3 posts tagged “democracy”

So, I've spent some time this morning reading the comments regarding China over at Hauptstadtblog.de (available in Germany only) and the general tone of all pro-China people commenting on there is:

• China doesn't like people interfering.
• China will remember.
• Learn our language/history and understand our culture! 

So, woah. I think I finally got it. We are not supposed to say anything, basic human rights are not part of your culture and if we still interfere, you will fuck us up economically in the long run?

All cultural differences aside, I really respect most of everything there is in the world. Whatever you do, do it, just don't harm anyone else.

Then again, China wants to do trade with the world and the world is supposed to not pay attention to interior affairs? You want the Olympic Games and expect everyone to just pretend that they don't see? Point taken it happens more than often. Yeah, we buy oil from Saudi Arabia even though they do all kinds of cruel things to people. It's a double-standard. But when the world finally pays attention how can anyone in their sane mind ask them to turn around?

I also fail to see how grown-up Chinese people, despite all the pride they have for their country, do not see this and instead chose to believe propaganda when it's so obvious that your government has more of a dictatorship than anything else. But I guess that is part of their culture and we are not supposed to interfere.

Though Germany is not a 100% perfect, of course I am still proud to be German. And that's because you can express your opinion on anything you want. People are allowed to be left, right, center, liberal, conservative, whatever. Even those Nazis are allowed to express their opinion (as long as they do not deny the Holocaust) - I mean, look at it, even they are allowed to be part of this democracy. Democracy's strongest asset, is also its biggest weakness.

In China you go to a labour camp for writing a critical blog.

In Re: Dear Flickrsphere I posted a while ago why I didn't want my Flickr account to be merged with the rest of Yahoo! - and here is more on the "why".

According to marketwatch, the wife of Xiaoning - a Chinese dissident, jailed, currently serving a 10 year sentence in a forced-labour camp - sued Yahoo! accusing them of complicity in jailing Xiaoning and in 60 other cases.

The information that Yahoo ultimately turned over to the government led to the arrest, prosecution, jailing and in some cases torture of about 60 people who used the Internet to discuss democracy and free-speech rights, according to the suit.

I am all interested in hearing the excuses - "But we had to in order to do busines in China." or "Sorry, we just wanted to make a lot of money.".

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