The Center for Civil and Human Rights (CCHR) celebrates the founding of the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. We are honored to be one of the several centers and institutes who will help to constitute the school. Already, the school’s vision is congenial to CCHR’s mission, especially its emphases on global justice, human rights, integral human development, civil society, and religion. Likewise, CCHR has much to offer the school, including a long track record in human rights education, extensive ties in the Latin American system of human rights, a commitment to Catholic teaching, and its recently expanded vision of human rights research, especially in the area of religious freedom. We eagerly anticipate working with Dean Scott Appleby to make the school a success and to bring glory to Notre Dame’s Catholic mission. Equally so, we look forward to strengthening ever more our partnership of four decades with Notre Dame Law School and to continuing to build our LL.M. program in human rights law.
Beneath Hong Kong’s Umbrellas: Religion
Key to the leadership of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution is religion. This should not be surprising. In the long wave of democracy movements beginning around 1974, religion has played a major role. My colleagues Monica Toft, Tim Shah, and I found that among 78 democracy movements that we studied, religion played a prominent role in 48.
John Lindblom, a doctoral student in the World Religions World Church program in the theology department here at Notre Dame, notices what many others have not: religion’s role in the Hong Kong protests. He has been involved in China-related teaching, research, and work since 1997. Here’s John:
The pro-democracy protests unfolding in Hong Kong during the past week, appear to have reached a decision point as of Sunday, with student leaders and government officials agreeing for the second time to hold negotiations after the first round of talks were canceled by protestors. At issue is the Beijing government’s announcement that the pool of candidates for the 2017 election to Hong Kong’s top office, the Chief Executive, would be pre-selected by the Communist Party, while protesters demand genuine democracy with universal suffrage and free and open elections. The first planned talks were canceled after protesters were violently attacked on Friday by counter-protesters who students claim were gang members (who spoke Mandarin, indicating they are from mainland China, not Hong Kong) sent in by officials to disrupt the peaceful demonstrations.
Tens of thousands of protesters, mostly students, have taken to the streets in a movement called “Occupy Central” (Hong Kong’s administrative district) since last weekend, and tensions have escalated step by step during the past week, after police used tear gas and pepper spray to disperse protesters, who responded with greater numbers and firmer resolve, carrying umbrellas and wearing face masks and goggles. Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying rejected their demands that he step down, while stating that students would be treated “with the greatest tolerance.” By Saturday, however, there were warnings that if students did not disperse and allow civil servants back to work Monday morning, that a “tragedy” may ensue. On Sunday, government and university officials urged students to disperse, stating that they had effectively made their voices heard. Even Hong Kong’s retired archbishop, Cardinal Joseph Zen, who has joined students the streets and strongly supported them in this movement, urged them in a Facebook post Sunday “not to sacrifice a single one” in this cause. As of Sunday night, most protest sites had only a fraction of their earlier numbers, and sites near government buildings showed walkways cleared so that government workers could reach their offices on Monday. Whether or not large numbers return to the streets remains to be seen.
In addition to Cardinal Zen, many among the students leading and participating in the demonstrations are Christians. As quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Joseph Cheng, a political-science professor at City University of Hong Kong and a supporter of the protesters said, “Christians, by definition, don’t trust the communists. The communists suppress Christians wherever they are.”
Beijing’s has used familiar rhetoric in its statements, writing that cadres and the masses “resolutely oppose” the protests, that these protests are an instance of unrest being instigated by a small number of troublemakers, and that this matter is China’s “internal affair” with which foreign entities must not “interfere.” A commentary on the English website of the People’s Daily, China’s largest state-run newspaper, quoted numerous non-Chinese experts to express opposition to the Occupy Central movement. One Catholic news source, Asia News, wrote in late August that Beijing fears that a “germ of democracy” could be implanted in the former British colony and from there “infect” mainland China. The People’s Daily, for its part, commented on the front page of the Chinese edition on Saturday, “As for the ideas of a very small minority of people to use Hong Kong to create a ‘color revolution’ in mainland China, that is even more of a daydream.”
To those who remember the pro-democracy movement of 1989 in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, these events and words bear a sadly familiar and ominous tone. We hope and pray that the violent Tiananmen Square massacre (which is remembered by thousands every year in Hong Kong, and to which there is a permanent memorial sculpture at the University of Hong Kong) will never be repeated. In fact, Beijing’s words and actions before, during, and since the Tiananmen movement are the same. Almost always, the CCP blames the unrest on a few lawless instigators, claims that force is needed to regain or maintain stability, and tells outside actors not to interfere with China’s internal affairs. This is the most important test to date for China’s promise to maintain a “high degree of autonomy” as promised for Hong Kong. Students and many others see Beijing’s actions in recent years as incremental encroachments on their previous way of life, which, shaped by 150 years of British colonial rule, is completely different from that in mainland China. Simple gestures such as students continuing to do their homework while sitting in the streets, and cleaning up after themselves at protest sites, indicate that their intentions and commitment to non-violence are genuine, yet their frustrations and fears are real. As recent history has shown, a peaceful resolution to conflict is rare when confronting the Chinese government, but in this case we must still hope and pray that the planned talks will move forward, an agreement will be reached, and a tragedy, which could have enormous repercussions for Hong Kong, China, and the rest of the world, will still be avoided.
More on Hong Kong
The latest from Victoria Hui (see earlier posts below):
Tensions in Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution were diffused at the eleventh hour last night (Oct. 2, HK time), but could rekindle any time unless protestors find a third alternative between escalating and retreating. Tensions were building up last evening as Hong Kong protestors surrounded the Chief Executive’s office and threatened to occupy other government office buildings if CY Leung would not step down by midnight. In response, the police were seen to stockpile tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and even bullets for AR-15 at the Chief Executive’s office. Observers could finally take a deep breath when CY Leung announced that he would appoint the Chief Secretary Carrie Lam to open negotiations with students. However, few people are optimistic that the negotiations would amount to anything. Not only that Mr. Leung refused to resign as demanded by protestors, Beijing has also stepped up its hardline position that it will not change the arrangements to vet candidates for the CE election in 2017 — which caused the protests in the first place. Protestors will thus continue to feel that they have to escalate to more disruptive actions or the movement would lose momentum and die out. But protestors have a third alternative. Scholars have argued that methods of dispersal — such as consumer boycotts and nonpayment of taxes — could be as effective as methods of concentration — such as the massive demonstrations that are on display now. If targeted boycotts hurt the interest of business tycoons whose support CY relies on and if nonpayment of taxes make bureaucrats unable to administer Hong Kong, then protestors would have a higher chance of compelling concessions and avoiding direct clashes with the police. And the movement will be sustainable in the long-term even when people have to go back to school or to work.
Christians (Still) Under Communism
In keeping with Arc of the Universe’s theme of religious freedom, Reg Reimer blogs on Christians in Vietnam. Reimer is part of the team of scholars who make up the Center for Civil and Human Rights’ project, “Under Caesar’s Sword: How Christian Communities Respond to Repression.” He first went to Vietnam as a missionary in 1966 and served there throughout the Vietnam War. He has travelled to the country numerous times since, connecting with Christians churches, researching the repression of Christians and advocating for them. He is an acknowledged authority on Christianity in Vietnam, particularly of the Evangelical tradition, whose followers have increased more than tenfold since the communist takeover in 1975. His book on the Evangelical movement, Vietnam’s Christians: A Century of Growth in Adversity, was published in 2011. Here is what he writes:
Christian believers in the remaining communist countries, even those that have made some progress toward religious freedom, continue to experience local or widespread reversions to discrimination and harsh treatment. An ugly campaign to remove crosses from hundreds of church buildings in eastern China is underway. From Laos and Cuba come periodic but regular reports of brutal persecution in local areas. In Vietnam, certain remote areas have never experienced the relaxation of persecution promised by changing regulations and experienced in urban areas.
A clear case in point is Dien Bien province in northern Vietnam. A rare and lengthy testimony of a Christian leader in the province was obtained by advocates. It details 25 years of repression against Christians of the Hmong ethnic minority. The leader himself spent 8 harsh years in various prisons, often in a “small dark cell”. He and fellow Christian villagers were often raided by officials, and forced to feed them – after which the villagers were thanked by beatings and attempts to pressure them to recant. This was done by forcing them to drink the blood of chickens freshly sacrificed to spirit or ancestors. Officials helped themselves to the Christians’ property, fields and crops and encouraged their animist neighbors to do likewise.
Many other abuses are listed, and the latest are very current. Earlier in 2014 groups of officials and animist Hmong they recruited raided Christians’ homes, abused the occupants, then tore their houses down, also destroying their gardens and taking their crops.
Authorities, whose goal is containment of the growing Christian movement, go to great lengths to prevent Christians from receiving teaching from qualified leaders. They confiscate Bibles and Bibles and Christian literature, and forbid meetings larger than the nuclear family. These enforced restrictions, all against Vietnam’s own religion regulations, have led directly to some Hmong Christians being led into cultic beliefs for which they suffered a brutal military crackdown in May 2011.
The Christian leader begs for the “the world” and the United Nations to come to see if Vietnam is living up to its promises on religious freedom. He also gives names and addresses of offending officials and Christian victims.
That such still happens in some places in Vietnam puts all religious believers under a cloud. There are no extenuating circumstances for abusing people for their religious beliefs and peaceful practices. As long as some people remain subject to regular abuse because of their religious beliefs, the whole fragile religious freedom project in any country is jeopardized.
On The Events in Hong Kong
Victoria Hui, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, has worked in the democracy movement in Hong Kong and now serves on the Academic Advisors Committee of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. She discuss protests in Hong Kong and the Communist Party’s crackdown on social media as Beijing tries to prevent the democratic protest from spreading to the mainland.
Hui says…
International media have reported on how hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong protesters have maintained nonviolent discipline and order. International observers see images common to nonviolent movements around the world: strength in numbers, determined faces in front of riot police, slogans, songs, and more. Beneath such broad strokes of similarities, Hong Kong is unlike other cases given the constitutional structure of “one country, two systems” agreed to between Beijing and London. While Hong Kong has only semi-democracy, people are free to protest. While the police sometimes make arbitrary arrests, the independent judiciary inherited from the colonial era routinely releases activists. This constitutional structure presents a very open political space unseen in the rest of China and yet makes it difficult for activists to mobilize the largely contented population. Against this backdrop, the unprecedented use of riot police and the firing of tear gas seemed to have galvanized popular support for the protesters fighting for genuine democracy and increased sympathy for nonviolent actions.
More from Hui in this Notre Dame news story.
Meanwhile in Hindu India . . .
All too little attention in the West is paid to the world’s second most populous state and most populous democracy, India. Just over three months ago, Narendra Modi was elected Prime Minister. Former Chief Minister of Gujarat State, Modi was demonstrated to have turned a blind eye towards and condoned massacres of Muslims in riots of 2002. More generally, he is associated with an aggressive Hindu nationalism that runs roughshod over religious minorities like Muslims and Christians. Now the Ghadar Alliance, a U.S.-based watchdog group, has published “Fast Track to Troubling Times: 100 Days of Narendra Modi – A Counter Report.” The conclusion is that little has changed about Modi now that he is in India’s highest office.
100 Muslims Scholars and Leaders to Issue Open Letter Denouncing ISIS
Tomorrow look for the announcement of a letter signed by 100 Muslim scholars and leaders denouncing the injustices of ISIS. Significantly, the letter is to be issued in Arabic as well as publicized in English. Though it will be important to see who the signers are and where they are from, the letter will likely create a strong Muslim voice for shared norms of justice. If religious beliefs matter in forming ISIS, then public theological arguments are needed to counter ISIS — and discourage would-be joiners across the Middle East and the West.
Gloomy Prediction for Iraqi Christians in WaPo
Christianity is finished in northern Iraq, argues Daniel Williams in an op-ed in the Washington Post today. Williams is not writing for a church or a Christian advocacy outfit; rather he is a correspondent for the Post and a former research at Human Rights Watch. The decimation of the Christian community that began when Saddam Hussein fell in 2003 has now accelerated. The iciest part of his analysis: They are not going back.
He writes:
Indeed, the exodus of Christians is ongoing. Has anyone noticed that the Christian population of Iraq has shrunk from more than 1 million in 2003 to maybe 300,000 today? Now, there are virtually no Christians left in either Mosul or on the plain.
So when I ask refugees their plans, it is unanimously to leave Iraq altogether. Enough is enough. This runs counter to the desire, expressed mostly outside Iraq, that a Christian presence be preserved in a land that has known Christianity for 2,000 years. It’s sad but true: Christianity in Iraq is finished. As one refugee told me, “We wanted Iraq. Iraq doesn’t want us.”
And:
Western countries ought to come together and offer refuge to the tens of thousands who want to leave Iraq. Yes, this would mean the end of Christianity in this part of the world, where its presence has often served as a bulwark against fanaticism. But it’s over anyway, whatever happens to the Islamic State. It’s time to face that fact and save the Christians themselves.
Do Human Rights Mix With Religion?
Resonant with the themes of Arc of the Universe is a conversation worth reading over at Open Global Rights on religion and human rights. Today’s human rights advocates — activists, academics — commonly believe that religion is an impediment to human rights. They believe that human rights were a modern, Enlightenment-era invention that replaced religion, which was hierarchical, feudal, and irrational.
The series, edited by James Ron, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota, challenges this view — and does not. It begins with a post by Larry Cox, who makes the case that religion, though some times in tension with human rights, also bolsters human rights. Others come back and defend the conventional contemporary view — that religion is in tension with human rights, leading to exclusion and even persecution.
My own post argues that it is difficult to make a strong defense of human rights without God. Human rights activists may be perfectly committed to their cause even without believing in God. If you want to know why there are human rights, though, you can’t get far without God.
It is true, though, that secular and religious people often offer different accounts for why there are human rights, which human rights are valid or deserve priority, and who is entitled to human rights. Rather than religion vs. human rights, I think it would be better to speak of “clashing visions of human rights” or “competing orthodoxies.” A more accurate and honest debate would ensue.
Required Reading on Religious Freedom
Two pieces are worth reading on the religious freedom theme. One is Ross Douthat’s piece in the Sunday New York Times, “The Middle East’s Friendless Christians.” Reflecting on Senator Ted Cruz walking off the stage amidst boos in speaking to a recent summit of Middle East Christian leaders, Douthat explains why Christians in the Middle East are a battered, forgotten minority, both in their region and in the American political system.
The other is Thomas Farr’s recent testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, republished on the website of First Things. A former foreign service officer whose last stint in the State Department was directing the Office of International Religious Freedom, Farr now directs the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs at Georgetown University. In his testimony, he takes up U.S. policy towards the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) and argues, as I have, that more than guns are needed to defeat them. Whereas I stressed the crucial need for political reconciliation among fractured groups, Farr stresses religious freedom. Why? Because, like John Owen, he stresses that the religious ideas of the Islamic State matter; the group’s rise cannot be chalked up to poverty, a reaction to western imperialism, or some other external factor. Ideas matter. Theology matters. And the antidote for extreme religious ideas is a regime of religious freedom, where such ideas cannot dictate and dominate through repression.