International Holocaust Remembrance Day

"Today we remember all of the victims of the Nazi regime, all those who were robbed of their dignity, their health, their worldly possessions and, indeed, of their lives. European Jews, Gypsy and Roma, people with disabilities, forced laborers, homosexuals, political dissenters, artists, academics, all those people who were vilified and persecuted as enemies of National Socialism"

--German Bundestag President Dr. Norbert Lammert

"Never again a racist doctrine. Never again the feeling of superiority. Never again a so-called divine authority to incite, murder, scorn the law, deny God and the Holocaust. Never again ignore blood-thirsty dictators hiding behind demagogical masks, who utter murderous slogans."

--Israeli President Shimon Peres

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The military junta in Burma reportedly plans to free opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from her house arrest in November, when her most recent sentence expires.

Of course, waiting until November means that she likely will not be available to stand for election in the country's first parliamentary election in two decades -- which most people think will take place in October (though no date has been set). Of course, it's generally understood that she would be barred from taking part in the election whether or not she's under house arrest.

Full article here.

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Free Internet and Human Rights

For a while, the Chinese government framed the continuing Internet censorship spat with Google as a business affair; however, now the argument is shaping up as one about human rights.

On Jan. 21, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton made remarks on Internet Freedom, bringing up the Cold War rhetoric of a “descending curtain” that is now Internet censorship. She specifically named a number of countries where such practice is common – with China topping the list. Clinton’s speech was an appeal to human rights and freedoms. In fact, she even mentioned the Declaration on Human Rights:

Some countries have erected electronic barriers that prevent their people from accessing portions of the world’s networks. They’ve expunged words, names, and phrases from search engine results. They have violated the privacy of citizens who engage in non-violent political speech. These actions contravene the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which tells us that all people have the right “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” With the spread of these restrictive practices, a new information curtain is descending across much of the world. And beyond this partition, viral videos and blog posts are becoming the samizdat of our day.

The Chinese government quickly reacted to Clinton’s comments with a statement that appealed to the U.S. government “to respect the truth and to stop using the so-called Internet freedom question to level baseless accusations,” seemingly an attempt to return to square one—when the argument was a business one, not of human rights.

Interestingly, a recent poll by a worldwide market research company Angus Reid Global Monitor discovered that a majority of American would prefer that the U.S. dealt with Chinese Internet censorship in the framework of a human rights debate as opposed to viewing it through the prism of consequences for trade relations. Why do you think it is so and do you agree? And also, is a right to free Internet access really a universal human right?

Google, Human Rights, Corporate Social Responsibility

Some time ago, I wrote a little bit about why I thought that corporations should do more than simply not do evil. Here is the full post, which began with Google but didn't really use Google as the model of a corporation that needed to do more. Though I certainly could have done so, I went with Microsoft and Cisco in China, and -- of course -- Shell in Nigeria. In the end, I said:

We can insist that corporations not do evil and that they avoid assisting those who do evil. Trying to do nothing when evil is happening — the position of not taking a position, like Cisco and Microsoft when it comes to Chinese repression — is insufficient. Even if it’s not actively doing evil, it clearly lends support to those who do.

Yesterday's big news from Google requires a mention, then. When Google first began operating in China, the company drew substantial fire for its decision to side with the Chinese government on the question of internet censorship. After a cyberattack that no one is saying originated with the Chinese government but no one is saying didn't originate with the Chinese government, Google announced that it "was no longer willing to censor results on its Chinese-language search engine and would discuss with Chinese authorities whether it could operate an uncensored search engine in that country." According to Google, the main goal of the attack seemed to be accessing the email accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

'These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered -- combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web -- have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China.'

The long and short of the matter is something I hope will resonate with other corporations: going into business with countries that routinely and systematically abuse the human rights of their citizens actually turns out to be a bad business decision.

Full article here.

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Welcome

Welcome to the Spring 2010 semester at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Between January and May, students in Political Science 470 -- Human Rights in Theory and Practice -- will be blogging about issues in the news and in our classroom readings relating both to the study and spread of global human rights. While the students and I will be principally responsible for adding posts and comments, other members of the local university community and the international internet community are also invited to chime in with comments or questions about the published material found here.