.
As a result, Israel is waging war on democracy and all those who demand that their fundamental rights be acknowledged and respected.
This war on democracy manifests itself in various ways: occupying and building settlements on Palestinian land, harassing and arresting civil rights activists, expelling foreign critics, and seeking to destroy the reputation of those bold enough to expose Israeli unethical behavior (Richard Goldstone).
Preserving the status quo is thus an Israeli priority. This is conditioned on keeping the Palestinians under total Israeli subjugation.
Should the Palestinians succeed in developing a vibrant non-violent civil rights movement, and as the BDS movement continues to develop, Israel’s position will become untenable.
It will either have to crack down hard, thus abandoning all pretence of being a democratic state, or accommodate Palestinian demands, and evacuate the West Bank, thereby dangerously alienating the most militant strand of its population, the settler movement.
Israel’s objective therefore is to prevent the development of a Palestinian civil rights movement, and leave the militants with no other choice but surrender or violence.
If they resort to the latter, then the Israelis will once again make the claim that peace is not possible because they have no one with which to negotiate.
It is much more comfortable dealing with the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah, radical organizations that resort to violence. Israel can respond in kind, and is under no pressure to recognize or have any contact with them. Hence, its desire to preserve the status quo, and prevent the emergence of a democratic civil rights movement it would be compelled to accommodate and recognize.
Israel should come to its senses.
The Middle East is in dire need of peace and democracy.
We all know what needs to be done: promote and support those organizations and individuals seeking to resolve conflicts peacefully.
This entails and is conditioned upon recognizing the fundamental human rights of everyone.
Peace will come only at that price.
Until that day, the struggle continues, for the simple reason that the oppressed never surrender, or in the words of Ameer Makhoul,
Palestinian civil society protests Israel's repressive policies of intimidation but at the same time resolves to continue our struggle. We have achieved unity, and it is important for us to protect this. We will not allow Israel to isolate members or parts of our community. We have become more influential in the Arab media and we will use this influence. We have built our international networks and we call on them to support us. The attacks that are meant to divide us have had the complete opposite effect. Injustice unites us; we are all together in this struggle.
(the photograph of the wall in Bil'in can be found here)　
　
　

One who insists on telling the truth must pay the price...

Gao Zhisheng, a fearless Chinese lawyer and activist, had disappeared the first time in February 2009. The Chinese secret police spirited him away and for months, no one knew anything of his whereabouts, least of all his wife and two children.
Seven months later, a policeman informed his brother that Gao had lost his way and went missing on September 25, 2009.
The authorities were cynically suggesting that they had played no role in his disappearance and knew nothing about it.
Yet, last January, a Foreign ministry spokesman told reporters that Gao was according to Chinese law, where he should be, presumably in secret detention, though no formal charges were ever brought against him.
Gao and his family had been under police surveillance for several years, particularly once the lawyer began representing members of the Falun Gong, a spiritual movement with millions of followers who have been brutally persecuted by the regime since 1999.
Gao’s wife, Geng He, succeeded in fleeing the country along with her two children shortly before her husband disappeared, in January 2009.
The police were harassing the family, and after the attempted suicide of her 15-year-old daughter who was prevented from attending school, Geng He could no longer bear remaining in China, we were forced to escape from China because of oppression and assault by the Chinese Communist Party. I couldn't let it continue. I had to escape from China for the safety of my children, she told The Telegraph.
The family now lives in the US, after having fled to Thailand.
Then, on March 28, 2010, Gao notified friends that he was currently living on Wutai Mountain in Shanxi Province, a Buddhist retreat.
Yet, was he actually a free man?
Where is he? Under what kind of circumstances is he? Is he in jail? Is he in prison? Is he under some sort of house arrest? It is a relief to learn that Gao Zhisheng appears to be alive and healthy enough to talk on the phone. But the mystery of Gao Zhisheng remains. The Chinese government has yet to produce him, Phelim Kine, of Human Rights Watch, told TIME.
He was authorized to return to Beijing, where he gave an interview to AP.
The previously combative Gao seemed to yearn for a more peaceful life, I don't have the capacity to persevere, he said. You know the main basis for choosing to give up is for the sake of family feelings. I hope I can reunite with them. My children need me by their side growing up… Everybody will be disappointed. Some people were really involved, concerned, supportive, making appeals. So when they read my words they will definitely feel disappointed. To them, I apologize. I'm extremely sorry, he added.
Was his renunciation genuine?
Was he really giving up the struggle against the thuggish regime in Beijing?
The authorities were clearly not convinced, for Mr. Gao has disappeared once again…
He was due to return to the capital on April 20, after a one week-long visit with his father-in-law in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province, in western China. He did board the airplane, but never made it back to his Beijing apartment.
Now we understand that the freedom was arranged by the authorities just for a show. He is missing again; he is still under their control. We must continue to pay attention to his case, Jiang Tianyong, a lawyer and friend told the NYT.
Gao Zhisheng, 44, was not always a prominent lawyer.
Born in humble circumstances in Shanxi Province, he once was a coal miner and a soldier in the People’s Liberation Army.
It was only in 1991, once Deng Xiaping had undertaken to develop and modernize China’s legal system, that he began his study of law, passing the bar exam in 1995.
The Administrative Procedure Law, enacted in 1989, allowed for the first time Chinese citizens to sue government agencies in order to obtain redress.
Gao specialized in such cases, often politically sensitive, pitting the ordinary citizen against powerful and opaque state bodies, and entrenched interests.
He represented dispossessed landowners, striking workers and victims in malpractice suits, for example.
By the year 2000, he has established his own law firm in Beijing, the Shengzhi Law Office, and the following year, was designated by China’s Ministry of Justice, one of the country’s ten best lawyers.
Yet, it his work on behalf of persecuted religious minorities, and particularly the Falun Gong movement that exacerbated his confrontation with the regime, and enlightened him as to its true nature.
Falun Gong (Cultivation of the Wheel of Law), a spiritual movement founded by Li Hongzhi in 1992, aims for spiritual elevation and promotes the cultivation of virtue.
Although similar to other traditional Chinese qigong movements (meditation through breathing and physical exercises to promote physical and spiritual balance and harmony), it emphasizes self-purification through virtuous and ethical conduct, promoting the values of Truthfulness, Benevolence, and Forbearance.
By 1998, some seventy million Chinese were advocates of Falun Gong.
Clearly alarmed by the movement’s popularity (though it had no leadership, Li moved to New York in 1998, and no agenda of any kind, least of all political) the regime began banning their publications.
What sealed the movement’s fate was what followed: remarkably, over 10,000 protesters gathered peacefully at Zhongnanhai, the compound housing the Chinese leadership, in April 1999, in order to demand an end to the campaign against their movement.
After having discussed their grievances with a government representative, they all quietly dispersed.
Ten years after Tiananmen however, the regime was not about to tolerate the emergence of an independent organization with potentially mass appeal and that could easily fill the streets with demonstrators. It launched a brutal campaign against what it called a dangerous evil sect. Furthermore, it accused the movement of being an evil force which is ­­anti-science, anti-humanity, anti-society and anarchistic, and a trouble-making group that attempts to challenge the [Communist] Party and the government.
This violent, hysterical reaction revealed the regime’s deep sense of insecurity, and its fear that such a movement could take advantage of the social instability that China’s rapid and uneven economic growth had spawned. Convinced that Falun Gong was part of a foreign conspiracy designed to destabilize the regime, the authorities arrested thousands, sending them to re-education camps in order to compel them to repudiate the movement and its tenets. Many others were dispatched to psychiatric hospitals, people are drugged with various unknown kinds of medication, tied with ropes to hospital beds . . . subjected to electro-convulsive therapy or painful forms of electrical acupuncture treatment, denied adequate food and water . . . forced to write confessional statements renouncing their belief in Falun Gong as a precondition of their eventual release, and then required to pay fines . . . for their board and treatment in the hospital, wrote Robin Munro, Senior Research Fellow at the Law Department and Center of Chinese Studies at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, in 2000.
Over 50,000 were detained and tortured in various jails.
This ruthless campaign was clearly a violation of the Convention Against Torture, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both signed by China.
Gao Zhisheng was one of those rare lawyers in China who dared defend persecuted Falun Gong members, and underground Christian pastors.
The regime’s response was swift: it closed his law firm, revoked his license and placed him under surveillance around the clock.
Yet, in researching his cases, he discovered the treatment inflicted on those peaceful practitioners that he interviewed, and he was appalled.
Interviewing these victims led him to perceive the true nature of the regime, over a dozen days' close touch with Falun Gong believers was a shocking experience to my soul, he wrote in December 2005.
On October 18, 2005, he wrote an open letter to Hu Jintao, the President of China, and Wen Jiabao, the Prime Minister, stop persecuting believers in freedom and mend your ties with the Chinese people, he urged them.
Gao Zhisheng was keenly aware of the risks he was taking, I will not avoid any of the real problems I saw, even if this means I may be immediately arrested when this letter is publicized, he wrote.
The truth must be told, he insisted.
The persecution of Falun Gong was orchestrated by the 6-10 Office, a powerful special department in the security apparatus. Dedicated exclusively to eradicating Falun Gong, 　transformation is one of its preferred tactics, in fact, forcing practitioners to engage in the "transformation" of their fellow practitioners is part of the regular routine. Transformation has finally been accomplished when the practitioner replaces truth, compassion, and tolerance with lies, brutality, and selfishness, when the practitioner is implicated in the persecution itself, according to The Epoch Times.
The Office has other tactics however. In his open letter, Gao relates the ordeal of several Falun Gong members tortured by the thugs of the 6-10 Office.
Here is one extract: in July 2002, Sun Shuxiang, from Changchu, told the lawyer,
I was in my father's home. A plainclothes policeman suddenly broke into the house and asked if I was Sun Shuxiang. Before I answered him, I was kidnapped. The next day, police from the first section of Changchun Public Security Bureau put me in a car and drove me on a bumpy road for about two hours. Two policemen took me to a dark and terrifying basement, and took off the blindfold. Eight or nine policemen all rushed into the room. On a table there were three electric batons of large, medium, and small sizes and a bundle of rope, and on the other side were three tiger benches. Two policemen forced me on a tiger bench, and placed my hands on the armrests that each had a handcuff attached to it. My hands were locked in place with the handcuffs. The armrests on the tiger bench had a row of different size holes to fit different wrist sizes. The police skillfully fixed an iron rod as thick as the thumb on the two armrests, pressing against my chest and abdomen area and making it impossible for me to move. One policeman pointed at the torture tools and said to me, 'Do you see that? If you cooperate, we can finish business in over an hour. Otherwise, we will have you taste all kinds of instruments. What happened to Liu Zhe and others [practitioners who were killed] ? Only a few can come out of here alive…
The other testimonies are equally harrowing and despicable…
Hundreds, if not thousands died due to the abuse.
The regime’s tactics and methods reveal its fundamental moral bankruptcy.
Power and the preservation of power is the sole guiding principle, justifying any means adopted to reach the ultimate objective.
Truth, justice and even common decency have been outlawed.
In China, the whole nation is subdued by a small group of hooligans who segregate and persecute people, one group after another, he wrote in a letter addressed to the Unites States Congress in September 2007.
Yet, the effects of such methods are corrosive, and led to the demise of morality. Furthermore, the regime can no longer command the respect of its people, only its allegiance extorted by intimidation and violence.
The people pretend the regime is legitimate and its rule enlightened and benign, because to reveal its true nature, and expose it publicly is too dangerous.
The people accept this fundamental lie because of the consequences of refusing to do so.
Thus, the regime rests and thrives on that apathy and fear, on that complicit indifference.
What can we do?
The regeneration of China depends on what Gao calls a moral awakening.
Changing China is so easy, that is, it can be done through a moral awakening in every person. A lot can be done in this regard, he wrote, both in China and in the West.
Ironically, he believes that it is by adopting an approach similar to Falun Gong’s, the evil sect denounced by the regime, based on ethics, truth and benevolence that China’s moral regeneration can take place. In contrast to the current situation where the humanity, conscience, morality, compassion, and responsibility of our society is suffering an overall deterioration, these cultivators, as a group reborn from the old nation, have impacted all of these areas in a positive way. One can feel the powerful way in which faith can change one's soul. Indeed it has allowed me to see a spark of hope for rescuing our nation from its current depraved state, he wrote.
Having discovered the path that china must follow, a possible antidote to sixty years of cruelty and nihilism, Gao Zhisheng had to continue speaking out forcefully…
But still, I choose to express myself in a way that has almost led to the annihilation of my whole family…I choose to do so despite the danger I may bring to myself because I consider it my obligation as a human being and as a Chinese person, he wrote.
The regime must be denounced and its true nature publicly exposed. This has been Gao’s approach, and a very brave one: state the facts, reveal the truth, come what may.
The Chinese Communist Party is a criminal group that operates under the protection of state powers. It is essential to realize its criminal nature so that we can come to the objective conclusions and in turn make the right decisions, he added.
Our leaders can follow the same course at much less personal cost…
The regime will respond immediately and harshly because it cannot allow the truth to be disseminated openly. Fear is its last asset.
Should there be no consequences for those bent on telling the truth, then the regime would quickly collapse.
In 2005, Gao left the Chinese Communist Party, from now on, Gao Zhisheng, a Party "member" who hasn't paid the membership fee for a long time and has been absent from the "Party activities" for many years, declares that he quits the cruel, untrustworthy, inhumane, and evil party.
This is the proudest day of my life, he wrote…
Gao never feared the confrontation with regime, they threaten to arrest me and I say, 'Go ahead'. I am a warrior who does not care whether I live or die. Such a sacrifice will be nothing to me if it speeds the death of this dictatorship, he had earlier told The Guardian.…
If he does not fear the regime, the latter is clearly terrified of him.
If they have not killed him yet (as far as we know), they have not spared him either.
Arrested in 2006, he was charged with subversion and given a three-year suspended sentence.
In September 2007, he was abducted by the secret police, ostensibly to follow a re-education session.
Once inside a police locale, a thug screamed ,Gao Zhisheng! You mother
f******! Your date with death is today! Brothers! Let’s show the bastard how brutal we can get. Kill the bastard. A leader (I assumed) of the group screamed. Then, four men with electric batons started to beat my head and body with ferocity, he later wrote in Dark Night, Dark Hood and Kidnapping by Dark Mafia (My account of more than 50 days of torture in 2007).
He was subjected to electric shock prods all over his body…
Haven’t you…accused the Communist Party of using horrendous torture? Well, today, I want you to experience all of them. Yes, you are not incorrect in saying that we torture Falun Gong followers. That’s right, we do. The 12 courses we’re serving you were perfected on the Falun Gong followers. To tell you the truth, I am no longer afraid of you writing about this. There is zero possibility that you will leave this place alive. We can torture you to death and make sure nobody can find your body. Every time I think about you, it makes me steaming mad. Who do you think you are, the thug continued…
It went on for fifty days, but he survived…
Before his release, he was forced to sign a document stipulating that he had not been tortured during his detention, and threatened with retaliation should he divulge the conditions of his detention. I will make sure you are dead if you tell the outside world what happened inside here, he was warned…
And yet, that is precisely what he did...

The document was released on February 9, 2009...
Moreover, Gao Zhisheng is not the only activist currently being victimized by the regime.
In fact, all those brazen enough to seek justice are being persecuted.
An activist investigating whether shoddy construction work may have led to the deaths of scores of schoolchildren in their classrooms, during the 2008 earthquake, was convicted and sent to jail. An editor, Tan Zuoren, was convicted on subversion charges for his writings on the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre.
Liu Xiaobo, a leader of the Charter 08 democracy movement was sentenced to eleven years in jail on Christmas day last year for inciting subversion of state power.
Last July, the office of Gongmeng, the Open Constitution Initiative, a legal research organization that took on sensitive cases on a pro bono basis, was closed by the authorities.
In May 2009, the licenses of 53 Beijing lawyers were not renewed…
Certainly looking at it from the outside, at case after case of heavy sentences being handed down for things that should be constitutionally protected rights, it's hard to come away from this and not see a hardening line, Joshua Rosenzweig, of the Dui Hua Foundation, a human rights organization, told TIME.
Conventional wisdom has it that China is a vital economic and strategic partner and that we cannot afford to shun or alienates its leaders.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently went to China on a state visit, and the human rights issue was not high on his agenda.
It is pointless being aggressive or reproachful with China. It is absolutely counterproductive, he told Le Figaro.
Launching accusations against the other is counterproductive, he added in a speech during the state dinner on April 28.
If that is the case, then how do we go about helping and protecting activists like Gao Zhisheng?
Are democracies under the moral obligation to help activists who are defending the values of peace, justice and democracy that we espouse and pride ourselves on embodying?
Judging by our China policies, it seems that we are not…
Although it is true that our relations with China encompass much more than solely the human rights issue, are we doing enough help the Gaos of China?
In a recent editorial, the French daily Le Monde argued that the Chinese leadership only understands and respects those nations that vigorously defend their own interests and points of view, come what may (the Chinese approach, presumably), and do not cave in to foreign pressure…
Let us then vigorously defend the values that Gao Zhisheng takes so seriously and that we now tend to take for granted, and openly advise the Chinese that we are keenly interested in the fate of MM. Gao, Liu and others, that we hold them responsible for their welfare, that we shall not be blackmailed into relenting, and that there will be concrete consequences should any harm befall them.
Can we even muster the courage to say that to the Chinese, or are our investments and future trade deals too important?
Mr. Gao is not delusional, western governments are sacrificing ethics and values in exchange for political and economic benefits that are right in front of their eyes, he wrote.
Furthermore, he concluded his account of more than fifty days of torture thus,
Finally, I want to say one thing that won’t be pleasing to some folks. I would like to remind those so-called “good friends and partners” of the CCP around the world that the increasing level of confidence of the CCP in treating the Chinese people with increasingly cold-blooded brutality and cruelty is the direct result of appeasement by both you and us (the Chinese people)…
The well-being of Mr. Gao is the responsibility of the Chinese government and people.
Yet, it is also ours.
Article 33 of the Chinese Constitution asserts the following, the state respects and guarantees human rights.
We must now allow the Chinese authorities to ignore their own principles, nor permit our leaders to overlook them for short term, cynical economic benefits..
Mr. Gao is willing to pay any price to defend his values.
Are we?
(the photograph of Gao Zhisheng above is by Verna Yu/AFP)