[Radix] Re: Radix Digest, Vol 105, Issue 1
Marla Petal
mpetal at imagins.com
Wed Jan 28 08:30:33 PST 2009
Terry - Thank you so much for bringing up a painful and important
issue. On the one hand I share your pessimism. On the other hand I
think that even the most authoritarian regimes respond to pressure
from their populations (witness significant progress in school safety
in Uzbekistan). So it seems to me that it is our ethical obligation to
find ways to express our solidarity with the grassroots efforts to
contribute to disaster prevention. Surely we cannot be of real
professional or expert support if we use the guise of diplomacy to
justify total silence.
The first time this hit me between the eyes was at IDRC in Davos this
past year is when the Sichuan earthquake experience was being
reviewed. Amidst a good deal of congratulatory remarks about the
earthquake response, there was NO MENTION of the terrible toll taken
by shoddy school construction.
It wasn't until the last day of the conf. in a special session, with
only 100 people left, that our Chinese colleagues and others finally
took the stage. One of the presenters had a couple of slides of
disinformation on school impacts which he hurried through with obvious
embarrassment (one hopes because of the transparent lies they
contained).
I could well understand the horrible quandry and vulnerability of our
Chinese colleagues, and had no desire to put them on the spot. But I
was livid with the rest of our colleagues for completely failing to
raise questions or make any kind of diplomatically worded or even
condolence statement of any kind. Their total silence struck me as
either total indifference or crass livelihood protection. The silence
of our "professional" and "expert" colleagues in the face of blatant
disinformation, the collusion with the re-writing of history by the
authorities strikes me as a betrayal of all of the bereaved parents
and their dead children.
I think that Walter Hays and myself were the only ones to break the
silence. Both of us, independently, did exactly as you suggest - we
tried to put our shame into a collective and universal context of
failure to prevent disaster. We said that this has happened and will
happen elsewhere. (It isn't hard coming from the U.S. to cite our
failures in Katrina or to refer to the worst earthquake - the one yet
to come in California). And we tried in some modest way to value truth-
telling a pre-requisite for involving communities in the hard tasks
that they must take on (like monitoring school construction). (While
in China, I also tried to invoke their own historic strengths to
suggest that bereaved parents could be engaged as "barefoot architects
and engineers" becoming partners in monitoring school construction
practices - providing an opportunity to turn anger and grief into a
commitment to the next generation.)
Indeed we do need people to live and fight another day - and we do
need some of us to remain persona grata and to visit China. And when
we get there we need to meet parents and school principles and support
their advocacy efforts.
I would like to suggest, that in some kind of 'diplomatic' and subtle
means of redress that we collectively nominate and campaign for School
Principle Ye Zhiping to be given the Sasakawa Award next year. In
addition to validating his courageous leadership and the importance of
school safety, it would also validate the tremendous service done by
just a couple of courageous journalists who took great risks to
uncover the truth, even while bulldozers were fast at work to plow it
under.
So as a result of this posting, I may never be granted a visa to visit
China again. Hopefully someone else who goes will convey our
collective condolences to parents and assure them of our solidarity in
making sure that every new school is a safe school
Sincerely,
Marla
On Jan 27, 2009, at 9:00 PM, radix-request at ecie.org wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
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> 1. Follow up & thanks on China disaster meeting
> (T.G.Cannon at greenwich.ac.uk)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:29:43 +0000
> From: T.G.Cannon at greenwich.ac.uk
> Subject: [Radix] Follow up & thanks on China disaster meeting
> To: radix at ecie.org
> Cc: terrycannon at blueyonder.co.uk
> Message-ID: <20090127152943.a2ufkztu28swgwgw at skye.gre.ac.uk>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; DelSp="Yes";
> format="flowed"
>
> Dear RADIXers
> This letter is mainly for those who responded to my call for advice on
> how to deal with the presentation I gave last week on the Chinese
> earthquake. The meeting was co-hosted by Fondation Madariaga and the
> Chinese embassy to the European Union, and the Chinese ambassador was
> there along with many other officials. Two Chinese disaster specialist
> also spoke. You can see the programme and presentations at:
>
> http://www.madariaga.org/events/events-2008/46-2008/159-chinas-ability-to-cope-with-natural-disaster
>
> and see my Powerpoint.
>
> Because the issues are of general interest to RADIX, I am sharing
> these thoughts, but I do especially want to thank Ben Wisner, George
> Kent, Terry Jeggle, James Lewis and John Wiener for their substantial
> messages to me. (Apologies for not responding individually to you, and
> I hope I have not left anyone out).
>
> It really helped to have your thoughts, though I think it would open
> up a very good if we were to discuss on RADIX the issue of how we deal
> with our approach to governments that have significant authoritarian
> tendencies. That is why I am sending my response to the list: this is
> a very general issue.
>
> While I came to the view (as a result of most of the comments from the
> above) for this meeting that I should be ‘diplomatic’ and "engage"
> with the officials in Brussels, and that the approach should be one of
> supporting reform and reformers, I still have very serious doubts
> about whether that will actually have an effect.
>
> I realise that part of the problem with the Chinese regime is that it
> does not respond to external pressure, seeing it (in a parallel way to
> Mugabe and some South African ANC ministers) as imperialist attacks.
> So how should outsiders comment on Chinese repression?
>
> One of my approaches at the meeting was to make it quite clear that I
> am not criticising China in isolation from critical comments that
> could be made about many other countries. I started by talking about
> Hurricane Katrina as an example of bad government, and when I spoke of
> corruption (re schools that were not constructed properly) I
> emphasised that this has to be seen in much a wider context. For this
> I mentioned the recent global financial crisis as a product of (in
> effect) corrupt behaviour in western banks, the British Aerospace
> corruption (linked to the UK government) over arms sales, and the
> Common Agricultural Policy as an example of a policy designed to deny
> development to the poor and support the already rich – institutional
> corruption if you like.
>
> When I mentioned rights, and the essential need for civil society to
> be enabled in relation to community-based disaster preparedness, I
> emphasised that this was in order to allow citizens to HELP the
> government to ensure that the government fulfils its remit of
> protecting its own citizens. Civil society can therefore be part of
> the process by which government achieves its goals against corruption
> at lower levels, rather than a threat to government.
>
> All this came after a rather positive account of the emergency
> response effort of the Chinese government (AND ordinary people), so
> that it was in context.
>
> I don’t share the optimism of most of my advisors that engagement is
> the best (or only) route. While many Chinese may themselves be
> uncomfortable about repression (including that related to the
> earthquake and other disasters), what has engagement achieved over the
> past two decades? See below on the Olympics; the doctor who blew the
> whistle on SARS has regularly been placed under house arrest around
> June 4 each year in case she makes some other kind of protest.
>
> The bereaved parents who started a law case against local governments
> that oversaw school construction have had their case dismissed. The
> human rights lawyer Huang Qi who acted for some parents to make other
> claims was imprisoned last May, and is still in prison, accused of
> betraying state secrets (a catch all and indefensible accusation). He
> is seriously ill, and has been offered release only if he gives up his
> human rights activities.
>
> (Relating to the Olympics, the government had agreed to improve its
> reputation to allow civil society activities during the Games. It
> designated four areas in Beijing parks for people to hold
> demonstrations – for which they had to make an application. As far as
> I know, none were ever permitted. Two women in their 70s who applied
> to hold a protest about the demolition of their homes were arrested
> and held without charge. Others were harassed.)
>
> Some of my advisors argued that I should not make links between the
> collapse of schools and corruption and repression with other recent
> issues (toxic baby-milk, Amur river chemical discharge, SARS, AIDs
> scandals
> ). I understand that this approach would have made it
> difficult or impossible to make a supportive engagement to “work with
> reformers” in the system who also share these doubts. BUT the issues
> are all linked by the type of power that is operating in China, and I
> cannot see how we can avoid analysing and criticising this form of
> power and how it links to disasters.
>
> Given that part of our role (our duty) in RADIX is to make such
> analysis, how should we then relate it to action (and words) to make
> the analysis have an effect? This for me is the key missing link, and
> I am not convinced that “engagement” is an effective translation of
> our analysis into action.
>
> So this is where we need a debate on RADIX at least, to fathom out how
> we should do this.
>
> I am not against the idea of engagement if it can be shown that it
> works, and that it is preferable to making loud critical remarks (in
> order to achieve reduced vulnerability). But I am far from convinced.
> Engagement and support to reform and reformers is very similar to the
> position of the British (and other western)government on countries
> like China, and in my view it is in danger of becoming a cop-out. Is
> there a RADIXal version of engagement?
>
> At the end, the Ambassador commented that he enjoyed my presentation
> very much!
>
> best wishes
> Terry
>
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> End of Radix Digest, Vol 105, Issue 1
> *************************************
Marla Petal
mpetal at imagins.com
Home +41 22 740 2704
Mobile +41 76 240 8474
Skype: shmarla
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