Human Rights in Russia and China

            The similarities between Russia and China are few and far between normally however, unfortunately, their respective track records on human rights and freedom of the press are disturbingly, if not horrifically, similar.  Whether it is in dealing with independent journalists, religious practitioners, opposition groups, or even their own people the establishment of these two countries have no problem silencing those who do not do as they are told in any way the powers that be deem necessary.

            Now, the prerequisite for democracy is having more than one person or party competing for office.  Woefully, both China and Russia fall short of this prerequisite in differing ways.  In China, the Communist Party of China (CPC) is the only party and anybody who works in government or wants to have any sort of standard of living must be a member.  The President of China is also the General Secretary of the CPC making these positions nearly synonymous.  In Russia, the power is not concentrated with one party, but instead, at this current time, in one person and that person is now (again) President Vladimir Putin.  Taking over after the resignation of Boris Yeltsin in 1999 he was elected in his own name in 2000 and served his constitutional limit of two consecutive four year terms.  After this, his Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was elected and served one term during which Putin served as his prime minister and it was widely known that Putin was still the one making the decisions.  Putin was again elected in 2012 however the constitution had been amended in 2008 by President Medvedev so that, among other things, the presidential term is now six years.  If Putin is reelected to a fourth term and serves out that term he will have been president for a total of 20 years.  No other person has served longer as the head of state in Russia or the USSR with one notably glaring exception – that of Iosif Dzhugashvili, or, as he is more commonly known as, General Secretary Josef Stalin.  To cement his power it is widely believed that Putin had the 2012 presidential elections rigged.  Tonino Picula, who is the Special Coordinator to lead the short-term Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe observer mission, stated that “There were serious problems from the very start of this election.  The point of elections is that the outcome should be uncertain.  This was not the case in Russia.  There was no real competition and abuse of government resources ensured that the ultimate winner of the election was never in doubt.”  Now as you can imagine, with such control, the power establishment does not tolerate dissent and thousands of people have been arrested in each country because of their dissent, whether it actually occurred, is just perceived, or because it might occur.  Russia has just recently been doing this, arresting many who participated in the May 6^th protests of Putin’s reelection.

            Now that we’ve seen how a small group of people have near absolute control over their individual countries let’s look at what this has done to certain institutions in these countries. 

First, we’ll take a look at how religions are treated in each country.  Historically, Russia has not been friendly toward religion, but this was mainly due to the policies of the USSR and things have only incrementally gotten better since then in that they aren’t being sent to the gulags.  Orthodox Christianity has a special place in Russian society and is nearly the state religion with three quarters of the population identifying as orthodox and President Putin has courted them extensively and in return the leader of the Orthodox church actually endorsed Putin in his campaign for a third term.  However, not only are there laws in Russia regulating churches but they make it extremely difficult for a church to start and if they do pass those hurdles then some are subjected to harassment by the police.  There have been countless documented cases of Muslims, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews, Falun Gong groups, and Scientology groups being harassed by the police and prosecutors who sometimes start an investigation with the sole purpose of finding a reason to shut them down.

            In China, all religious organizations are controlled by the government and very few religions are able to operate outside of that.  The only exception might be the Tibetan monks but they have also been subjected to harsh treatment and indiscriminate arrests and prosecutions.  Take, for example, that the only allowed group for Catholics in China is controlled by the government and the government actually picks the bishops.  Only recently did the Vatican start to show some steps toward actually recognizing these bishops and technically any bishop ordained by the government and not by the church is performing a schismatic act and is instantly excommunicated.  China has also enacted a law that makes it illegal for the next Dalai Lama to be from anywhere but China and basically states that they will choose the next Dalai Lama after the current one dies.  They have already taken steps to make sure this happens.  After the Dalai Lama recognized a six year old boy as the 11^th Panchen Lama the Chinese government kidnapped the child and chose a different child who happened to be the child of two CCP members and appointed him as the 11^th Panchen Lama.  The first child remains missing.

            Second, let’s look at the plight of the independent journalists in these countries starting, once again, with Russia.  Russia has progressed some from its former days but unfortunately not much, all of the major news channels are owned in whole or in part by the government and they use it to their own means.  The government also controls a large proportion of the print media but a few independent publications are able to operate but journalist themselves remain at risk.  According to Reporters Without Borders, 26 journalists have been murdered because of their work in Russia since 2000.  This is in addition to countless vicious beatings and threats to journalists.

            In China, this situation is worse.  All news channels are subject to strict censorship and they never go off script.  All media outlets must get a license from the government to operate and these licenses can be taken away at any time, all journalists must also have a press pass issued by the government and must pass yearly political tests in order to keep it.  There are a few publications that are able to investigate stories but they must be careful of where they lay blame lest they lose their license or find themselves arrested or harassed.  Numerous journalists and bloggers have been imprisoned in China, some being sentenced to long prison terms and/or hard labor.  The internet is extremely censored but the proliferation of micro blogs (similar to Twitter, but Twitter is banned in China) has made it much more difficult for the government to suppress all dissent and many people report about what is going on that the official press cannot report on before government censors are able to stop it.  In Reporters Without Border’s yearly rankings China ranks 174^th out of a total of 179 – even behind the failed state of Somalia, but still only three above North Korea.

            While this essay is long by my standards, you could fill the library of congress documenting and writing about the human rights abuses in these two countries.  This is only a small taste of what goes on in these countries, and we may never know the full extent of the abuses because they are hidden from public view and any journalists who risks reporting on them also risks being maimed, beaten, or even killed.  While Russia ranks better than China on most things it does not make their crimes any less wrong.  Both countries are intolerant of dissent, criticism, and most of the time, religion.  While these abuses may have gotten worse over the short term there is reason to believe that as more people come online in China and Russia there will slowly be more and more people who find out what their country is doing to their neighbors and will act against it in some fashion or another, after all Freedom House writes in their report that “23 pro-reform CCP elders submitted an open letter to the National People’s Congress…[which] called for an end to media control and a full realization of the press freedom guarantees of the Chinese constitution.”  Change will come to these countries but it will be necessary for journalists to continue risking their lives to report on what is actually happening.