Burma Shave (r)

[waterly@xxxxxxxxx]

At 11:54 PM 5/23/97, you wrote:
>From: Ken and Visakha Kawasaki <brelief@xxxxxxx>
>
>Cartoon:
>"Human Rights Abuses?  
>Have No Fear
>We're not in 
>Your hemisphere!"
>--Burma Shave
>
>Human Rights,
>Presidential Wrongs
>by Mary McGrory
>
>Lucky for John Shattuck, head of the State Department's human rights office,
>that the theme of the evening was already set: the plight of women and
>children who are victims of human rights abusers. The occasion, at the
>Italian Embassy, was to honor the winner of a new Amnesty International
>award, named after the Italian Resistance heroine Ginetta Sagan. The first
>recipient was a small, bright-eyed woman named Mangala Sharma, who founded
>an organization to help her sister refugees in her native Bhutan -- victims,
>like herself, of political violence and repression.
>
>Shattuck's personal commitment to human rights is not in question -- he was
>once a member of Amnesty International's board -- but the same cannot be
>said for the Clinton administration. Members of the human rights community
>don't have the heart to criticize Shattuck. They are fond of him. Behind his
>back they say the best thing he could do for the oppressed of the world is
>to resign, and perhaps shame Bill Clinton into the kind of militancy he
>promised when he first ran for president in 1992.
>
>Shattuck's instructions left him free to talk about women's rights, a cause
>to which Hillary Clinton is strongly committed. He could even brag about the
>"integration" of women's rights into the human rights movement and avoid
>entirely the subject of China, the world's worst human rights violator.
>
>China was much on the minds of those at the gathering. The night before,
>human rights activists had gathered at the New York Public Library to pay
>homage to China's most famous political prisoner, Wei Jingsheng, an eloquent
>and valiant dissident who is spending his 17th year in jail for advocating
>democracy. The Chinese regime has been peppered with pleas from world
>leaders to let him go, with the usual results. China ignores them.
>
>Wei has been given honors -- the Robert Kennedy Human Rights Award, the
>Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, the Olof Palme Award of the European
>Parliament. John Shattuck saw Wei during the six-month interval between
>Wei's first prison sentence in 1979 and his second in 1994, and this meeting
>was used against Wei at his sham second trial. Wei's extraordinary letters
>from prison have been collected in a book under the title "The Courage to
>Stand Alone." His tone is grave and, even in letters addressed to high
>authority, breathtakingly bold.
>
>Two California members of Congress at the embassy reception -- one from the
>left (Democrat Nancy Pelosi) and one from the right (Republican Dana
>Rohrabacher) told Shattuck that the Clinton strategy of decoupling trade
>issues from human rights violations was obviously not working. A growing
>number in Congress are preparing to vote against a renewal of China's most
>favored nation status. Conservatives are joining, but probably not enough to
>override a presidential veto. Thank the China lobby.
>Clinton's indulgence toward China distorts and dominates our feeble human
>rights effort in other parts of the world. Now, when we try to do the right
>thing, the offenders just snicker. In Burma, for example, the obduracy of
>the colonels who stand in the way of democracy and democratically elected
>leader Ann San Sun Kyi finally led the U.S. government to issue a ban on new
>investments. "So what?" said the
>colonels, knowing from China that we were only kidding.
>
>When questioned about the contrast, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
>gave an airy answer that illustrated the Clinton administration's detachment
>on a subject that requires strong convictions: "We have consistent
>principles and flexible tactics."
>
>Like Shattuck, Albright is personally popular and believable, if only
>because of her own compelling personal history. But despite her promise to
>"tell it like it is" on human rights, she has notably not done so.
>
>Nobel Prize winner Oscar Arias Sanchez, former president of Costa Rica,
>observed to William Goodfellow of the Center for International Politics
>during a visit to Washington that "the U.S. is blowing its opportunity to
>become a moral superpower."
>
>Compare U.S. policy in Cuba and China, and you see why. We have thrown an
>embargo around the small island in response to Miami's fanatic and noisy
>Cuban exile population. By forbidding sales of medicine and food, we end up
>punishing the very people we are trying to save, far more than we are
>hurting Castro. And, you may well ask, if the administration believes that
>Cubans would revolt if austerely treated, why wouldn't we apply the same
>theory to Chinese?
>
>It makes no sense. Maybe it would be better to declare human rights a dead
>policy and give it a decent burial. Say it died for lack of presidential
>leadership. Say it expired during Vice President Gore's trip to China, when
>he was trapped into toasting the butcher of Tiananmen Square and did not
>allow the words human rights to fall from his lips.
>
>People who want to trade with China are big campaign givers. That could be
>one of the reasons campaign finance reform is barely breathing. The cause
>the president said was consuming him is forgotten in the swirl of
>fund-raising at every meal in Washington. Many hearts were saddened on
>Tuesday to see that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), cosponsor of the
>McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill, was on the menu of the
>Republican extravaganza that brought in $11 million. McCain insists reform
>is still alive, if not well. "Wait till they have to vote on any part of
>it," he promises, "you'll see their fear of the issue."
>
>Human rights and campaign reform -- both worthy causes. Too bad they have to
>die this way.
>
>>From the Washington Post supplement to Daily Yomiuri, May 23, 1997
>
>http://www2.gol.com/users/brelief/Index.htm
>
>
>