cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/48320144
[This is an opinion piece by Rayhan Asat, a human rights lawyer of Uyghur descent, an international law scholar at Harvard Law School and a senior legal and policy advisor at the Atlantic Council Strategic Litigation Project.]
At Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney drew applause for his plea to middle powers to “build a new order that encompasses values.” … It was also deeply painful to see Carney feted for his “principled pragmatism” only days after he visited China to forge a new strategic partnership, devoid of any mention of human rights concerns.
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Carney’s embrace at Davos and his appeal to deal with the “world as it is, not as we wish it to be” left me with the question: Will the “new” world order he’s advertising protect everyone, or only those whose suffering is not inconvenient? The old order certainly didn’t. Treating human rights as separate from trade, as if mass atrocity can be compartmentalized to appease China, may have safeguarded commercial interests and avoided friction in the short-term—but it also helped normalize the intolerable.
It’s been 10 years since China began building a sprawling system of concentration camps—designed to bury atrocities behind bureaucracy and beyond tourists’ gaze.
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It’s been three years since the U.N.’s foremost human rights body determined China is committing crimes against humanity. Carney and his “middle power” peers can hardly claim that they didn’t know.
But what happens when China’s façade becomes useful? Even for leaders of the democratic world, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently visited China, it allows suffering to be acknowledged just enough to be set aside, framed as a difference in systems rather than a violation that demands consequence. Public pressure is muted, accountability deferred and appeals for justice quietly absorbed into diplomatic language.
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It’s not just Uyghurs; there are Tibetans, Hong Kongers. International law has never protected Taiwan. Its security rests not on legal norms, but on strategic necessity—especially its dominance in advanced semiconductor chips.
Carney argued that middle powers need to unite to hedge against stronger countries, because what we’re living through is not a transition but a rupture in the rules-based order … The deeper irony is that leaders of the Global South, including President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s advisor, argued that Brazil would continue working with Europe, China and others who champion multilateralism and international law. It’s unfathomable to square China’s status as a champion with its promotion of what Professor Tom Ginsburg described as authoritarian international law.
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An international legal order worth its name is more than just policing borders and battlefields. It must serve as a shield for those hidden from sight, protecting them from the machinery of disappearance, torture, cultural erasure and similar threats.
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But no problem with the Tibetan monarchy torturing and enslaving the masses? No problem with the KMT running an openly fascist dictatorship for 40 years in Taiwan killing and torturing anyone who disagreed with them?
No problem with the US and UK protecting the KMT while they prosecuted the White Terror? No problem with the US training terrorists and airlifting them into Tibet to kill and maim and destroy?
No problem with the US program of terrorism that resulted in the high rate of terrorist attacks in Xinjiang? No consideration of the claims that China’s program that violated human rights have resulted in an incredible reduction of terrorist attacks in the Xinjiang, increased women’s autonomy, increased income, reduced economic precarity, and maintained cultural autonomy and vibrancy?
The idea that countries are appeasing China is a drop of water in an ocean of appeasement for the US and Western Europe.
Don’t you know. When I kill people, it’s called freedom; when someone else kills people, it’s called tyranny.
People who think this don’t deserve an /s.
Kind of expected this to be about the big big news given the title, but it’s just some harvard-educated atlantic council spook talking about China. God willing, we will be rid of these pigs one day.
I was hoping this would be a Uyghur aligning themselves with other people who are let down by international law…you want to say tibet, taiwan, and hong kong? Huh…sure I guess but FFS there are some pretty obvious examples here…Palestine would be the biggest one. But there’s a lot more! I wonder what makes the examples that are talked about the same…and what makes the ones not mentioned the same…
There are a lot more examples, unfortunately. But I guess the author is referring to Mr. Carney’s speech in Davos soon after his visit to China where he ‘revived’ ties with Beijing, apparently ignoring its human rights violations.
But despite Israel’s assault on Gaza, attacks in the West Bank and violations of international law, Canada continues to ship Israel arms, financially supports Israeli settlements on Palestinian land and offers Israel diplomatic support and multilateral cover.
Canada has zero interest in human rights, as shown by their direct military and financial support for ethnic cleansing
I guess the author is referring to Mr. Carney’s speech in Davos soon after his visit to China where he ‘revived’ ties with Beijing, apparently ignoring its human rights violations.
