opinion



Crouching Sant and Hidden Eddie

On 23rd November 1999 veteran human rights activist Wang Xonxing was forcibly removed from his home by eight public security officers and taken to Ankang Public Security Hospital. His wife was told that he was suffering from a condition called political monomania.

Zhou Jianxing a 30-year-old agricultural worker from Hunan province died under torture on 15 May 1998. Detained on 13 May he was tortured by officials from the township birth control office to make him reveal the whereabouts of his wife, suspected of being pregnant without permission. He was hung upside down, repeatedly whipped and beaten with wooden clubs, burned with cigarette butts, branded by soldering irons and had his genitals ripped off.

What would you do if after reading these stories, you end up in a meeting with a Chinese Communist Party delegation?

Would you
a) talk to them about the Maltese economic transition
b) encourage them to invade Taiwan
c) forget about the atrocities and stroll hand in hand in hand with them in the Santa Lucija Chinese Garden.

Well that was what our PN and MLP politicians did!

Last week a Communist Party delegation held meetings with the Prim Minister Dr. Eddie Fenech Adami, the Leader of the Opposition Dr. Alfred Sant, PN General Secretary Joe Saliba, Foreign Minister Joe Borg, Finance Minister John Dalli and the Minister for Economic services Joe Borg. None of these politicians said one single word about the abuse of human rights in China. These politicians often present themselves as the heroes of Maltese democracy. In international politics they lack any statesmanlike qualities.

Many times they tend to behave like the whores of international politics. The Prime Minister has forgotten when in 1989 he used the Tienanmen massacre to announce the collapse of socialism without distinguishing between democratic socialism and totalitarian Stalinism.

Dr Alfred Sant has long declared his admiration for China’s economic pragmatism i.e. a mixture of the worst aspects of capitalism and the worst aspects of Stalinist totalitarianism. He did so last year after returning from a visit in land of the Dragon. After returning from this visit he talked about snakes and all sorts of Chinese delicacies.... But when will we hear a word about the nitty gritty of human rights abuses from the leader of the opposition?

A true statesman would have also sought ways to increase co-operation with the government of a country of 1.2 billion people i.e. a sixth of the world’s population. I am no advocate of turning Malta into an international hermit! Yet a true statesman would have also told the Chinese officials that as a democratic nation we are concerned about the human rights situation in China Amnesty International has recorded 2,088 death sentences and 1,263 confirmed executions in China in 1999. These minimum figures for 1999 reveal a state, which sentences to death, on average, over 40 people a week and – as throughout the 1990s – executed more people than the rest of the world put together. From 1990 to the end of 1999, Amnesty International has recorded a figure of over 27,588 death sentences in China and over 18,023 executions – an average of at least 2,758 death sentences and 1,802 confirmed executions every year in China. China has also been accused of having a commercial interest in these executions. The organs of executed prisoners are allegedly sold to wealthy South Asian businessmen at the price of $30, 000!

The Chinese have also invaded Tibet and during the past half a century of occupation a million indigenous Tibetans have lost their lives.

Alfred Sant has repeatedly heaped praise on the Chinese economic model. He always harps on closer relationship with China, Russia and the USA as an alternative to membership in the European Union. I would not like to question the possibility of such a scenario; I would like to question its desirability. Alfred Sant is now using globalisation as a dirty word to demonise the European Union. This is a quote I would like to dedicate to Alfred Sant: "Rejecting globalisation as such, seeking to resist it nationally leads inevitably to capitulation in the face of this particular form of globalisation States are not without the requisite levers for changing the direction and nature of globalisation. But they do not possess them individually. They will not have them so long as they lack the political will to win through common action what can now only be a pooled sovereignty". The author of this quote is the left-wing critic of capitalist globalisation called Andre Gorz. The European Union is an example of "pooled sovereignty".

Russia, China and the USA are far from models in democracy, social policy and environmental sustainability. Russia and China survive globalisation by selling themselves cheaply on the global market place. The more I think about the Labour Party’s model rather than envisioning picturesque Swiss mountains I am increasingly envisioning a shabby and dirty South east Asian sweat shop suffocating in pollution and floating on sewage right in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. Facing globalisation within an increasingly social democratic and green Europe is a much more desirable alternative than this nightmare!