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The Manifesto calls on the authorities to radically change the country’s oppressive system and guarantee human rights including freedom of religion.

BEIJING (AsiaNews) – A group of 303 Chinese citizens signed ‘Charter 08’, a declaration to mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In it they call on the government of China to transform the country’s authoritarian and corrupt regime along democratic lines, respectful of human rights, including religious freedom.

“Charter 08” follows the path laid down by “Charter 77”, a manifesto signed by Czech and Slovak intellectuals and activists, who in 1977 called on the government of Czechoslovakia to respect human rights.Writer and playwright Václav Havel, who went on to become president of the Czech Republic after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the break-up of the Soviet Empire, was one of the signatories.

In the case of ‘Charter 08’ many signatories are Chinese academics but many others are ordinary people, from the business world to rural communities. Their goal is not to create a political party but rather to start a movement of cultural transformation to radically change China.

The manifesto’s publication has however already created fear. It has also led to arrests. One signatory, Liu Xiaobo, an intellectual, was taken into police custody on 8 December. Another, Zhang Zuhua, was interrogated for 12 hours and then released. Yesterday scientist Jiang Qisheng and Beijing lawyer Pu Zhiqiang were questioned by police. Mr Pu is also closely followed and his movement are restricted by the police.

A corrupt system and social tensions

The manifesto is divided into three parts. The first one is a foreword which goes over the last 100 years of Chinese history, from the time when the country’s first constitution was written to our time when many Chinese “see clearly that freedom, equality, and human rights are universal values of humankind, and that democracy and constitutional government are the fundamental framework for protecting these values.”

For the Charter’s signatories the Chinese government's approach to “modernization” has proven disastrous. It has stripped people of their rights, destroyed their dignity, and corrupted normal human intercourse.” They therefore ask: “Where is China headed in the twenty-first century? Will it continue with ‘modernization’ under authoritarian rule, or will it embrace universal human values, join the mainstream of civilized nations, and build a democratic system?”

The document does highlight positive changes that have occurred in the last 20 years like relief from poverty and an end to Maoist totalitarianism. For instance in “1998 the Chinese government signed two important international human rights conventions; in 2004 it amended its constitution to include the phrase ‘respect and protect human rights’; and this year, 2008, it has promised to promote a ‘national human rights action plan’. Unfortunately most of this political progress has extended no further than the paper on which it is written.”

Results have been “stultifying” with “endemic official corruption, an undermining of the rule of law, weak human rights, decay in public ethics, crony capitalism, growing inequality between the wealthy and the poor, pillage of the natural environment as well as of the human and historical environments, and the exacerbation of a long list of social conflicts, especially, in recent times, a sharpening animosity between officials and ordinary people.” Hence chances that “conflicts and crises” will grow are ever greater. “The decline of the current system has reached the point where change is no longer optional.”

Universal human values

The second part of the manifesto addresses the fundamental principles that have inspired it and which should be adopted by the state, above all the principle of “freedom.”
“Freedom,” it says, “is at the core of universal human values. [. . .] Without freedom, China will always remain far from civilized ideals.”

Significantly, by focusing on the universal nature of freedom, the manifesto dismisses the authorities’ relativist arguments suggesting that freedom and human rights in China are different from those in the West.

Instead, “[h]uman rights are not bestowed by a state. Every person is born with inherent rights to dignity and freedom. The government exists for the protection of the human rights of its citizens. The exercise of state power must be authorized by the people.”

Other principles are equality, a republican form of government, democracy “of the people, by the people, and for the people” as well as a constitution that protects “the freedom and the rights of citizens, limiting and defining the scope of legitimate government power”.

Freedom of religion and federalism

The third part of the document is titled “What We Advocate” and lists the steps that should be taken to transform China into a non-authoritarian nation that ...