volume vii issue viii

JHU POLITIKTHE SAUDI SUCCESSION CRISIS

Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud (pictured) will now be the next in line for the Saudi throne after Crown Prince Nayef. (SOURCE: http://news.yahoo.com)

by VIRGIL DOYLE, ’14Staff Writer

On October 21, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Sultan Al Saud,

national defense minister and next in line to the Saudi throne, passed away. The death of the 83-year-old sultan emphasized the major issues surrounding succession within the Saudi royal family. As Dr. Khalid Da-khil, a professor of political science at King Saud University in Saudi Arabia, states, “[Saudi Arabians] are really concerned about how the succession is going to proceed.” For the past few years, the trio of King Abdullah, Crown Prince Sultan, and Prince Nayef (all of whom are broth-ers) has essentially run the country. Age is a key factor for these rulers:

(continued on Page 2)

ISSUE VIIIINTERNATIONAL

COLOMBIA’S CRACKDOWN ON GUERILLA WARFARE

by Julia Allen ’15- Page 3

BOKO HARAM AND WAR AGAINST THE WEST

by Cary Glynn, ’13- Page 4

THE AID FOR TRADE INITIAITIVE

by Hilary Matfess, ’14- Page 6

OPINION

JOHNS HOPKINS’ Only Weekly-Published Political Magazine

CITIZENS UNITED AND THE UNIVERSAL RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH

by Matt Varvaro, ’13- Page 7

Abdullah is 87, and Nayef, who has taken the place of Sultan as crown prince and next in line to the throne, is 78. As this aging generation of Saudi rulers dies out, a new group of young leaders will have to be brought into the Saudi ruling class. The char-acter of this new generation of Saudi leaders will have a huge influence on Saudi Arabia and the country’s care-ful balancing of conservative Islam, oil wealth, and external moderniz-ing forces.

Succession has followed an atyp-ical pattern in Saudi Arabia’s rela-tively brief history. Ibn Saud found-ed modern Saudi Arabia in 1932 after conquering the majority of the

HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA

by Jackson Tse, ’15 and Ari Schaffer, ’14

- Page 8

ACHIEVING THE FUTURE WITH DAVID AXELROD

by Ari Schaffer, ’14 - Page 5

NATIONAL

the milton s.eisenhower symposium

presents:

tuesday 15 november8 pm (doors 7:30) - shriver

KARLROVE

November 14, 2011 Volume VII, Issue VIII

1 WWW.JHUPOLITIK.ORG

THE POLITIKEDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Hannah Holliday

STAFF WRITERS

Julia AllenColette Andrei

Megan AugustineMichael Bodner

Rachel CohenRobert D’Annibale

Virgil DoyleEric Feinberg

Cary GlynnBen GoldbergAnna Kochut

Hilary MatfessChloe Reichel

Daniel RoettgerAri Schaffer

LAYOUT EDITOR

Ana Giraldo-Wingler

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Will Denton

MANAGING EDITOR

Alex Clearfield

ASSISTANT EDITORS

Randy BellJeremy OrloffMatt Varvaro

PRODUCTION MANAGER

Neil O’Donnell

FACULTY ADVISOR

Steven R. David

JHU POLITIK is a student-run political publication. Please note that the opinions expressed within JHU POLITIK are those of the author alone.

INTERNATIONAL REPORT

Arabian Peninsula. He ruled until his death in 1953, and since then a series of his sons have held the Saudi throne. Thus, rather than a system of primogeniture—a clear-cut system of succession in which the crown passes to the king’s eldest son—the Saudi monarchy has been passed among a series of brothers. But these sons are dying out now, and there are no clear-cut leaders in the royal fam-ily to take their places. King Abdullah has made little ef-fort to promote or create clear paths for younger succes-sors, preferring to keep the line of succession within his close circle of brothers. As Ali al-Ahmed, an expert on Saudi politics, said, “there [were] no other competitors… King Abdullah had no other choice.”

King Abdullah’s second response to Sultan’s death was to promote yet another of his brothers, Salman, to the vacated seat of defense minister. Salman, 76 years old, had served as governor of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital, since 1962. An anonymous former diplomat in Saudi Arabia described Salman as “intelligent, political, in touch with the conservative base, but also quite mod-ern-minded.” The move to promote Salman, according to Hossein Shobokshi, a Saudi columnist for Al Jazeera, makes it “everybody’s guess that Prince Salman is the next in line after Nayef.”

The appointment of the relatively “modern-mind-ed” Salman stands in contrast to Abdullah’s decision to

promote Nayef to crown prince. Nayef was appointed to the position of interior minister in 1975, and is known as a fairly conservative leader with little interest in mod-ernization or reform within Saudi Arabia. An Ameri-can cable from 2009 leaked by online whistle-blower Wikileaks states that “Nayef is widely seen as a hard-line conservative who at best is lukewarm to Abdullah’s re-form initiatives.” The cable goes on to describe Nayef’s top priorities as “[preserving] Al Saud rule and [ensur-ing] prosperity for Saudi citizens.”

As the Arab Spring swept much of the Middle East, Saudi Arabia remained remarkably free of unrest. Fre-quent government crackdowns carried out against polit-ical dissenters by Nayef’s interior ministry have prevent-ed any major protest movements from developing in the country. Saudi Arabia’s government further cemented its anti-protest stance by providing military aid to the gov-ernment of nearby Bahrain in order to help put down the massive popular protests occurring there. So far, these crackdowns have been successful, and no major dis-senting political movements or activists have emerged against the Saudi government.

The governing combination of Nayef and Salman will be integral to Saudi Arabia’s future. King Abdullah is aging and ailing, having undergone several back opera-

(Continued from page 1)




INTERNATIONAL REPORT

tions in the past few years. This leaves room for a poten-tial power struggle between the hard-line Nayef and the more “modern-minded” Salman. The ability of each man to effectively exert his power will leave a lasting imprint on Saudi Arabia’s political future, its role as a regional leader, and the tension between modernism and Islam that has toppled governments and mobilized citizens throughout the Middle East. s

—[email protected]

Colombia’s Crackdown on Guerrila Warfare

by JULIA ALLEN, ’15Staff Writer

On November 4, a military raid was carried out in southwest Colombia that led to the death of Al-

fonso Cano, the most recent leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The FARC is a leftist guerrilla organization that has been operating in Colom-bia since the early 1960s, and has funded itself mainly through illegal drug trafficking and ransom kidnappings. After taking power of the FARC in 2008, Cano imple-mented a successful policy of hit-and-run attacks that made use of land mines and snipers to keep the guerrilla units mobile and hard hitting. Because of the recent rise in FARC aggression and Cano’s role in it, Colombian De-fense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon proclaimed that “the death of Alfonso Cano is the most important historical mark of our military forces and our national police in our fight against the FARC organization.” Though many share this optimistic view, there are still those who claim that this is only a small victory in what is bound to be a long battle against the FARC guerrillas.

Serving as the defense minister for three years un-der former President Alvaro Uribe, who held office from 2002-2010, Juan Manuel Santos, now the president of Colombia, led the nation in an aggressive policy aimed at the FARC guerrillas. This crackdown reduced the num-ber of FARC combatants from around 18,000 in 2002 to 8,000 in 2011 and forced them to relocate away areas in central Colombia that had been occupied for years.

In addition to the violence brought about by the FARC, right-wing paramilitary groups also play a large role in the national waves of violence, as they periodi-cally engage the leftist FARC guerrillas in conflicts over territory and the drug trade. Recently, however, these

paramilitary groups have made limited agreements with the FARC in select areas of the country due to their shared interests in drug trafficking. The Colombian government sees both the FARC and the paramilitary groups as actors in the newly recognized national armed conflict. Former President Uribe claimed that the two groups only represented terrorist threats to the nation; it was not until this past May that President Santos ac-knowledged that “there has been an armed conflict in this country for some time.”

Following the initial success of President Santos’s crackdown on the FARC, there were some indications that the guerrillas were making a comeback. Though its numbers have dropped, the FARC has been able to carry out multiple successful attacks in 2011. According to Rafael Guarin, the deputy defense minister, the FARC experienced a radicalization of its remaining members while its less devoted constituency has been weeded out through Santos’s aggressive strategy. Because of these perceived threats, Cano’s death has been praised as a major victory for the Colombian government. Presi-dent Santos stated that the elimination of the guerrillas’ top leader “is the most overwhelming blow given to the FARC in all of Colombia’s history.” Many celebrate Ca-no’s death as a victory in the fight against the FARC, and agree with Rafael Pardo, the labor minister, who sees this as a message that “shows that armed conflict is no longer a way forward in Colombia.”

There are, however, several reasons to believe that Cano’s death will actually end up delaying the pacifica-tion of Colombia’s armed conflict. Victor Ricardo, the peace commissioner during the failed talks with the FARC in 1998-2002, urged people to understand that “this is a blow to the FARC’s morale... But by no means can people imagine that this can bring an end to the FARC.” Claiming that “dialogue is the only way,” Cano used his influence to encourage the FARC leadership to pursue peace talks with the Colombian government. Without his strong leadership, the likelihood of any meaningful negotiations is largely diminished. Pinzon argues that because Cano was the FARC’s ideologue and central political figure, his death will be a major setback to the FARC.

Though it is true that Cano played a large role in the FARC’s recent successful operations, his leadership role can be filled easily. Due to the hierarchic structure of the FARC, the transfer of power from one leader to the next is never up in the air for very long. Experts say that




INTERNATIONAL REPORTCano’s possible successors could include Ivan Marquez or Timoleon Jimenez. Though the military raid that led to Cano’s death has been considered to be a victory for President Santos’s anti-FARC policy, it is clear that the fight against the FARC guerrillas is far from over. s


Boko Haram and War Against the West

by CARY GLYNN ’13Staff Writer

As the Muslim feast of sacrifice, Eid-al-Adha, began last Wednesday, Islamist terrorists struck in north-

ern Nigeria, killing at least 100 people. Using suicide bombs, IEDs, and roving gunmen, the group, known as Boko Haram, attacked churches, banks, police stations, military posts, and government offices in the northern states of Yobe and Borno. The attacks come two months after the bombing of the UN Headquarters in Abuja that left twenty-one people dead. The US Embassy has warned that Boko Haram may be targeting foreign busi-ness people and diplomats with bomb attacks in the cap-ital Abuja.

Boko Haram, which in the region’s Hausa dialect means, “Western teachings are sacrilege,” seeks to im-pose a stringent form of Islamic Sharia law throughout the country. The group views Nigeria’s Western-in-spired democratic institutions as corrupting influences on Muslims and wants them dismantled. As Nigeria is the most populated country on the African continent, with 160 million inhabitants almost equally divided be-tween Christians concentrated in the south and Muslims in the north, fears of further violence are well founded.

The coordinated nature of the recent assaults and the utilization of car bombs and remotely detonated IEDs represent a new level of sophistication for Boko Haram. Some officials point to these new methods as evidence of contact between Boko Haram and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the Somalia based Al-Shabaab.

Western diplomats and security experts speculate that these Islamic insurgency groups are cooperating in an effort to broaden the reach of the jihad movement in Africa. Establishing a foothold for Islamic extremism in an oil and mineral rich country with close ties to the

West would raise the profile of their movement signifi-cantly.

Previously, the group’s tactics involved the assas-sination of police officers, often in daylight hours in front of their families and neighbors. In addition to at-tacks on government buildings, Boko Haram has taken responsibility for numerous gun attacks in the past year on Christian churches, banks, and beer halls. The group claims these places are examples of foreign corrupting influences that would be removed by the imposition of Sharia Law.

“Where are they getting this knowledge of IEDs?” asked Kashima Shettima, Governor of the State of Borno, in August. “Some of them went as far as Sudan. Why? I believe they are making efforts to reach out to the global terrorism network.”

As Boko Haram’s tactics have evolved, the Nigerian government’s response has not kept pace. The govern-ment has reacted to previous attacks with indiscriminate violent sweeps causing accusations of looting and rape. Dozens of summary executions have been documented according to Human Rights Watch.

“The Nigerian authorities need to ensure that all law enforcement operations in response to Boko Haram are conducted in full accordance with international human rights standards,” said Corinne Dufka, senior West Af-rica researcher for Human Rights Watch. “The most ef-fective way to counter the abhorrent tactics employed by groups like Boko Haram is to scrupulously adhere to respect for human rights and rule of law.”

Boko Haram spokesman, Abul-Qaqa, quoted in The Daily Trust, a newspaper from the Muslim dominated north of the country, took responsibility for the Novem-ber 4 attacks and said, “We will continue attacking gov-ernment formations until security forces stop their ex-cesses on our members and vulnerable civilians.”

Nigerian security forces have been, as yet, unable to prevent Boko Haram’s ability to operate. As if scripted from a classic insurgent handbook, the harshness of the government response to attacks, rather than limiting the group’s effectiveness, has only served to further alienate large elements of the country’s Muslim population.

Referring to what he described as a “loose partner-ship” between Boko Haram, AQIM, and Al-Shabaab, Gen. Carter F. Ham, head of the United States Africa Command, said an association of these extremist groups “would be the most dangerous thing to happen not only to the Africans but to us as well.” s




(Continued on page 6)

NATIONAL REPORT

N A T I O N A L

Achieving the Future with David Axelrod

by ARI SCHAFFER, ’14Staff Writer

On Tuesday, November 8, David Axelrod, the former Senior Advisor to the President and the political

mastermind credited with Barack Obama’s rise to power, addressed the Hopkins community assembled in Shriver Hall.

David Axelrod’s story starts, like most change does, with youth. Axelrod had his first taste of politics at age 5 and even from that young age, he understood the mo-ment and power that good leadership could bring. The power behind leaders, movements, and major reforms, he explained, are the youth: the college students and

it was not until his campaign advising brought Barack Obama into the Senate that he felt his efforts had paid off.

Axelrod argues that every positive change, reform and significant development of the Obama administra-tion, is the product of the young people who put Presi-dent Obama in the Oval Office. David Axelrod spoke to the audience declaring that all of the President’s accom-plishments were because of those in audience: Osama bin Laden’s assassination, the breaking down of Al-Qa-eda leadership, advances in stem cell research, break-throughs in curing Parkinson’s, increased fuel efficiency standards for the first time in 30 years, more funding is being given to renewable energy research; the reforming of tuition grants, the repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ and the appointment of two new female Supreme Court jus-tices. All of these accomplishments came from the young Americans, according to Axelrod. In the words of Presi-dent Obama, “We built this thing together.”

Foreshadowing the upcoming election, Axelrod shifted topics to discuss the Republican primaries. Un-like previous Republican primaries, he pointed out, where the candidates were essentially anointed by the party elite, this campaign for the nomination will feature real divisions in the party between the Tea Party and the corporate elite, or the “martini party,” as he called it.

He made clear his unwavering belief that both fac-tions of the Republican Party pursue the same ineffec-tive program of cutting taxes for the wealthy expecting different results. Media sensations like Perry and Cain just bring more of the same ineffective policies.

In response to a question from the audience, Axel-rod explained that the upcoming Obama campaign will be about laying the foundations and building a sound economy for the future, not bringing more of the same. The anthem that brought crowds to President Obama’s doorstep and the young politician into office, “Change” will be the guiding principle of the next campaign.

Before concluding his speech, the man so often be-hind the curtain gave the crowd assembled to hear him some parting advice. He declared that he believes in American exceptionalism but does not base his belief on America’s unique development into a world power. Rather, the uniqueness of America stems from his belief that Americans will always strive for more through in-novation. “The future is not a gift” he advised, “It’s an achievement.” The exceptionalism of America comes

David Axelrod, former advisor to President Obama, spoke at Johns Hopkins University last Tuesday for a Milton S. Eisenhower speaker event. (SOURCE: http://theblaze.com)

young professionals who brought President Obama into office.

As a five-year-old, he sat atop a mailbox to watch crowds gather before another future president, John F Kennedy. He volunteered on Robert F Kennedy’s cam-paigns at the ages of 9 and 13. RFK’s strength and re-solve in the years following his brother’s assassination inspired Axelrod.

Axelrod’s career took off as the youngest writer in the history of the Chicago Tribune. He went on to ad-vise Hillary Clinton and other prominent politicians, but





NATIONAL REPORT/OPINION

from its people’s ability to always ‘achieve its future.’ His parting advice for the rapt listeners in the audience was to continue to achieve their futures. “Don’t be a specta-tor,” he concluded. s


O P I N I O N

The Aid for Trade Initiative

by HILARY MATFESS, ’14Staff Writer

At the Hong Kong Ministerial Conference in Decem-ber of 2005, the World Trade Organization launched

the Aid for Trade initiative in an attempt to raise the eco-nomic capacities of Least-Developed Countries (LDCs). The general principle behind Aid for Trade’s system of reforms is that opening a nation to trade will expand its market, raise its GDP per capita, and raise the quality of life for all participants in international trade. Although the reforms purported by this initiative were not neces-sarily groundbreaking, the initiative sought to stream-line and supervise the implementation of trade reform polices. As with many aid initiatives, the purpose of this initiative and the ensuing reforms was to alleviate pov-erty.

In a discussion among leaders of African nations at a WTO summit, the committee for economic development in Eastern and Southern Africa came to the conclusion that

“The relatively small size of domestic markets means that export growth, regionally as well as globally, is es-sential to East and Southern Africa’s development. The fact that so many countries in the region are landlocked also means that efforts to reduce the cost of cross-border trade—through trade facilitation and transport infra-structure, as well as regional integration—are essential. These are the priority areas where Aid for Trade could deliver the biggest return on investment and provide a needed catalyst for attracting private financing.”

Aid for Trade is thus recognized for its ability to ad-dress the ‘supply-side’ issues of development. Though infrastructure development has been posited as one of Aid for Trade’s fortes, such programs are often plagued by problems arising from the property rights of indig-

enous groups, unclear or non-existent land ownership legislation, and environmental concerns.

Another issue confronting Aid for Trade is its pro-pensity to encourage Ricardian specialization. Consider-ing the deleterious effects of such specialization in cocoa and coffee for Cote d’Ivoire when the prices plummeted in the late 1990s, such specialization could ultimately destabilize a nation. Similarly, it should be noted that though trade will typically promote economic growth, the connection between increases in trade and reduc-tions in poverty is tenuous at best. Though a reduction in absolute poverty is likely given economic expansion, reductions in relative poverty are not so easily remedied.

It has been said that the link between trade, growth, and poverty alleviation is neither simple nor automatic.

Above, women participate in an Aid for Trade program sponsored by Bel-gium. (SOURCE: http://belgium.be)

While the transmission mechanism between trade and growth may seem straightforward, those between trade and poverty reduction are complex. According to the Integrated Louisiana Educational Assessment Program, this mechanism depends not only on the trade-growth relationship but also on the way in which trade affects income inequality and employment.

If trade is not coupled with responsible social pro-grams, it can be a recipe for a lopsided and untenable society. If Aid for Trade is truly focused on alleviating poverty through supply-side economics, we must evalu-ate the program under those terms.

Unsurprisingly, given Aid for Trade’s strong ground-ing in classical liberal economics, it seems that the pro-gram has focused on developing particular industries within African countries. This strategy makes sense un-der classical economic models, which posit that nations





OPINION

should specialize and engage in trade to compensate for what they do not produce. However, one must consider the effects of specialization in certain industries on the quality of life of the population. Specialization under Aid for Trade’s guidelines often means specialization in min-eral or fuel extraction, industries that offer few jobs for local populations and often lower the quality of life in surrounding regions through environmental degrada-tion and government ‘rent-seeking’ behavior.

Economic policies cannot be considered in a vacu-um; specialization in an industry that has deleterious ef-fects on the population or is an unsustainable model of growth cannot be shrugged off and attributed to market forces. Development is a concerted policy. Although cer-tain nations are better equipped for certain industries, it does not justify a resignation to specialization in envi-ronmentally and socially untenable industries. s


Citizens United and the Universal Right to Free Speech

by MATT VARVARO, ’13Assistant Editor

The Occupy Wall Street movement has brought to light an antipathy that many harbor toward “cor-

porate America” and, in particular, its influence on American politics. Earlier this month, perhaps in a show of solidarity with OWS, six Democratic senators intro-duced a constitutional amendment that would effec-tively overturn the Supreme Court’s controversial deci-sion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which struck down prohibitions on corporate-funded election advertisements on First Amendment grounds. The Citizens United ruling provoked a strong backlash from many on the Left who argue that the Court improp-erly extended constitutional protections to corporations under the false notion that, as the caricature goes, “cor-porations are people.” The case against Citizens United is an interesting and worthwhile argument to explore because it exposes a set of false assumptions that infuse much the Left’s anti-corporate populism.

The assertion that corporations’ lack of personhood disqualifies them from constitutional protection betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of cor-

porations. A corporation is not an inanimate object, as many suggest; it is not a faceless entity that embodies the characteristics of a rock, a plant, or a piece of pa-per. A corporation is simply a group of people—laborers, salesmen, accountants, executives, shareholders, and so forth—who organize themselves under some sort of fi-nancial arrangement. Some corporations consist of just a single individual, in which case the corporation liter-ally can be considered “a person.” To suggest that a cor-poration is an inanimate object would be just as silly and nonsensical as to suggest that a basketball team or a fam-ily are inanimate objects.

Seeing as a corporation is simply a group of people, it logically follows that any rights denied to the corpo-ration as a whole are simply rights denied to the indi-viduals who comprise that corporation. In the context of political elections and the Citizens United case, a ban on corporate election advertising would clearly constitute such an abridgement of individual rights. The decision to run a political advertisement is made by individu-als within the corporation, using money that has been earned by individuals, in order to pay individuals to pro-duce and publicize the final product, namely the adver-tisement. A ban on this type of collective exercise in free expression would effectively deny First Amendment protections to each individual engaged in the process. The government would be no more justified in impos-ing such a ban than it would be in prohibiting a protest group from collectively designing and producing a ban-ner, taking it to Zuccotti Park, and holding it up in oppo-sition to perceived Wall Street malfeasance.

Some have puzzlingly suggested that the recognition of constitutionally protected corporate rights is unprec-edented in American jurisprudence and is essentially an invention of the Roberts Court. Any cursory examina-tion of the matter, however, would demonstrate the ab-surdity of this claim. Few would argue, for example, that the government has the right to send troops to a corpo-rate headquarters to barrel down its doors and demand that the corporation overturn computer files and other documents without a warrant; or that, if a corporation is sued, it is not entitled to a fair and speedy trial by jury. Perhaps fewer still would suggest that the government has the right to censor a newspaper’s editorial page on the grounds that, because a newspaper is an inanimate object produced by a corporation, the First Amendment does not protect its content. Nor could the government prohibit the New York Times Company, for instance,




OPINION

of political persecution and crackdowns. Groups like the Chinese Human Rights Defenders logged more than 3,500 cases of arbitrary detention in 2010. These efforts have been fueled and caused in part by the government’s perception to current events. As social unrest and revo-lution spread through the Arab World, the Chinese gov-ernment has responded with “stability maintenance” ef-forts, deploying police troops to popular gathering sites.

Indeed, one can claim that human rights since the Tiananmen era have barely advanced, a tragic paradox of the Chinese government. House confinements remain the popular norm. State officials oftentimes make dis-sidents “disappear.” It remains ludicrous and, indeed, ridiculous that individuals who voice their mild discon-tent for the CCP are forcefully and instantaneously per-secuted under the guise of the so-called “justice system.” Consider the persecution of activist Liu Xiaobo and art-ist Ai Weiwei. Both were critics of governmental efforts to stifle personal liberties and freedom of speech. Both, in turn, have been forcefully detained, subjected to psy-chological torture, and imprisoned. Even upon release, Ai Weiwei has been prohibited from speaking with the media and has recently been served a fifteen million Yuan (around $2.4 million) tax bill in an effort to further silence him. Even twenty years after the public relations fiasco of Tiananmen, the CCP still resorts to highly pub-lic means of suppression.

The Communist Party effort to curb freedom of speech extends to the Internet, where Chinese citizens are subject to the restrictions of the “Great Firewall.” This government-run firewall restricts what Chinese citizens can search on the Internet. Political terms such as Falun Gong or the “Tank Man” are blocked and, due to the search restrictions, knowledge about dissident groups or the Tiananmen massacre is hidden from the people. Search terms related to the recent high-speed train accident were also blocked. Popular sites like Face-book, Youtube, Twitter, Google and CNN are all restrict-ed, in the attempt to stifle political discussion. Added concern over a “Jasmine Revolution” in China following the Arab Spring in the Middle East has also prompted the CCP to tighten censorship on the country’s many micro-blogging services. Freedom of speech is far from a reality in China.

Human rights violations are prevalent in the au-tonomous western regions of Tibet and Xinjiang. The Tibetans, long desiring independence from the Chinese government and reinstatement of the religious leader in

from spending money on the publication of its newspa-per and justify this action on constitutional grounds by claiming that, to quote a popular catchphrase, “money is not speech.” It would, in fact, be unprecedented to sug-gest that constitutional protections against such govern-mental overreach do not exist.

The nature of speech is such that there is no finite amount of it that the government can identify and then ration among the populace. Free speech is something of which the Constitution guarantees indefinite exercise, unless that speech materially endangers another person (e.g., verbal abuse and shouting fire in a crowded the-ater). Any speech that does not put other people at mate-rial risk—a category into which political advertisements surely fall— is necessarily constitutional. Evidently, crit-ics of Citizens United and of so-called corporate rights believe that the government should, in fact, be in the business of rationing harmless free speech and distrib-uting speech rights to select constituencies. They should not, however, suggest that this perspective is consistent with the spirit or letter of the First Amendment. s


Human Rights in China

by JACKSON TSE, ’15 and ARI SCHAFFER, ’14Contributing Writer, Staff Writer

On June 4, 1989, the People’s Liberation Army marched into Beijing and, abiding by the execu-

tive order of “martial law,” began shooting at student protestors. By morning, the broadcasted footage and photos would shock the international community. Bod-ies of students lay bloodied on the streets, frayed with bullet wounds. Civilians sympathetic to the protest were arrested and beaten to death. Even those attempting to leave the protest site were gunned down, in what BBC reporter Kate Adie spoke of as “indiscriminate fire.” Hundreds, if not thousands, of nonviolent protestors were slaughtered through the Chinese government’s at-tempt to maintain order in Tiananmen Square.

Fast-forward twenty-two years and not much has changed. The issue of human rights still remains a con-tentious issue for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), a thorn imbedded in the otherwise remarkable rise of China. Indeed, the past few years have seen a resurgence





OPINION

often praise the Chinese government’s spectacular abil-ity, through its one-party autocracy, to “impose the po-litically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.”

What China needs to recognize, however, is that as an ascending power, it will have to recognize fundamen-tal human rights. The oppression of the Xinjiang and Ti-betan peoples, in addition to the brutally oppressed Fa-lun Gong sect, exemplifies Beijing’s utter disregard for human rights. It is shameful that a country that has ac-complished so much still suffers from chronic paranoia. This is a disconnect with reality that the CCP will have to address if it seeks to benefit from the international order in which it currently operates. We know for sure that cit-izens will not stand idly by while governments suppress basic political and human freedoms, as evidenced in the Arab Spring protests. Nations, too, as evidenced in the international pressure on China during the Olympics, have a breaking point where “too much is too much.”

Looking at its human rights record, China will have a long way to go before it becomes a Great Power. It would do well to heed Uncle Ben’s words in the film Spider-man: “with great power comes great responsibility.”

—[email protected], [email protected]

exile, the Dalai Lama, have been consistently rebuffed by Beijing. The 2008 riots in Tibet produced no results. As the police round up monks, nuns, and other clergy for involvement in the 2008 protest, Tibetan Buddhists have resorted to self-immolation as a means of protest.

The Muslims in Xinjiang fare much worse. Desiring not only political independence, but economic equality, the Muslims in Xinjiang have been brutally suppressed. Protests and riots are common and met with police gun-fire. In one protest alone, over 180 Xinjiang demonstra-tors were killed. Additionally, the Han Chinese exclude the Xinjiang natives from the major industries in Xinji-ang, such as coal and oil. With little economic opportuni-ty and brutal oppression, the possibility of human rights protection in Xinjiang is scarce.

Of course, the last twenty-two years have no doubt witnessed a host of remarkable social reforms initiated by the Chinese government. Not many governments around the world can best the Chinese claim of having dramati-cally reduced poverty levels, spurred efforts toward achieving universal healthcare and improved the social livelihood of many of its citizens. Columnists like Thom-as Friedman aren’t making unfounded claims when they

g



volume vii issue viii

Documents

saudi throne

saudi arabians

saudi royal family

saudi ruling class

ed modern saudi arabia

crown prince nayef

system of succession

king saud university