AN OPEN LETTER TO THE LEADERS OF THE DEMOCRATIC WORLD

Vladimir Bukovsky and Wei Jingsheng

As far back as twenty years ago Alexander Solzhenitsyn published an essay entitled "The Error of the West" in which he urged Europe and America to open their eyes to the reality of communism, be it Soviet, Vietnamese, Cambodgian, Cuban or Chinese. He wrote: "Communism will neither be kept in check by any artificial détente nor by any negociation: only by an external force or by internal disintegration." He even added: "It will be fatal for the entire world if America saw potential allies in the leaders of China."

The context then was of course different from the context we find ourselves in today: the number one enemy then was the Soviet Union, and it was necessary to employ all the methods of the Cold War, including alliance with China, in order to "contain" it.

Today the United States is proposing a resolution condemning violations of human rights in China before the Commission on Human Rights of the United Nations in Geneva. We support this initiative and encourage all democratic countries to join in this condemnation. But we insist, once again, in order to remind everyone of what the true nature of the regime they are dealing with is. A communist regime cannot progress towards democracy by itself. To do so it must constantly be put under both internal and external pressures, and, in order that these pressures have any effect at all, they must all be pushing in one and the same direction, that is to say, the message they try to get across must not be obscured by statements that contradict one another.

But today contradictory messages abound. On the one hand the United States urges its allies to join it and vote for the resolution and condemn China, but on the other President Clinton delivered, on April 7, 1999, a speech encouraging the Chinese goverment to allow its dissidents to express themselves freely, supposedly because "freely expressed opposition is much less dangerous than a repressed opposition." Is he saying this in order to help the Chinese leaders keep their dictatorial regime in place to the ends of time?

The two of us are living examples of the odious bargaining dictators engage in: when external pressure becomes too great, they expel one or two dissidents to the West at the same time they continue the repression by arresting a few new spoilsports until their "market value" is high enough so that they, too, in their turn, can be exchanged for those signs of legitimacy that the dictatorial regimes are so in need of: a solemn state visit, the entry into the WTO or the holding of the Olympic Games in their capital.

This time China has not even taken the trouble to expel new dissidents in order to "prove" its new-found liberal tendencies. It has simply accepted, in responding to a request by the American government, to adjourn the trial of a former high official of the Party, Fang Jue, who has been kept in solitary confinement since last July, but who is officially said to have been under arrest for less than a month (since March 22) for "fraud and illicit commercial practices." In fact Fang Jue is the author of a remarkable document that appeared in the West at the beginning of 1998 and that sketches in the principal democratic reforms that will be essential if China wants to develop harmoniously, enjoying the respect of both its own people and of its allies. The requests put forward by Fang Jue, requests that had been ratified by dozens of high officials in the Party, were logical and reasonable. They all go in the direction of China's and the rest of the planet's best interests. In refusing to liberate Fang Jue purel

y and simply, and proposing only to adjourn his trial, the Chinese government is again showing its true face, for it reserves the right to condemn heavily a sincere and peace-loving reformist once the threat of a condamnation by the United Nations of its iniquitous behavior was over.

Let the reader make no mistake: Fang Jue is not an isolated case. There are others, thousands, tens of thousands who rot in Chinese prisons because they have expressed a claim, a criticism, for having attempted to organize a group in conformity with what is authorized by the law, encouraged to do so because the Chinese leaders have accepted to sign an international convention that guarantees economic, cultural and social rights. The Chinese people and with it the Tibetans, the Uighurs, the Mongols, need the constant and indestructible support of the West in order to overcome the most powerful dictatorship of this century. Every passing year makes it even more difficult to get out of a system that only fans the flames of social, racial and international hatreds. In voting in Geneva on the 23rd of April for the resolution condemning the violation of human rights in China the democratic nations will show that they have, for once, understood that their true allies are on the side of the oppressed peoples and not

on the side of unscrupulous dictators.

Wei Jingsheng has been expelled from China in November 1997. He is now based in New York, U.S.A.

Vladimir Boukovsky has been expelled by the U.S.S.R. in 1977. He is now based in Cambridge, U.K.