==+==+==+== C h i n e s e C o m m u n i t y F o r u m ==+==+==+=== Saturday, April 23, 1994 (Issue No. 9419) +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Chinese Community Forum (CCF) is an e-journal published on China-Net. CCF is dedicated to the discussion on the issues related to the Chinese community. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of the Editorial Board of CCF. Contributions to the discussions and suggestions of new topics are very much appreciated. +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= # of Table of Contents Author | Lines ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== 1. Culture Is Destiny -- A Conversation with Lee Kuan Yew (Part IV)............................Fareed Zakaria 291 2. Malaysia's Mahathir: Leading a Crusade Against the West .....................................Jonathan Sikes and Pete Engardio 65 3. A Speech at UN Assembly.............................Mahathir Mohammed 210 ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== -- From The Editor -- This Weekend Edition is exclusively on the topic on the East-West relation. Firstly we complete the series of the conversation between Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's former Prime Minister, and Fareed Zakaria, the Managing Editor of Foreign Affair magazine (cf: CCF #9416-9418). Since this is a long series, we apologize to our readers for breaking it into small pieces. Next, we carry a feature article from Business Week about Malayia's Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohammad and his viewpoints on the battle between his government and the West. It is followed by Mr. Mahathir's own speech on UN Assembly. That we carry these articles does not imply in any way that we agree or disagree with the original authors. Rather we carry these articles in hope of bringing our readers' attention to the issues that have drawn some publicity elsewhere. Those are issues concerning the developing countries, especially some Asian countries, in the process of their development and democratization. We hope CCF readers send us their opinions on these issues. CORRIGENDUM: Some readers pointed out that China-Net was not closed down by IFCSS as claimed by a letter to the editor (cf: CCF #9418). In fact China-Net has not been closed down but rather changed to a moderated net. We apologize to our readers for any confusion associated with such an error. As always, we wholeheartedly welcome our readers to send us any comment, criticism, suggestion. We will try our best to improve CCF to our readers' satisfaction. ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== 1. Culture Is Destiny -- A Conversation with Lee Kuan Yew (Part IV)...........................Fareed Zakaria 291 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- MULTICULTURAL SCHISMS FZ: Change is often most threatening when it occurs in multiethnic societies. You have been part of both a multiethnic state that failed and one that has succeeded. Malaysia was unwilling to allow what it saw as a Chinese city-state to be part of it and expelled Singapore from its federation in 1965. Singapore itself, however, exists peacefully as a multiethnic state. Is there a solution for those states that have ethnic and religious groups mixed within them? LKY: Each state faces a different set of problems and I would be most reluctant to dish out general solutions. From my own experience, I would say, make haste slowly. Nobody likes to lose his ethnic, cultural, religious, even linguistic identity. To exist as one state you need to share certain attributes, have things in common. If you pressure-cook you are in for problems. If you go gently, but steadily, the logic of events will bring about not assimilation, but integration. If I had tried to foist the English language on the people of Singapore I would have faced rebellion all around. If I had tried to foist the Chinese language, I'd have had immediate revolt and disaster. But I offered every parent a choice of English and their mother tongue, in whatever order they chose. By their free choice, plus the rewards of the marketplace over a period of 30 years, we have ended up with English first and the mother tongue second. We have switched one university already established in the Chinese language from Chinese into English. Had this change been forced in five or ten years instead of being done over 30 years---and by free choice---it would have been a disaster. FZ: This sounds like a live-and-let-live kind of approach. Many Western countries, particularly the United States and France, respectively, have traditionally attempted to assimilate people toward a national mainstream--- with English and French as the national language, respectively. Today this approach is being questioned, as you know, with some minority groups in the United States and France arguing for "multiculturalism," which would allow distinct and unassimilated minority groups to coexist within the nation. How does this debate strike you as you read about it in Singapore? LKY: You cannot have too many distinct components and be one nation. It makes interchange ability difficult. If you want complete separateness then you should not come to live in the host country. But there are circumstances where it is wise to leave things be. For instance, all races in Singapore are eligible for jobs and for many other things. But we put the Muslims in a slightly different category because they are extremely sensitive about their customs, especially diet. In such matters one has to find a middle path between uniformity and a certain freedom to be somewhat different. I think it is wise to leave alone questions of fundamental beliefs and give time to sort matters out. FZ: So you would look at the French handling of their Muslim minorities and say "Go slow, don't push these people so hard." LKY: I would not want to say that because the French having ruled Algeria for many years know the kind of problems that they are faced with. My approach would be, if some Muslim girl insists on coming to school with her headdress on and is prepared to put up with that discomfort, we should be prepared to put up with the strangeness. But if she joined the customs or immigration department where it would be confusing to the millions of people who stream through to have some customs officer looking different, she must wear the uniform. That approach has worked in Singapore so far. IS EUROPE'S PAST ASIA'S FUTURE? FZ: Let me shift gears somewhat and ask you some questions about the international climate in East Asia. The part of the world you live in is experiencing the kind of growth that the West has experienced for the last 400 years. The West has not only been the world's great producer of wealth for four centuries, it has also been the world's great producer of war. Today East Asia is the locus of great and unsettling growth, with several newly rising powers close to each other, many with different political systems, historical animosities, border disputes, and all with ever-increasing quantities of arms. Should one look at this and ask whether Europe's past will be East Asia's future? LKY: No, it's too simplistic. One reason why growth is likely to last for many years in East Asia---and this is just a guess---is that the peoples and the governments of East Asia have learned some powerful lessons about the viciousness and destructiveness of wars. Not only full-scale wars like in Korea, but guerrilla wars as in Vietnam, in Cambodia and in the jungles of Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. We all know that the more you engage in conflict, the poorer and the more desperate you become. Visit Cambodia and Vietnam; the world just passed them by. That lesson will live for a very long time, at least as long as this generation is alive. FZ: The most unsettling change in an international system is the rise of a new great power. Can the rise of China be accommodated into the East Asian order? Isn't that kind of growth inevitably destabilizing? LKY: I don't think we can speak in terms of just the East Asian order. The question is: Can the world develop a system in which a country the size of China becomes part of the management of international peace and stability? Sometime in the next 20 or 30 years the world, by which I mean the major powers, will have to agree among themselves how to manage peace and stability, how to create a system that is both viable and fair. Wars between small countries won't destroy the whole world, but will only destroy themselves. But big conflicts between big powers will destroy the world many times over. That's just too disastrous to contemplate. At the end of the last war what they could foresee was the United Nations. The hope was that the permanent five would maintain the rule of law or gradually spread the rule of law in international relations. It did not come off because of Stalin and the Cold War. This is now a new phase. The great powers---by which I mean America, Western Europe as a group if they become a union, Japan, China and, in 20 to 30 years time, the Russian republic---have got to find a balance between themselves. I think the best way forward is through the United Nations. It already has 48 years of experience. It is imperfect, but what is the alternative? You can not have a consortium of five big powers lording it over the rest of mankind. They will not have the moral authority or legitimacy to do it. Are they going to divide the world into five spheres of influence? So they have to fall back on some multilateral framework and work out a set of rules that makes it viable. There may be conflicts of a minor nature, for instance between two Latin American countries or two small Southeast Asian countries; that doesn't really matter. Now if you have two big countries in South Asia like India and Pakistan and both with nuclear capabilities, then something has to be done. It is in that context that we have to find a place for China when it becomes a major economic and military power. FZ: Is the Chinese regime stable? Is the growth that's going on there sustainable? Is the balancing act between economic reform and political control that Deng Xiaoping is trying to keep going sustainable after his death? LKY: The regime in Beijing is more stable than any alternative government that can be formed in China. Let us assume that the students had carried the day at Tiananmen and they had formed a government. The same students who were at Tiananmen went to France and America. They've been quarreling with each other ever since. What kind of China would they have today? Something worse than the Soviet Union. China is a vast, disparate country; there is no alternative to strong central power. FZ: Do you worry that the kind of rapid and unequal growth taking place in China might cause the country to break up? LKY: First, the economy is growing everywhere, even in Sichuan, in the heart of the interior. Disparate growth rates are inevitable. It is the difference between, say, California before the recession and the Rust Belt. There will be enormous stresses because of the size of the country and the intractable nature of the problems---the poor infrastructure, the weak institutions, the wrong systems that they have installed, modeling themselves upon the Soviet system in Stalin's time. Given all those handicaps, I am amazed that they have got so far. FZ: What about the other great East Asian power? If Japan continues on the current trajectory, should the world encourage the expansion of its political and military responsibilities and power? LKY: No. I know that the present generation of Japanese leaders do not want to project power. I'm not sure what follows when leaders born after the war take charge. I doubt if there will be a sudden change. If Japan can carry on with its current policy, leaving security to the Americans and concentrating on the economic and the political, the world will be better off. And the Japanese are quite happy to do this. It is when America feels that it's too burdensome and not worth the candle to be present in East Asia to protect Japan that it will have to look after its own security. When Japan becomes a separate player, it is an extra joker in the pack of cards. FZ: You've said recently that allowing Japan to send its forces abroad is like giving liquor to an alcoholic. LKY: The Japanese have always had this cultural trait, that whatever they do they carry it to the nth degree. I think they know this. I have Japanese friends who have told me this. They admit that this is a problem with them. FZ: What if Japan did follow the trajectory that most great powers have; that it was not content simply to be an economic superpower, "a bank with a flag" in a writer's phrase? What if they decided they wanted to have the ultimate mark of a great power---nuclear weapons? What should the world do? LKY: If they decided on that the world will not be able to stop them. You are unable to stop North Korea. Nobody believes that an American government that could not sustain its mission in Somalia because of an ambush and one television snippet of a dead American pulled through the streets in Mogadishu could contemplate a strike on North Korean nuclear facilities like the Israeli strike on Iraq. Therefore it can only be sanctions in the U.N. Security Council. That requires that there be no vetoes. Similarly, if the Japanese decide to go nuclear, I don't believe you will be able to stop them. But they know that they face a nuclear power in China and in Russia, and so they would have to posture themselves in such a way as not to invite a preemptive strike. If they can avoid a preemptive strike then a balance will be established. Each will deter the others. FZ: So it's the transition period that you are worried about. LKY: I would prefer that the matter never arises and I believe so does the world. Whether the Japanese go down the military path will depend largely on America's strength and its willingness to be engaged. VIVE LA DIFFERENCE FZ: Is there some contradiction here between your role as a politician and your new role as an intellectual, speaking out on all matters? As a politician you want America as a strong balancer in the region, a country that is feared and respected all over the world. As an intellectual, however, you choose to speak out forcefully against the American model in a way that has to undermine America's credibility abroad. LKY: That's preposterous. The last thing I would want to do is to undermine her credibility. America has been unusual in the history of the world, being the sole possessor of power---the nuclear weapon---and the one and only government in the world unaffected by war damage whilst the others were in ruins. Any old and established nation would have ensured its supremacy for as long as it could. But America set out to put her defeated enemies on their feet, to ward off an evil force, the Soviet Union, brought about technological change by transferring technology generously and freely to Europeans and to Japanese, and enabled them to become her challengers within 30 years. By 1975 they were at her heels. That's unprecedented in history. There was a certain greatness of spirit born out of the fear of communism plus American idealism that brought that about. But that does not mean that we all admire everything about America. Let me be frank; if we did not have the good points of the West to guide us, we wouldn't have got out of our backwardness. We would have been a backward economy with a backward society. But we do not want all of the West. A CODA ON CULTURE The dominant theme throughout our conversation was culture. Lee returned again and again to his views on the importance of culture and the differences between Confucianism and Western values. In this respect, Lee is very much part of a trend. Culture is in. From business consultants to military strategists, people talk about culture as the deepest and most determinative aspect of human life. I remain skeptical. If culture is destiny, what explains a culture's failure in one era and success in another? If Confucianism explains the economic boom in East Asia today, does it not also explain that region's stagnation for four centuries? In fact, when East Asia seemed immutably poor, many scholars---most famously Max Weber---made precisely that case, arguing that Confucian-based cultures discouraged all the attributes necessary for success in capitalism. Today scholars explain how Confucianism emphasizes the essential traits for economic dynamism. Were Latin American countries to succeed in the next few decades, we shall surely read encomiums to Latin culture. I suspect that since we cannot find one simple answer to why certain societies succeed at certain times, we examine successful societies and search within their cultures for the seeds of success. Cultures being complex, one finds in them what one wants. What explains Lee Kuan Yew's fascination with culture? It is not something he was born with. Until his thirties he was called "Harry" Lee (and still is by family and friends). In the 1960s the British foreign secretary could say to him, "Harry, you're the best bloody Englishman east of the Suez." This is not a man untouched by the West. Part of his interest in cultural differences is surely that they provide a coherent defense against what he sees as Western democratic imperialism. But a deeper reason is revealed in something he said in our conversation: "We have left the past behind, and there is an underlying unease that there will be nothing left of us which is part of the old." Cultures change. Under the impact of economic growth, technological change and social transformation, no culture has remained the same. Most of the attributes that Lee sees in Eastern cultures were once part of the West. Four hundred years of economic growth changed things. From the very beginning of England's economic boom, many Englishmen worried that as their country became rich it was losing its moral and ethical base. "Wealth accumulates and men decay," wrote Oliver Goldsmith in 1770. It is this "decay" that Lee is trying to stave off. He speaks of the anxious search for religion in East Asia today, and while he never says this, his own quest for a Confucian alternative to the West is part of this search. But to be modern without becoming more Western is difficult; the two are not wholly separable. The West has left a mark on "the rest," and it is not simply a legacy of technology and material products. It is, perhaps most profoundly, in the realm of ideas. At the close of the interview Lee handed me three pages. This was, he explained, to emphasize how alien Confucian culture is to the West. The pages were from the book East Asia: Tradition and Transformation, by John Fairbank, an American scholar. (End) [Fareed Zakaria is Managing Editor of Foreign Affair] [This interview was published on Foreign Affair, March/April, 1994] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Malaysia's Mahathir: Leading a Crusade against the West ....................................Jonathan Sikes and Pete Engardio 65 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List may have won seven Oscars in Hollywood, but that didn't impress Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohammad. His government banned the film, charging it was Jewish propaganda. This action sparked an uproar, but controversy is nothing new to the Malaysian leader. Whether he's railing against environmentalists, retaliating against British companies for negative press, or snubbing President Bill Clinton by refusing to attend last fall's Seattle summit of Asian leaders, Mahathir relishes tweaking the West. But he's more than a gadfly. Mahathir is trying to position himself as a kind of 1990s version of earlier Third World leaders such as Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser or Indonesia's Sukarno. Mahathir's message that Asia is now strong enough to thumb its nose at the West is winning a following. His influence is apparent in the new tone toward the West that smaller Asian countries have adopted. Singapore, for instance has so far refused to back down in its determination to flog an American youth for vandalizing cars. ARM TWISTING. On a much more serious issue, Mahathir recently rallied opposition to a move by U. S. and European negotiators to link preferential access to their markets to workers' rights. Western attacks on cheap labor, the main comparative advantage of many developing countries, is simply "disguised protectionism," Mahathir charges. Washington backed off when leaders of 15 developing countries endorsed Mahathir's view. Mahathir knows how to twist American corporate arms as well. After meeting with him in Kuala Lumpur on Apr. 9, a group representing 16 U. S. Chamber of Commerce chapters in Asia called on Washington to stop trying to link human rights to trade. Sitting atop booming markets for everything from Boeing air craft to Hollywood movies, Asian leaders are rejecting Western liberal values. They're quick to compare low unemployment and crime rates produced by their systems with the West's urban war zones. "The vast majority of Americans who visit Singapore leave wishing desperately they could bring back some of the law and order they find here," says a local newspaper, defending the decision to flog 18-year-old Michael Fay. Mahathir excels in trying to put Malaysia's booming market to political use. When Australian Premier Paul J. Keating blasted him for boycotting the Asian summit, Mahathir told Australian companies they would get no more government contracts until Keating apologized. A lukewarm "clarification" came within days. So far, Mahathir's lecturing hasn't hurt him at home. With economic growth averaging 8.5% for the past six years, Mahathir's National Front coalition is in solid control. His backing for Palestinian statehood and other Islamic causes helps him with Malaysia's Muslim majority. But some observers wonder whether Mahathir's increasingly abrasive behavior might foul the climate that has led such companies as Intel and Motorola to make Malaysia a global base for manufacturing and design. "If you were a businessman from Iowa and all you read about Malaysia are bad things, would you come here?" asks a U. S. executive in Kuala Lumpur. Mahathir's outspoken anti-Westernism also makes some of his neighbors, including Indonesia's President Suharto, uneasy. Such countries as Indonesia and Thailand want a Western presence in the region to balance Japan and China, and that will limit Mahathir's influence. [From: Business Week, April 25, 1994] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. A Speech at UN Assembly.............................Mahathir Mohammed 210 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Malaysia is a developing third world country. We should according to the stereotypical western concept of a third world country, be politically unstable, administratively incompetent and economically depressed. But we are not quite typical. We have actually made progress. We are quite inherited stable despite a multi-racial time-bomb we inherited from our colonial past. We are fairly competent in the running of our affairs. And we dare to speak our mind. These are unforgivable sins and we are reminded every time that we should not be too ambitious. We are told that our achievements are temporary, that next year we would go the way of their preconceived third world countries. Of course last year and the years before we were told the same. We are however humbly aware that nothing is permanent. Our detractors may yet prove to be right. That we do well and are not in dire need of their development aid is apparently not prasieworthy. Yet, when other developing countries performed badly they are chastised and told to do better, or else they would get no more aid or loans. When investors are told repeatedly that we are about to explode in racial violence, etc..., they are likely to invest elsewhere. Of course what is said about us is untrues, lies. But these people apparently subscribe to the dictum, that a lie repeated often enough will be believed. We care for the well-being of our people. We want to develop so as to give them a reasonable standard of living. But we cannot be cowed into not speaking our minds. If the powerful nations do wrong, we will speak out against them even if they say we are unduly suspicious, that we have an exaggerated sense of our own importance, etc. We can be belittled but we will continue to speak the truth. Here at the U.N. we say what we feel we should say. Of course the control free Western media will not publish it. But the few here will hear us. In any case it is what we achieve that counts with us. We can do without Western apporoval. Four or five years ago the world was celebrating the impending collapse of the Evil Empire. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republic was still intact then, but all indications were that it had given up the fight: that it was coming to terms with its main adversaries, the countries of the so-called Free World; and that the Cold War was drawing to a close. A brave new world would emerge: equitable, just and prosperous. There would be no oppression and no terror and no poverty or starvation. It would be wrong to say that there would be no 'peace dividends' at all - the Iran-Iraq War, the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the war in Cambodia, some of the Central American wars, and now the violent Palestinian-Israeli confrontation and South Africa's apartheid did get resolved, partially or completely. But the world has not become a safer or a better place for a great many. The Soviet Union did not just become democratic practitioners of free trade, working with the good guys for a better world. It broke up into a number of republics, and Russia has become dangerously unstable and ungovernable. The respected great reformer of Peristroika and Glasnost fame has been ousted and disgraced and has been replaced by another who seems to fare no better. The Evil Empire is no more. But the price in human lives and displacement of people is very high. And the price is still being paid. In Georgia, Moldavia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, much destruction and many killings have taken place and are still taking place. The old economic structure has been destroyed, but the new one is far from being in place. Chaos, bloody chaos, prevails in many places. Far from achieving universal peace the world is treated to a spectacle of unparalleled brutality by the Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In many countries of Europe, fascism has once again reared its ugly head. Houses are torched and people burned to death. And the voters actually approved. With the collapse of the communist bloc, the people there expected help when they overthrew their Communist governments and established democratic free market societies or they sought independance for their countries. In some instances they found their expectations justified. The Slovenes and the Croats enjoyed the full support of the Europeans and were able to mould new nations. But the Iraqi Kurds and the Bosnians learned that they thought wrong. It is only coincidental that both are Muslim communities. The most tragic case is that of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The crime of the Muslims is that they wish for a Muslim religiously heterogeneous state. They were viciously attacked by the Serbs who openly declared that they were and are doing this to ensure that Europe remains Christian. They are not prevented by the Europeans. The cruelties commited by the Serbs defy imagination. In one case, which caused officials in one of the powerful countries of the West to resign in protest over the governments passivity, a six- year old child was repeatedly raped in front of her mother who not only had to watch but was prevented from giving any help untill the child died after two days of exposure. This is not an isolated incident. Muslim women, old and yound and little girls were raped, brutalised and killed by the tens of thousands at the hands of the Serbs and now the Croats. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims have died and are dying and some two million have been forced to flee from their burning towns and villages. And what do the erstwhile champions of freedom and democracy do? They actually prevent the victims from defending themselves. Instead they try to force the victims to accept the partitioning and surrender of their territories which had been ethically cleansed by the Serbs and Croats. Thus are the rapists and murderers to be rewarded? Only the most gullible will still believe that the vociferous champions of freedom will risk their necks for other people's freedom and democracy. When we add up, the peace dividendss accruing from the end of the Cold War have not been really substantial. If at all, the debit side is much bigger than the credit side. The most glaring example is the reneging on the much needed developmental assistance to poor developing countries. We live in the Information Age. There has been and there continue to be an unending explosion in the field of information technology. Today we can sit in our homes and watch and hear a war as it is being fought; witness with eyes and ears a beauty contest as it is being judged and look at bugs under a microscope as it swims via the TV screen. We see all these as they are, where they are without a second's delay. We can watch murder as it is being commited, in all the gory details. And we can be shocked by it. But then we can also watch Michael Jackson doing his moon-walk' even as mass murder and massacres of the most brutal kinds are being commited at that very moment. What we see and hear and witness is what the media decide we should see and hear and witness. If the media wants us to be shocked by the massacre, it can broadcast lurid details of that massacre. But if it chooses to broadcast Michael Jackson at the time the massacre was taking place, we will be stomping our feet in total enjoyment. Clearly the people who decide what we should see and hear will hold terrible power. They can have us dancing in the streets or they can have us rioting in the streets with firebrands in our hands, burning, looting and killing. Can we doubt that such people are powerful? Make no mistake. The people who control the media control our minds, and probably control the world. Presidents can be made or broken by them. And they have. Countries can be isolated or accepted despite violations of human rights, depending on how the media presents them. Now they have an even more effective weapon in the form of the worldwide TV network. Today they broadcast slanted news. Tomorrow they will broadcast pornography to corrupt our children and destroy our culture. They are already doing that in Europe. We will have nowhere to retreat. Already the small nations are being accused of being undemocratic and limiting freedom because we do not allow reception of international TV networks. We hope it is because our accusers believe in the freedom of the press. But we suspect it is because they monopolise the world media and they stand to profit substantially from the freedom they insist every nation should have. Malaysia believes in press freedoms. But that freedom, as with other freedoms and rights, must be accompanied by responsibility. We will continue to expect the Malaysian media to be responsible. We will not forgo the need to enforce this responsibility. But as to the international press we can only hope and pray that they will realize the damage they are doing. We will not interfere with them. They are free to report and to write any amount of lies. But we do hope that occasionally cover the truth also. Power corrupts. But power without responsibility is the most corrupting influence of all. The people who plunged the world into a horrendous war are now the good guys, telling the world how to be humane. The rapacious invaders of the past are now the good samaritans distributing aid to the needy. Will there always be no room for the reformed? We talk of democracy as the only acceptable of government. It is so good that we cannot wait for the democratic process to bring about its acceptance by every country. It must be forced upon everyone whether it is welcomed or not. Yet when it comes to the U.N. we eschew democracy. And the most undemocratic aspect of the U.N. is the veto pwer of the Permanent Five. We can accept some weightage for them, but for each of them, alone, to be more powerful than the whole membership is not acceptable; not before, not now and not for the future. There can be for the time being some permanent members of the security council. Whatever may be the other qualifications, they must include a genuine and sincere interest in international welfare. At the Ministerial Meeting in Vienna this year a more comprehensive definition of Human Rights was presented. Many countries like Malaysia were smeared in Vienna for allegedly refusing to accept the universality of human rights. We do subscribe to the universality of human rights but not to the irresponsible variety propunded by the West. Human Rights is not a liscence to do anything without regard to the rights of others. The rights of the majority are just as valid as the rights of the minority or the individual. A society has a right to protect itself from the unbridled excercises of rights by individuals or a minority which in the West has contributed to the collapse of morality and the structure of human society. If the individual and minority rights are so totally inviolable then you must allow the resurgence of Nazism and their violently racist activities in Europe and elsewhere. But it is apparent that at least the West still think racist violence is wrong. We hope they will accept that freedom from poverty and the wish to develop are essential elements of human rights. Finally countries like Malaysia must take exception to preachings on human rights from people who willingly condone and to a certain degree aid the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Until they redeem themselves there, all their talk of human rights sound hollow. A statement in the U.N. Assembly is not going to change the world. But there is really nowhere else that the woes of the third world can be aired. Not to air them is to encourage the kind of supercilious arrogance on the part of those who are most responsible an yet still presume to extoll their own virtues and to preach to others. Even if the benefit is minimal, the truth must be told sometime. (This was a speech delivered at UN Assembly) (Forwarded by: Jian Chen ) +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=++ + Executive Editor: Huang Tang Executive Moderator: Will Yang + +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ + For subscription: mail "SUB CHINA-NT Your-First-Name Your-Last-Name" + + to LISTSERV@UGA (bitnet) or listserv@uga.cc.uga.edu (internet) + + For back issues of CCF: + + anonymous ftp to: cnd.org[132.249.229.100]:pub/community/CCF + + gopher cnd.org: 2. English Menu --> 13. Community --> 1. ccf + + For contribution and inquiry: mail to ccf-editor@ifcss.org + +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=++