【09.12.30 英国卫报】Britain and China: Death deplored

青蛙小王子

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/30/britain-china-death-deplored

In a nasty diplomatic dance to the death, Britain and China have been exchanging carefully calculated protests this week over the fate of Akmal Shaikh. Neither side can have expected their words to change anything. British ministers and opposition leaders have expressed appropriate and genuine outrage at the poor man's judicial killing. China, in turn, has shrugged off complaints as unjustified interference. "No one has the right to comment on China's judicial sovereignty," said a representative of the Chinese foreign ministry yesterday.

That latter statement is of course nonsense. Britain has a duty to express horror at the execution of one of its citizens, especially someone as confused and unwell as the unfortunate Mr Shaikh, who seems to have been lured into smuggling without knowing what he was doing. The serious criminals are the people who used him, and people around the world like him, as drug mules – but they are often rich enough, or hidden enough, to escape. That, sadly, was not the case with Mr Shaikh, who died on Tuesday morning amid disingenuous Chinese claims that the 4,030 grams of heroin he smuggled was "enough to cause 26,800 deaths".

In the same statement, issued on Christmas Eve, the Chinese embassy in London made a pointed reference to the country's "bitter memory of drug problems in history". Not that long ago, Britain fought wars to keep the opium trade open. China may well feel resentment at being lectured about drugs by a power that once supplied them. But the country ought to listen. Protests about China's human rights record are not intended to weaken the country, or humiliate it, but to protect its citizens. China would be more respected in the world if it did not sustain such a casual approach to trying and executing its people. Much about what happens is secret, but Amnesty International believes that at least 7,003 people were sentenced to death in China last year, and at least 1,718 were executed. That is more industrialised slaughter than justice.

Some argue that external pressure will only do harm. The world needs Chinese co-operation to overcome the financial crisis and the environmental one. Whatever the truth behind the outcome of the Copenhagen summit, an obstructive China is in a position to do great harm, and a co-operative one great good. That, though, should not stop other countries speaking out. In the last years of British rule in Hong Kong, so-called old China hands in the Foreign Office deplored Chris Patten's brave attempt to bring democracy to the colony. Fiery words were exchanged. But it made Hong Kong a better place. Respect for Chinese power is no reason to stay silent when China is in the wrong.