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Aung San Suu Kyi may have won international acclaim for advocating human rights and democracy in her native Myanmar, but since becoming the countrys de facto leader 15 months ago, she has done little to protect the human rights of the stateless Rohingya Muslim minority there. Long a target of persecution, the countrys estimated 1 million Rohingya live mostly in the Rakhine state in impoverished villages. About 120,000 of them have ended up in wretched displaced persons camps.

Now, in another alarming move, Suu Kyis government has refused to allow a U.N. fact-finding team to come into the country to investigate reports of human rights abuses by security forces in Rakhine against the Rohingya. The decision to deny visas to members of the mission, established by the U.N.s Human Rights Council earlier this year, seems more in step with the repressive military regime that Myanmar used to be than the fledgling democracy it now prides itself on being. Suu Kyi and her government should immediately reverse course and let the U.N. human rights mission into the country to investigate.

The latest wave of violence started last fall after armed men, believed to be connected to a militant Rohyinga group, attacked border guard outposts on Oct. 9, killing nine police officers. In response, the Myanmar government instituted a massive crackdown in the area that included hundreds of arrests. Police officers and soldiers allegedly conducted a months-long campaign of terror, according to reports gathered by human rights groups and the United Nations, indiscriminately killing hundreds, raping and abusing women and children and burning down homes. As many as 90,000 Rohingya have fled their villages since last fall. Investigating all this is the goal of the fact-finding mission.

Human Rights Watch, an international advocacy group, has decried Myanmars refusal to grant visas. Even the Trump administration, so reticent to wade into human rights controversies that might cause political fallout, has called on the government of Myanmar also known as Burma to cooperate with the United Nations. The international community cannot overlook what is happening in Burma, said Nikki Haley, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

Suu Kyi and other government officials have dismissed the U.N. request, saying the government is doing its own investigation. Suu Kyi has steadfastly tried not to alienate those in the Buddhist-majority country who maintain that the Rohingya are in the country illegally. She has said that allowing in the U.N. team will only heighten tensions in Rakhine.

Actually, one sure way to raise tensions is for Myanmar to continue treating the Rohingya so badly (denying them access to healthcare and education as well as citizenship) that more of them become radicalized. In the last week, the government has opened Rakhine to a group of foreign journalists (with government escorts) and a human rights investigator for the United Nations (who is reportedly not touring all of Rakhine.) Thats good, but thats not enough. The government of Myanmar needs to allow the full U.N. fact-finding mission unfettered access to Rakhine to show that it has changed not only its leaders, but the way they govern as well.

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If Myanmar really wants to be considered a democracy, it needs to ... - Los Angeles Times

Once seemingly on the path towards liberalisation, China is now in position to redefine the term for the region, taking ownership and reshaping the term in its own, more authoritarian image

By Rana Mitter

15 Jul 2017

As I walked through central Beijing this week, I passed endless posters promoting democracy (minzhu). One might be forgiven for raising ones eyebrows at a moment when the 20th anniversary of the Hong Kong handover prompts elegies for the fate of democracy in the SAR. Yet it is no longer just greater China where liberal democracy seems in peril. It may be in retreat all across Asia.

If so, that political trend would be a reversal of the past three decades. When the Joint Declaration on Hong Kong was signed in 1984, both the Chinese and the British sides shared two assumptions. One was that China would become more democratic over time. This was the era of top Communist leaders Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, who at times allowed startling levels of freedom of speech that seemed to indicate eventual liberalisation in a way hard to imagine in todays China. The other assumption was that China would liberalise in the context of a rather undemocratic continent. In those cold war years, Japan and India were the only full liberal democracies in Asia.

The situation had changed hugely within a decade. By the mid-1990s, China was in a much harsher mode, its governing party burnt by the 1989 Tiananmen uprising, but also taking advantage of its new double-digit growth. In contrast, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia and the Philippines had democratised.

One reason that the struggle for democratisation in Hong Kong has become so fierce in recent years is that the comparators have changed. Between 1984 and 1989, Hong Kong could believe it was going back to an authoritarian but liberalising power in a continent that was mostly undemocratic; rule by Beijing didnt look so bad, or at least so anomalous. Today, Hong Kong can compare itself to cities such as Seoul, Taipei, and even Singapore and ask why it has less autonomy than these other cosmopolitan and democratic cities. Even a couple of years ago, the direction of travel in Asia itself seemed to be firmly toward democratisation.

Yet if the tide is not going out on democracy in Asia, it certainly seems to have seriously stalled in the past couple of years. In Thailand, a formerly raucous and flawed democracy, is now very much under the control of the military. In Myanmar, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi seems to be in close collaboration with that countrys military as political prisoners remain in detention, and the countrys Rohingya inhabitants have their rights restricted. Indonesia has seen religiously inspired prosecutions. The Philippines has certainly elected its president, but much of its political culture seems to have turned brutally authoritarian. Even in democratic Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abes regime has been accused of pressuring the free media and trying to stack the governing council of NHK, the national broadcaster.

Meanwhile, as China rises, the exhortations to civilisation and democracy are plastered far and wide in its capital. However, little in the direction of Chinas political travel in recent months suggests any version of liberal democracy. Rather, there have been discussions among Chinese think-tankers over whether China is a meritocracy rather than a democracy.

Why, then, is the term democracy so powerful that the Party wants to own it? The answer may be a nod both to the past and the future. Back in the days of Chinas war against Japan, Mao Zedong pioneered the three-thirds system which actually preserved the majority (two thirds) of the local assemblies for non-Party members. President Xi Jinpings party is unlikely to permit that much loss of control, but it certainly wants to use an association with the Mao era to burnish its brand.

But its the future that might be the more powerful factor. If China can persuade new partners to redefine democracy in its own terms, as a system that somehow does not involve national votes, free media or popular participation in government, then it will have won ownership in a powerful linguistic battle. The record of peoples democracies in Eastern Europe doesnt suggest success, but then they didnt have Chinas advantage of decades of high economic growth or attractive technological and consumer goods to make their model attractive.

We now face the prospect of two hegemons in the region with different, but damaging views on liberal democracy. The US administration no longer seems to care for the presence of liberal government in Asia (or at home) as a good in its own right, a situation which has given Beijing the opportunity to redefine democracy in its own terms. Now the region needs a champion who will defend democracy not just for the economic and security benefits that it brings, but as a powerful ethical good in its own right. Ideally that should be a power within Asia; it is strange that a North American power has held that role for so many decades. But does such a champion exist?

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The mystery of China's eagerness to own the term 'democracy' - South China Morning Post

Taiwans president marked the 30th anniversary of the lifting of martial law on Saturday by crediting the public rather than late leader Chiang Ching-kuo for putting the island on the path to democracy.

The comments prompted the opposition Kuomintang to hit back, saying Chiangs role in the process was undeniable.

In a Facebook post, President Tsai Ing-wen said many nameless people from truck drivers, to dissidents, teachers, factory workers and owners of small businesses were behind the struggle to remove martial law.

For a long time, some people have been in the habit of crediting former president Chiang Ching-kuo for Taiwans democratisation, but I would say [the credit] should go to the Taiwanese public, Tsai said.

Tsais independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party also called for the younger generation to have a correct perception of history, saying the removal of the martial law was neither an act of grace nor wisdom by the governing authority at that time.

70 years after Taiwans White Terror, relatives of victims still seeking justice

On July 15, 1987, Chiang announced the lifting of martial law, which had been in place on the island since May, 1949, seven months before the KMT forces led by his father, Chiang Kai-shek, were defeated by the Communists and fled to Taiwan.

The martial law period is associated with the so-called white terror, when many political dissidents, including communists and supporters of Taiwanese independence, were either jailed or executed.

But the KMT, now in opposition, insisted on Saturday that Chiang Ching-kuo was a central player in the shift to democracy on the island.

Former president Chiang laid the foundation for freedom and democracy in Taiwan by lifting martial law in 1987, which was followed by the removal of bans on the founding of new political parties and new newspapers, the KMT said.

It said the changes spurred the formation of many new political groups and expanded freedom of speech in Taiwan, paving the way for several peaceful transfers of power.

Game set during Taiwans White Terror garnering rave reviews

The DPP government has tried to use the anniversary to manipulate public feeling towards the old authoritarian regime in a bid to make political gains, the KMT said.

It also accused the DPP of pursuing a political witch hunt against the KMT.

The DPP has previously blamed Chiang Kai-shek for a massacre in 1947 in which thousands of Taiwanese were killed by KMT troops sent to suppress an uprising on the island.

Some KMT lawmakers and local news outlets have said that since Tsai became president in May last year, the DPP government has sought to not only minimise the islands historical links with the mainland, but also to eradicate the legacies of both Chiangs.

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People power not politicians put Taiwan on path to democracy, island's president says - South China Morning Post

And when President Xi Jinping of China visited Hong Kong two weeks ago for the 20th anniversary of its return to Chinese sovereignty, he mixed reassurances about the citys special status with an unmistakable warning not to test Beijings will.

Through it all, people in Hong Kong have been comforted by the fact that the city has its own legal system based on British common law, unlike Chinas that is proudly independent. That legal system remains robust, and it is one reason investment flows to Hong Kong. But Fridays ruling will deepen worries that Chinese influence is weakening judicial protections.

Since pro-democracy protesters occupied major streets in Hong Kong for months in 2014 a movement that came to be known as the Umbrella Revolution Mr. Xis government has sought to strengthen its grip on the city. But the democratic lawmakers held enough seats in the legislature to frustrate the citys pro-Beijing administration with filibustering and veto power over bills introduced by pro-Beijing lawmakers.

The court ruling was a disturbing and ominous development, said Willy Lam, a political analyst and adjunct professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Like many critics of the decision, he suggested that the judge had bent over backward to create a decision pleasing to Beijing.

Its a direct interference in Hong Kongs internal affairs, a breach of both its judicial independence and separation of powers, Mr. Lam said.

The ruling could galvanize opposition groups in Hong Kong. On Friday night, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Legislative Council, a concrete and glass edifice near Victoria Harbor, to denounce the decision.

But for now, Hong Kongs pro-democracy parties have been forced into retreat after a buoyant showing in local elections last year, and some of the lawmakers who were removed may privately rue turning their oath-taking into protests.

Hong Kong returned to Chinese sovereignty from British rule in 1997. Under terms agreed upon by London and Beijing, Hong Kong retained its own legal system, as well as the Legislative Council.

When their protest movement in 2014 failed to bring about freer local elections, Hong Kongs democracy campaigners set their sights on maintaining enough members in the council to thwart policies they saw as weakening the citys separate status.

The voters did not disappoint. In September, people turned up at polling stations in record numbers, electing many of the protesters who led rallies and spent nights in tents.

It was a triumphant moment for the activists, and the message was clear: Hong Kong people reject Chinese encroachment on their citys freedoms. The next month, in the grand chamber of the Legislative Council, the newly elected legislators took the oath of office.

Thats when the troubles began.

First, the authorities came for the separatists. In November, the Chinese government took the extraordinary step of blocking Sixtus Leung, known as Baggio, and Yau Wai-ching, advocates for an independent Hong Kong, from assuming office as legislators, ostensibly because they inserted anti-China snubs into their oaths of office.

It did so by issuing a legal interpretation of the Basic Law, the charter ensuring that Hong Kong is governed according to a one country, two systems principle and that the judiciary remains independent for at least half a century from when the city returned to Chinese rule. The interpretation orders that legislators who deliver an oath in an insincere or undignified manner must be barred from office and not be given a chance to do it again.

The purge continued on Friday. The court removed the four additional legislators based on the interpretation and precedent set in the removal of Mr. Leung and Ms. Yau, arguing that they, too, had failed to take the oath properly.

The removed legislators include Nathan Law, a leader of the 2014 protests who later founded the party Demosisto with his fellow protester Joshua Wong.

Its flagrant political suppression by the government, Mr. Law said. I had read the oath completely, and the Legislative Council approved it. It only became an issue after Beijings interpretation.

Mr. Law, 24, had begun his oath saying he would never serve a regime that murders its own people and read the Cantonese word for China with an upward inflection, as if asking a question. He was the youngest person ever to win a legislative seat.

By adopting a rising intonation, Mr. Law was objectively expressing a doubt on or disrespect of the status of the Peoples Republic of China as Hong Kongs legitimate sovereign country, the judgment said.

The three other legislators who were unseated, Leung Kwok-hung, Lau Siu-lai and Edward Yiu, had delivered their oaths with various displays of defiance, including by reading extremely slowly, inserting words calling for democracy and displaying props. Likewise, their oaths were declared invalid by the court, and they have been asked to pack up in two weeks.

The four disqualified legislators may not be the last to be removed, since at least four other pro-democracy legislators used props or made defiant speeches before or after delivering the oath of office.

They played with fire and got burned, said Priscilla Leung, vice chairwoman of the pro-Beijing party Business and Professionals Alliance for Hong Kong.

Ms. Leung told reporters she might introduce a bill to amend legislative rules to prevent filibustering by opposition legislators, though she declined to offer a timeline. Weve been discussing that since I entered the Legislative Council in 2008, but we hadnt had enough votes.

Follow Alan Wong on Twitter @alanwongw.

Chris Buckley contributed reporting from Beijing.

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Court Deals Major Blow to Hong Kong's Pro-Democracy Movement - New York Times

Georg Vanberg, professor of political science and law at Duke University and president of the Public Choice Society, asked if I would post his response to his Duke colleague Nancy MacLeans portrayal of James Buchanans ideas in Democracy in Chains. Here it is.

Professor Nancy MacLeans book Democracy in Chains has received considerable attention since its release a few weeks ago. A recent Inside Higher Ed article reports on the critical reviews and Professor MacLeans allegation that these critiques are part of a coordinated, right-wing attack on her work. The books central thesis summarized elegantly in the Inside Higher Ed piece is that Nobel Prize-winning economist James M. Buchanan was the architect of a long-term plan to take libertarianism mainstream, raze democratic institutions and keep power in the hands of the wealthy, white few. MacLean concludes that Buchanans academic research program known as public choice theory is a (thinly) disguised attempt to achieve this purpose, motivated by racial and class animus.

As president of the Public Choice Society (the academic organization founded by Buchanan and his colleague Gordon Tullock), I am writing to respond to Professor MacLeans portrayal. Since she believes that critiques of the book are part of a coordinated attack funded by Koch money, let me begin with a disclosure. I have no relationship with the Kochs or the Koch organization. I have never received money from them or their organization, either personally or to support my research. I have not coordinated my response to the book with anyone. I do, however, have a personal connection to Buchanan. My father was a longtime colleague and co-author of Buchanans. I am also very familiar with Buchanans academic work, which relates directly to my own research interests. In short, I know Buchanan and his work well, but I am certainly not part of the dark money network Professor MacLean is concerned about.

There are many things to be said about Professor MacLeans book. For an intellectual historian, the documentary record constitutes the primary source of evidence that can be offered in support of arguments or interpretations. For this reason, intellectual historians generally apply great care in sifting through this record and presenting it in a way that accurately reflects sources. As numerous scholars have by now shown (see here, and links therein, for an example), Professor MacLeans book unfortunately falls short of these standards. In many instances, quotations are taken out of context or abbreviated in ways that suggest meanings radically at odds with the tenor of the passage or document from which they were taken. Critically, these misleading quotations are often central to establishing Professor MacLeans argument.

But rather than focus on details that others have already commented on, let me respond to the books overarching, central thesis. I take it that Professor MacLean wants to show that Buchanans ultimate motivation and aim was to undermine democratic institutions in an effort to preserve (or enhance) the power of a white, wealthy elite at the expenses of marginalized social groups.

Such a portrayal represents a fundamental misunderstanding of Buchanans intellectual project and is inconsistent with the basic themes that were the foundation of his published work over more than 50 years. Professor MacLean is right that Buchanan advocated for chains on democracy in the sense that his academic work led him to the conclusion that unrestricted majority rule often constitutes an undesirable method of collective decision-making. This does not, however, imply that Buchanan was anti-democratic, or interested in preserving the power and status of traditional elites. Quite the contrary. The fact that Buchanan favored limits on majority rule originates directly from his deep commitment to democratic principles, including individual autonomy and equality. Let me explain.

The central question in Buchanans work was the organization of collective decision-making politics, for short. How should collective decisions be made? What can legitimize particular decisions and the political frameworks within which they are reached? Buchanan approached these questions with a contractarian perspective, built on two fundamental principles that he never wavered from, and that are again and again discussed in his published work over decades.

The first principle is that political and social institutions (and changes in these institutions) are legitimate to the extent that they improve the welfare of all individuals who live under them. Moreover, Buchanan believed that only the evaluations of the individuals concerned (rather than some exogenous standard or expert judgment) are the relevant measures of improvement. These commitments form the basis of his contractarianism: If a social institution improves the welfare of individuals as they see it, it should be possible to secure individuals agreement to it. Conceptually, at least, unanimity rule therefore becomes the proper criterion for evaluating social institutions. Only those institutions that can secure the agreement of all individuals affected by them are legitimate. As Buchanan put it, if politics in the large, defined to encompass the whole structure of governance, is modeled as a the cooperative effort of individuals to further or advance their own interests and values, which only they, as individuals, know, it is evident that all persons must be brought into agreement (Buchanan 1986/2001: 220f.). In short, the very foundation of Buchanans project is the principle that political arrangements should make all individuals better off, and do so by their own assessment. The notion that Buchanan favored arrangements that allow an elite to extract gain at the expense of others, or to impose their views on the rest of society, is utterly at odds with his fundamental stance.

The principle that social arrangements are legitimized by providing gains to all individuals, and that the only way to assess whether individuals secure such gains is agreement, leads directly to the second key principle of Buchanans position: a commitment to the equality of all individuals. It is impossible to secure unanimous agreement to political institutions that deny some persons or groups ex ante access to the political process (Buchanan 1986/2001: 219). As a result, Buchanan concludes, political arrangements must be characterized by political equality of all those who are included in the politys membership, at least in some ultimate ex ante sense What is required here is that all persons possess equal access to political influence over a whole pattern or sequence of collective choices. In practical terms, this means that the franchise be open to all, that political agents be rotated on some regular basis, and that gross bundling of collective choices be avoided (1986/2001: 222). To claim that Buchanan was favorably disposed to institutions that institute or perpetuate political inequality, deprive some individuals or groups of political influence or establish an oligarchy, is simply mistaken.

What then, of chains on democracy? It is true that Buchanan did not think much of unfettered, majoritarian politics and favored constitutional rules that restrict majority rule. But the foregoing discussion should already make clear that this conclusion was not based on an anti-democratic instinct or a desire to preserve the privilege of a few. Instead, Buchanans careful analysis, originating in his seminal work with Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent, led him to the conclusion that in choosing a political framework (constitution), all individuals will typically have good reasons to favor some restrictions on majority rule in order to protect against the tyranny of the majority. As he argued, democracy understood simply as majority rule may produce consequences desired by no one unless these procedures are limited by constitutional boundaries (Buchanan 1997/2001: 226). In other words, what justifies chains on democracy for Buchanan are his commitment to individual autonomy and equality, and his emphasis on consent as a legitimating principle for political arrangements. To paint his endorsement of constitutional limits on the use of political power as motivated by an anti-democratic desire to institute oligarchical politics is to fundamentally misunderstand Buchanans sophisticated, subtle approach to democratic theory, which was committed above all to the idea that political arrangements should redound to the benefit of all members of a community.

References:

Buchanan, James M. (1986/2001). Contractarianism and Democracy. In Choice, Contract, and Constitutions. The Collected Works of James Buchanan, Volume 16. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.

Buchanan, James M. (1997/2001). Democracy within Constitutional Limits. In Choice, Contract, and Constitutions. The Collected Works of James Buchanan, Volume 16. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.

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Duke professor Georg Vanberg on 'Democracy in Chains' - Washington Post