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Forty years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream. He
dreamed that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves
and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the
table of brotherhood; He dreamed that his four little children will one day
live in a nation where they will not be judged by their color but by their
character. Today, his dream has come true.
The power of that dream, and the
power of human aspiration echoed throughout history.
For centuries, people have dreamed of freedom from
tyranny, liberty from slavery and justice over wrongdoing. The realization of
all these dreams gives us a powerful lesson, that truth and justice will
prevail. They will triumph over the wall of hatred, ignorance and political
repression. They will ring the bell across the land of every nation in the
world.
At this yearend of 2003, which is still the beginning of
the 21st century, I have a dream. I dream that one day China
will become a free and democratic society, where people can elect their own
president, where they can speak out without being arrested, worship without
harassment and torture, and organize without being persecuted. My dream seems
ironic at this modern age. After all, this dream has been realized by the
majority of countries in this world. Today, among the total 192 nations in
the world, there are 121 freely elected governments and 23 vibrant civil
societies. China
is among the remaining 48 countries that systematically deny their citizens
the basic freedom, the freedom of speech, the freedom of press and the
freedom of association. Among these 48 countries, 31 are Middle
East and Africa, 9 are in Asia
including North Korea
and Burma,
and 2 in central America are Cuba
and Haiti.
It’s a shame to see that China
falls into this group of repressive regimes.
Table
1. Countries that are not free in 2003
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Region
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Countries
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Asia (9)
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China,
North Korea,
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Bhutan, Brunei, Maldives
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Middle East (12)
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Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Oman,
Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Syria
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Africa (19)
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Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea, Cameroon ,
Cote d’Ivoire, Togo, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea, Chad, Congo , Liberia,
Burundi, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Angola, Swaziland
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Former Soviet Union Satellites
(6)
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Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan
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Central America (2)
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Cuba, Haiti
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Data Source: Freedom House,
2003 survey
Inside China,
newspaper is tightly controlled by the government and will be forced to shut
down if they speak out against government policy or even just reveals the
truth. The Internet news sites from outside China are blocked. Satellite TVs
are banned. People who engage in peaceful religious practice, like Fa
Lungong, are arrested by thousands. Among them 834 have died from torture in prison in the last 4 years.
Hundreds of others are forced into mental institution. People who attempted
to organize a peaceful independent party, China Democracy party, are all put
in prison. After crushing the student movement in 1989, the Chinese
government has not hesitated to crush any voice for democracy ever since. Any
attempt for bringing democracy to China is met with brutal police force.
There is a strange argument inside China,
promoted by the government, saying that people don’t need political freedom.
All they care is economic gain. Is it really so? While we can temporarily
separate out the economic development and political development, we are
seeing the huge human cost in a non-democratic decision process. When a big
dam was ordered to be build by the party leader, 1.2 million people are
forced to move out of their home and villages where they have lived for
generations. They have no saying in the decision process. The dam over Yangzi
River was built against advices
of many experts. With its potential for environment disaster, this dam
becomes a time bomb hanging over the heads of people at the downstream. In
the cities, developers collude with local government to occupy land and pull
down resident buildings to build shopping centers. The residents have no
right in this whole process. Those people who refused to leave have their
house bulldozed and their belongings taken. There have been many instances of
public suicide where people burned themselves to death in protest. The
repressive political system has also its mark on financial system. The
Chinese stock market is rampant with inside trading and irregularity, but the
government has no incentive to clean it up because inside traders are linked
to high-ranking officials. Therefore small investors can only suffer. Not to
mention that a criminal justice system that executes more than 2400 people a
year. The number of people executed in China
accounts for 80% of all the people executed in the world, but China
only has 20% of world’s population. Many people are executed in China
for non-violent crimes such as bribe and theft. China
has become the most violent country in the world against its own
citizens.
I have a dream, that one day people in China will not fear
from their own government, one day they will have dignity and equal respect
as a citizen, and one day the Chinese people can say the following, that “we hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal. That people have the unalienable
rights to: Life, Liberty and the
Pursuit of Happiness.”
--December 17,
2003
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