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Thursday, April 13, 2023

People's republic

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Map of states using the name people's republic:
  Current
  Former

People's republic is an official title, commonly used by some current and former communist states as well as other left-wing governments. It is mainly associated with soviet republics, socialist states following people's democracy, sovereign states with a democratic-republican constitution usually mentioning socialism, as well as some countries that do not fit into any of these categories.

A number of the short-lived socialist states that formed during World War I and its aftermath called themselves people's republics. Many of these sprang up in the territory of the former Russian Empire which collapsed following the Russian Revolution of 1917. Decades later, following the Allied victory in World War II, the name "people's republic" was adopted by some of the newly established Marxist–Leninist states, mainly within the Soviet Union's Eastern Bloc.

As a term, "people's republic" is associated with socialist states as well as communist countries adhering to Marxism–Leninism, although its use is not unique to such states. A number of republics with liberal democratic political systems such as Algeria and Bangladesh adopted the title, given its rather generic nature, after popular wars of independence. Nonetheless, such countries still usually mention socialism in their constitutions.

Marxist–Leninist people's republics

The first people's republics that came into existence were those formed following the Russian Revolution. Ukraine was briefly declared a people's republic in 1917. The Khanate of Khiva and the Emirate of Bukhara, both territories of the former Russian Empire, were declared people's republics in 1920. In 1921, the Russian protectorate of Tuva became a people's republic, followed in 1924 by neighbouring Mongolia. Following World War II, developments in Marxist–Leninist theory led to the appearance of people's democracy, a concept which potentially allowed for a route to socialism via multi-class, multi-party democracy. Countries which had reached this intermediate stage were called people's republics. The European states that became people's republics at this time were Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia. In Asia, China became a people's republic following the Chinese Communist Revolution and North Korea also became a people's republic.

Many of these countries also called themselves socialist states in their constitutions. During the 1960s, Romania and Yugoslavia ceased to use the term people's in their official name, replacing it with the term socialist as a mark of their ongoing political development. Czechoslovakia also added the term socialist into its name during this period. It had become a people's republic in 1948, but the country had not used that term in its official name. Albania used both terms in its official name from 1976 to 1991. In the West, these countries are often referred to as communist states. However, none of them described themselves in that way as they regarded communism as a level of political development that they had not yet reached. Terms used by communist states include national-democratic, people's democratic, socialist-oriented and workers and peasants' states. The communist parties in these countries often governed in coalitions with other progressive parties.

During the postcolonial period, a number of former European colonies that had achieved independence and adopted Marxist–Leninist governments took the name people's republic. Angola, Benin, Congo-Brazzaville, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Laos, Mozambique and South Yemen followed this route. Following the Revolutions of 1989, the people's republics of Central and Eastern Europe (Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland) and Mongolia dropped the term people's from their names as it was associated with their former communist governments and became known simply as republics, adopting liberal democracy as their system of government. At around the same time, most of the former European colonies that had taken the people's republic name began to replace it as part of their move away from Marxism–Leninism and towards democratic socialism or social democracy.

List of Marxist–Leninist people's republics

The current officially Marxist-Leninist states that use the term people's republic in their full names include:

Historical examples include:

Other titles commonly used by Marxist–Leninist and socialist states are democratic republic (e.g. the German Democratic Republic, the Somali Democratic Republic, or the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia between 1943 and 1946) and socialist republic (e.g. the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam).

Non-Marxist–Leninist people's republics

The collapse of the European empires during and following World War I resulted in the creation of a number of short-lived non-Marxist–Leninist people's republics during the revolutions of 1917–1923. In many cases, these governments were unrecognised and often had Marxist–Leninist rivals.

The Russian Empire produced several non-Marxist–Leninist people's republics after the October Revolution. The Crimean People's Republic was opposed to the Bolsheviks and the latter went on to capture its territory and establish the Taurida Soviet Socialist Republic. The anti-Bolshevik Kuban People's Republic was established in Russia's Kuban region and survived until the Red Army captured the area. The socialist-leaning Ukrainian People's Republic declared its independence from the Russian Republic, but it had a rival in the Ukrainian People's Republic of Soviets (later the Ukrainian Soviet Republic) whom it fought during the Ukrainian War of Independence. The Belarusian People's Republic tried to create an independent Belarusian state in land controlled by the German Imperial Army, but the Socialist Soviet Republic of Byelorussia replaced it once the German army had left. All of these territories finally became constituent parts of the Soviet Union.

In the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, the West Ukrainian People's Republic was formed in eastern Galicia under the political guidance of Greek Catholic, liberal and socialist ideologies. The territory was subsequently absorbed into the Second Polish Republic. Meanwhile, the Hungarian People's Republic was established, briefly replaced by the Hungarian Soviet Republic and eventually succeeded by the Kingdom of Hungary.

In Germany, the People's State of Bavaria (German: Volksstaat Bayern) was a short-lived socialist state and people's republic formed in Bavaria during the German Revolution of 1918–1919 as a rival to the Bavarian Soviet Republic. It was succeeded by the Free State of Bavaria which existed within the Weimar Republic.

During the 1960s and 1970s, a number of former colonies that had gained independence through revolutionary liberation struggles adopted the name people's republic. Examples include Algeria, Bangladesh and Zanzibar. Libya adopted the term after its Al Fateh Revolution against King Idris.

In the 2010s, Ukraine's pro-Russian separatist movements during the Russo-Ukrainian War declared the oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk to be people's republics, but they did not receive diplomatic recognition from the international community. In 2022, during the prelude to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia became the first UN member to formally recognise both the DPR and LPR.

List of non-Marxist–Leninist people's republics

Current non-Marxist–Leninist people's republics include:

Historical people's republics include:

Other uses

As a term, people's republic is sometimes used by critics and satirists to describe areas perceived to be dominated by left-wing politics, such as the People's Republic of South Yorkshire.

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People's democracy (Marxism–Leninism)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

People's democracy is a theoretical concept within Marxism–Leninism and a form of government which developed after World War II and allows in theory for a multi-class and multi-party democracy on the pathway to socialism. People's democracy was established in a number of European and Asian countries as a result of the people's democratic revolutions of the 1940s.

Prior to the rise of fascism, communist parties had called for soviet republics to be implemented throughout the world, such as the Chinese Soviet Republic or William Z. Foster's book Toward Soviet America. However, after the rise of fascism, and the creation of the popular front governments in France and Spain, the Comintern under Bulgarian Communist leader Georgi Dimitrov began to advocate for a multi-party united front of the communist and social democratic parties as opposed to the one-party proletarian dictatorship of the Soviets.

The possibility of a multi-party people's democracy was first put forward during the popular front period against fascism.

History

György Lukács was one of the first to suggest the possibility of communists working for a democratic republic in his Blum Thesis of 1929. Lukacs recounted in 1967:

It is hard for most people to imagine how paradoxical this sounded then. Although the Sixth Congress of the Third International did mention this as a possibility, it was generally thought to be historically impossible to take such a retrograde step, as Hungary had already been a soviet republic in 1919.

Joseph Stalin, who had been in Soviet administration throughout the Russian Civil War and its aftermath, well remembered how the attempt to fight Bolshevik-style revolutions throughout Europe during and after World War I—the revolutions of 1917–1923—had mostly failed. Many Old Bolsheviks had thought at the time that these revolutions were the vanguard of the world revolution, but the latter never materialized. It was this very reality that had driven the development of the idea of socialism in one country as the Soviet Union's own path.

With such historical lessons in mind, Stalin suggested to the leaders of Eastern European communist parties at the end of World War II that they should present themselves as advocates of a people's democracy. After the defeat of Nazi Germany and its allies in Eastern Europe, Marxist–Leninist theoreticians first began expanding on the idea of a possible peaceful transition to socialism, given the presence of the Soviet Red Army. In most areas of Eastern Europe, the Communist Parties did not immediately take power directly but instead worked in Popular Coalitions with progressive parties. Unlike the Soviet Union, which was officially a one-party state, a majority of people's democracies of Eastern Europe were theoretically multi-party states. Many of the ruling Marxist–Leninist parties no longer called themselves Communist in their official title as they had in the 1930s. The Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) for instance was ostensibly a union of the SPD and the Communist Party of Germany. Many of the other European states were ruled by Worker's or Socialist Parties. In the Eastern Bloc, people's democracy was a synonym for socialist state.

The origins of the idea of people's democracy can be traced back to both the idea of popular front governments, which were coalitions of anti-fascist parties, such as the one that existed in Spain. The theory was perhaps first articulated by Bulgarian Communist Georgi Dimitrov.

Scholars have argued that the emergence of the theory acted as a way for the Soviet Union to legitimize its establishment of Socialist States, as well as the method by which they would be established. For one, the Soviet Union had to justify the creation of Soviet-aligned governments to the existing, non-Communist, political movements within Eastern European countries. The theory of people's democracy allowed the Soviet Union to assuage the concerns of such movements, as people's democracies were to be governed by a coalition of Anti-fascist parties. By creating a theory which contrasted the peaceful nature by which Socialism would be established in Eastern European countries with the violent nature it was established in the Soviet Union, the USSR was able to ease fears that many in anti-fascist parties had of a Bolshevik-style revolution.

Many Scholars and Historians have argued that the theory of people's democracy grew out of a need for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to find a place within Marxist–Leninist theory for the different circumstances under which Socialism would emerge in Eastern Europe. For example, Ruth Amende Rosa stated:

the U.S.S.R. apparently felt obliged to establish its own position of ideological "leadership" in eastern Europe and, simultaneously, to fit the concept of "people's democracy" into the body of orthodox Marxist-Leninist doctrine. — Ruth Amende Rosa, World Politics , Jul., 1949, Vol. 1, No. 4, The Soviet Theory of "People's Democracy"

The work of Marxian economist Eugen Varga was of particular importance to the development of the theory of people's democracy. His work entitled Changes in the Economy of Capitalism Resulting from the Second World War gave an explanation as to why newly emerging States were different from the Soviet model while still giving them their place as a transition stage facilitating the emergence of Socialism within the dominant Soviet theory of Marxism–Leninism. However, in 1949, Varga recanted his ideas, and many high ranking Communists, including Dimitrov, suggested that people's democracies actually were similar to the Soviet Union. This reflected the changed view within the Soviet Union that the character of the people's democracies was identical to that of the USSR itself.

The theory of people's democracy underwent a considerable change. In its initial conception, the theory stated that the newly emerging Soviet-aligned states were totally different in character than the Soviet Union, whereas its later conception held that they were quite similar to the Soviet model. The reason for this change is debatable. While Richard F. Staar argues that the initial instance of the theory was used to conceal the true intentions of establishing a one-party dictatorship in the model of the Soviet Union, other scholars have suggested that the uncertain nature of the time when the original theory was formulated help to account for why the theory underwent change once power was consolidated.

Mao Zedong proposed a similar idea of a cross-class democracy in the 1940 essay On New Democracy. In 1949, he would make a speech on the people's democratic dictatorship. The people's democratic model would later be applied to socialist states in Asia, including China, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam.

Ideology

While people's democracies were considered a form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, classes such as the peasantry, petite bourgeoisie and progressive bourgeoisie were allowed to participate. Nikita Khrushchev explicitly stated that the possibility of peaceful transition to people's democracy was predicated on the global strength of the USSR as a superpower.

The Soviet Textbook A Dictionary of Scientific Communism defined people's democracy as follows:

People's Democracy, a form of the dictatorship of the proletariat established in several European and Asian countries as a result of popular-democratic revolutions in the 1940s which developed into socialist revolutions. It emerged at a new stage in the world revolutionary process and reflected the specific way in which the socialist revolution was developing at a time when imperialism was weakened and the balance of world forces had tipped in favour of socialism. The common features characteristic of people's democracy as a form of the dictatorship of the proletariat were determined by the broad social base underlying the socialist revolutions that occurred in the European and Asian countries after World War II, their relatively peaceful development and the assistance and support rendered to them by the Soviet Union. Yet, in each particular country, people's democracy has its own distinctive features, since the socialist changeover took place there under specific historical and national conditions. Unlike the Soviet Union, where a single-party system emerged in the course of history, in most of the countries under people's democratic rule, a multi-party system was formed. The parties united in the Popular Front to fight fascism and imperialism; under these conditions, the multi-party system helped to expand the social base of the revolution and better fulfil the tasks facing it. Leading positions were held by Communist and Workers' Parties (this was the case in the East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia). To strengthen cohesion within the ranks of the working class, the Communist and Workers' Parties in several European countries of P.D. merged with Social-Democratic parties on the basis of Marxism-Leninism (q. v.), while in Hungary and Romania the multi-party system was replaced by a single-party one.

Trotskyists and other dissident anti-Stalinist Communists were against the idea of people's democracy which they saw as denying the Leninist insistence on the class essence of all state power.

The Marxists Internet Archive dictionary critiques people's democracy as follows:

Stalin fully intended to establish Popular Front-type governments, that is multi-class governments, states representing an alliance between the working class and the Bourgeoisie. It was quite explicitly envisaged that capitalist property would be protected.

When no bourgeois party could be found with whom to form a 'popular front' the Communist Party created their own. Artificial 'parties' were created to represent the various social classes who were 'invited' to form coalition governments. The presence of 'deputies' representing absolutely impotent 'parties' in rubber-stamp 'parliaments' does not make a two-class or three-class state.

The 'Peoples Democracy' program proved unworkable however. The combination of the pressure of the working class and peasantry in favour of expropriation of the capitalists and landowners and the inability of the Soviet bureaucracy to manage a capitalist economy forced Stalin into a policy that he never anticipated.

In Soviet-occupied Europe, the Red Army was the State. The social relations of production upon which the Red Army rested, i.e. the political-economy of the Soviet Union, imposed themselves upon the countries it occupied. Stalin's diplomacy could not eradicate the fundamental antagonism between the workers' state and international capitalism.

The same policy was carried in China under the banner of "Bloc of Four classes".

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Crimes against humanity under communist regimes

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimes_against_humanity_under_communist_regimes
 
Map of current and former Communist regimes
  Current
  Former

Crimes against humanity under communist regimes occurred during the 20th century, including forced deportations, massacres, torture, forced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, terror, ethnic cleansing, enslavement and the deliberate starvation of people i.e. during the Holodomor and the Great Leap Forward. Additional events included the use of genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, and complicity in genocide. Such events have been described as crimes against humanity.

The 2008 Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism stated that crimes which were committed in the name of communism should be assessed as crimes against humanity. Very few people have been tried for these crimes, although the government of Cambodia has prosecuted former members of the Khmer Rouge and the governments of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have passed laws that have led to the prosecution of several perpetrators for their crimes against the Baltic peoples. They were tried for crimes which they committed during the Occupation of the Baltic states in 1940 and 1941 as well as for crimes which they committed during the Soviet reoccupation of those states which occurred after World War II. Trials were also held for attacks which the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) carried out against the Forest Brethren.

Cambodia

Skulls of victims of the Khmer Rouge Killing Fields in Cambodia

There is a scholarly consensus that the Cambodian genocide which was carried out by the Khmer Rouge under the leadership of Pol Pot in what became known as the Killing Fields was a crime against humanity. Over the course of 4 years, the Pol Pot regime was responsible for the deaths of approximately 2 million people through starvation, exhaustion, execution, lack of medical care as a result of the communist utopia experiment. Legal scholars Antoine Garapon and David Boyle, sociologist Michael Mann and professor of political science Jacques Sémelin all believe that the actions of the Communist Party of Kampuchea can best be described as a crime against humanity rather than a genocide. In 2018, the Khmer Rouge was declared guilty of committing genocide against the minority Muslim Cham and Vietnamese. Conviction appeal against court decision was rejected in 2022. It reaffirms the ECCC's recognition of Khmer Rouges racial discriminations and ethnic cleansing against non-Cambodian (Khmer) minorities. The naming of the Cambodian Genocide is an overlooked problem because it downplays the overwhelming sufferings among targeted minority groups and the important roles of racism in understanding how the genocide was perpetrated. Historian Eric D. Weitz calls the Khmer Rouge's ethnic policy "racial communism."

In 1997, the co-prime ministers of Cambodia sought help from the United Nations in seeking justice for the crimes which were perpetrated by the communists during the years from 1975 to 1979. In June 1997, Pol Pot was taken prisoner during an internal power struggle within the Khmer Rouge and offered up to the international community. However, no country was willing to seek his extradition. The policies enacted by the Khmer Rouge led to the deaths of one quarter of the population in just four years.

China

Under Mao Zedong

A large portrait of Mao Zedong at Tiananmen

Mao Zedong was the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) which took control of China in 1949 until his death in September 1976. During this time, he instituted several reform efforts, the most notable of which were the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. In January 1958, Mao launched the first five-year plan, the latter part of which was known as the Great Leap Forward. The plan was intended to expedite production and heavy industry as a supplement to economic growth similar to the Soviet model and the defining factor behind Mao's Chinese Marxist policies. Mao spent ten months touring the country in 1958 in order to gain support for the Great Leap Forward and inspect the progress that had already been made. What this entailed was the humiliation, public castigation and torture of all who questioned the leap. The five-year-plan first instituted the division of farming communities into communes. The Chinese National Program for Agricultural Development (NPAD) began to accelerate its drafting plans for the countries industrial and agricultural outputs. The drafting plans were initially successful as the Great Leap Forward divided the Chinese workforce and production briefly soared.

Eventually, CCP planners developed even more ambitious goals such as replacing the draft plans for 1962 with those for 1967 and the industries developed supply bottlenecks, but they could not meet the growth demands. Rapid industrial development came in turn with a swelling of urban populations. Due to the furthering of collectivization, heavy industry production and the stagnation of the farming industry that did not keep up with the demands of population growth in combination with a year (1959) of unfortunate weather in farming areas, only 170 million tons of grain were produced, far below the actual amount of grain which the population needed. Mass starvation ensued and it was made even worse in 1960, when only 144 million tons of grain were produced, a total amount which was 26 million tons lower than the total amount of grain that was produced in 1959. The government instituted rationing, but between 1958 and 1962 it is estimated that at least 10 million people died of starvation. The famine did not go unnoticed and Mao was fully aware of the major famine that was sweeping the countryside, but rather than try to fix the problem he blamed it on counterrevolutionaries who were "hiding and dividing grain". Mao even symbolically decided to abstain from eating meat in honor of those who were suffering.

Due to the widespread famine across the country, there were many reports of human cannibalism, including that of a farmer from Hunan who was forced to kill and eat his own child. When questioned about it, he said he did it "out of mercy". An original estimate of the final death toll ranged from 15 to 40 million. According to Frank Dikötter, a chair professor of humanities at the University of Hong Kong and the author of Mao's Great Famine, a book which details the Great Leap Forward and the consequences of the strong armed implementation of the economic reform, the total number of people who were killed in the famine which lasted from 1958 to 1962 ran upwards of 45 million. Of those who were killed in the famine, 6–8% of them were often tortured first and then prematurely killed by the government, 2% of them committed suicide and 5% of them died in Mao's labor camps which were built to hold those who were labelled "enemies of the people". In an article for The New York Times, Dikötter also references severe punishments for slight infractions such as being buried alive for stealing a handful of grain or losing an ear and being branded for digging up a potato. Dikotter claims that a chairman in an executive meeting in 1959 expressed apathy with regard to the widespread suffering, stating: "When there is not enough to eat, people starve to death. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill". Anthony Garnaut clarifies that Dikötter's interpretation of Mao's quotation, "It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill." not only ignores the substantial commentary on the conference by other scholars and several of its key participants, but defies the very plain wording of the archival document in his possession on which he hangs his case.

Ethiopia

Main article: Red Terror (Ethiopia)
 
Sketch showing civilian torture by the Derg police officers

Following the overthrow of Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, the Derg gained control over Ethiopia and established a Marxist–Leninist state. They enacted the Red Terror against political opponents, killing an estimated 10,000 to 750,000 people. Derg chairman Mengistu Haile Mariam said "We are doing what Lenin did. You cannot build socialism without Red Terror." The Save the Children Fund reported that the victims of the Red Terror included not only adults but 1,000 or more children, mostly aged between eleven and thirteen, whose corpses were left in the streets of Addis Ababa.

On 13 August 2004, 33 top former Derg officials were presented in trial for genocide and other human rights violations during the Red Terror. The officials appealed for a pardon to the Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in a forum to "beg the Ethiopian public for their pardon for the mistakes done knowingly or unknowingly" during the Derg regime. No official response made by the government to the date. The Red Terror trial included grave human rights violations, comprising genocide, crime against humanity, torture, rape and forced disappearances which be would punishable under Article 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as well as article 3 of the African Charter on Human and People's Rights, all of which made part of the Ethiopian law.

North Korea

Further information: Human experimentation in North Korea, Human rights in North Korea, and Prisons in North Korea

Three victims of the prison camp system in North Korea unsuccessfully attempted to bring Kim Jong-il to justice with the aid of the Citizens Coalition for Human Rights of abductees and North Korean Refugees. In December 2010, they filed charges in The Hague. The NGO group Christian Solidarity Worldwide has stated that the gulag system appears to be specifically designed to kill a large number of people who are labelled enemies or have a differing political belief.

Romania

In a speech before the Parliament of Romania, President Traian Băsescu stated that "the criminal and illegitimate former communist regime committed massive human rights violations and crimes against humanity, killing and persecuting as many as two million people between 1945 and 1989". The speech was based on the 660-page report of a Presidential Commission headed by Vladimir Tismăneanu, a professor at the University of Maryland. The report also stated that "the regime exterminated people by assassination and deportation of hundreds of thousands of people" and it also highlighted the Pitești Experiment.

Engineer and former political prisoner Gheorghe Boldur-Lățescu has also stated that the Pitești Experiment was a crime against humanity, while Dennis Deletant has described it as "[a]n experiment of a grotesque originality ... [which] employed techniques of psychiatric abuse which were not only designed to inculcate terror into opponents of the regime but also to destroy the personality of the individual. The nature and enormity of the experiment ... set Romania apart from the other Eastern European regimes."

Soviet Union

Further information: Soviet war crimes and Human rights in the Soviet Union

Yugoslavia

Dominic McGoldrick writes that as the head of a "highly centralized and oppressive" dictatorship, Josip Broz Tito wielded tremendous power in Yugoslavia, with his dictatorial rule administered through an elaborate bureaucracy which routinely suppressed human rights. The main victims of this repression were known and alleged Stalinists during the first years such as Dragoslav Mihailović and Dragoljub Mićunović, but during the following years even some of the most prominent among Tito's collaborators were arrested. On 19 November 1956, Milovan Đilas, perhaps the closest of Tito's collaborator and widely regarded as Tito's possible successor, was arrested because of his criticism against Tito's regime. The repression did not exclude intellectuals and writers such as Venko Markovski, who was arrested and sent to jail in January 1956 for writing poems considered anti-Titoist. Tito, during his totalitarian system, made dramatic bloody repression and several massacres of POW after World War II including Bleiburg repatriations and Foibe massacres.

Tito's Yugoslavia remained a tightly controlled police state. According to David Matas, outside the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia had more political prisoners than all of the rest of Eastern Europe combined. Tito's secret police was modeled on the Soviet KGB. Its members were ever-present and often acted extrajudicially, with victims including middle-class intellectuals, liberals and democrats. Yugoslavia was a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but scant regard was paid to some of its provisions.

Near the end of the Second World War, Banat Swabians who were suspected to have been involved with the Nazi administration were placed into internment camps. Many were tortured, and at least 5,800 were killed. Others were subject to forced labor. In March 1945, the surviving Swabians were ghettoized in "village camps", later described as "extermination camps" by the survivors, where the death rate ranged as high as 50%. The most notorious camp was at Knićanin (formerly Rudolfsgnad), where an estimated 11,000 to 12,500 Swabians died.

Some 120,000 Macedonian Serbs were forced to emigrate to Serbia by the Yugoslav Communists after they had opted for Serbian citizenship in 1944. Those who stayed were subject to increasing Macedonian efforts, such as forcibly changing their surnames, substituting "ić" with "ski " (Jovanović - Jovanovski). In the whole period after the Second World War the Serbs in the Socialist Republic of Macedonia were kept from freely developing their national and cultural identity. The Serbs were treated like second-class citizens.

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Wednesday, April 12, 2023

Protest and dissent in China

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In spite of restrictions on freedom of association, particularly in the decades since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, there have been incidents of protest and dissent in China. Among the most notable of these were the 1959 Tibetan uprising against Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, which were put down with brutal military force, the 25 April 1999 demonstration by 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners at Zhongnanhai, and the 2022 protests against COVID-19 lockdowns. Protesters and dissidents in China espouse a wide variety of grievances, including corruption, forced evictions, unpaid wages, human rights abuses, environmental degradation, ethnic protests, petitioning for religious freedom and civil liberties, protests against one-party rule, as well as nationalist protests against foreign countries.

The number of annual protests has grown steadily since the early 1990s, from approximately 8,700 "mass group incidents" in 1993 to over 87,000 in 2005. In 2006, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences estimated the number of annual mass incidents to exceed 90,000, and Chinese sociology professor Sun Liping estimated 180,000 incidents in 2010. Mass incidents are defined broadly as "planned or impromptu gathering that forms because of internal contradictions", and can include public speeches or demonstrations, physical clashes, public airings of grievances, and other group behaviors that are seen as disrupting social stability.

Despite the increase in protests, some scholars have argued that they may not pose an existential threat to CCP rule because they lack "connective tissue"; the preponderance of protests in China are aimed at local-level officials, and only a select few dissident movements seek systemic change. In a study conducted by Chinese academic Li Yao, released in 2017, the majority of protests which were non-controversial did not receive much if any negative police action, which is to say police may have been present but in no more capacity than Western police would be attending to a protest/mass gathering event. The idea that Chinese do not protest or would be brutally repressed for any kind of political action does not seem to be supported by existing data. In addition, it was noted at times that the national government uses these protests as a barometer to test local officials' response to the citizens under their care.

Legal framework

According to the 1947 Constitution of the Republic of China, article 13 states that "the people shall have freedom of assembly and association." This practice was constrained from 1948 to 1991 due to the usage of the Temporary Provisions against the Communist Rebellion, which nullified civil liberties at that time.

The Constitution of the People's Republic of China asserts that "citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession, and of demonstration." In practice, however, the practice of these rights are tightly proscribed, generally under the auspices of maintaining "social stability." While guaranteeing freedoms, the constitution also declares it to be the duty of Chinese citizens to "fight against those forces and elements [...] that are hostile to China's socialist system and try to undermine it." Poorly defined anti-subversion laws, such as article 105 of the criminal code, may be used to criminally prosecute individuals seeking to exercise the rights of assembly, free speech, or demonstration. Other citizens engaged in various forms of protest may face administrative punishment, such as sentencing to forced labor terms.

Tactics

Chinese dissidents and protesters have employed numerous different tactics to express dissatisfaction with authorities, including petitioning of local governments or appeals offices, Weiquan lawyering, demonstrations on Tiananmen Square, signing support for dissident manifestos such as Charter 08, boycotts, marches, and occasionally violent rioting.

The majority of protests in China concern local grievances, such as the corruption of county- or township-level government or CCP officials, exploitation by employers, excessive taxation, and so on. Protests targeting specific, local grievances, and where citizens propose actionable remedies, are more likely to succeed than alternative forms of protests.

As the rights consciousness of the Chinese populace has grown since the 1980s and 1990s, a growing number of citizens have adopted semi-institutionalized forms of protest known as "rightful resistance," whereby they make use of the court system, petitioning channels, or of central government decrees and policies to bring grievances against local authorities. Such protests are occasionally successful, but are often frustrated if authorities determine that it is not in the party's interest to heed protesters' demands.

The failure of semi-institutionalized means of protest can eventually lead citizens to adopt more overt and public forms of resistance, such as sit-ins, picketing, coordinated hunger strikes, or marches. When petitioning to local authorities fails, many citizens take their grievances to the capital in Beijing, occasionally staging demonstrations in Tiananmen Square.

In isolated instances disaffected citizens have turned to rioting, bombings of government buildings and related targets, or suicide as a form of protest. In December 2011, residents of the village of Wukan expelled CCP authorities following land requisition protests.

In the case of pro-nationalist protests, citizens have engaged in boycotts against foreign goods or companies, officially sanctioned marches, and occasionally targeted foreign embassies for violence.

Technology has become an increasingly important part of the arsenal of Chinese protesters and dissidents. Some protests occur almost entirely in the realm of online activism and engagement, taking the form of citizens signing online petitions, issuing statements online rejecting the CCP, of signing support for dissident manifestos like Charter 08. Cyber-vigilantes make use of the internet to publicize and publicly shame government officials and others who are perceived as corrupt, have committed human rights abuses, or have otherwise offended collective values. SMS text messages have also been used to organize and coordinate protests.

Rural protests

An estimated 65 percent of the 180,000 annual "mass incidents" in China stem from grievances over forced land requisitions, whereby government authorities—often in collusion with private developers—seize land from villages with little to no compensation. Since 2005, surveys have indicated a steady increase in the number of forced land requisitions. Every year, local government expropriates the land of approximately 4 million rural Chinese citizens. 43 percent of villagers surveys across China report being the victims of land grabs. In most instances, the land is then sold to private developers at an average cost of 40x higher per acre than the government paid to the villagers.

Labor protests

Labor protests in China's industrial sector are common, as migrant workers resist low wages or poor working conditions. There are trade unions in China, but they supposedly consist of state cadres. Trade unions are supposedly an extension of the CCP in companies, factories and general management.

In March 2010, employees of the Chinese Honda plant went on a strike, demanding a pay raise and a self-chosen union. One employee mentioned that Honda had been willing to compromise, but the government in Guangdong had spoken out against wage increases, fearing that similar demands could be made in other companies. According to media reports, the number of workers' strikes rose to a record level in 2015. The China Labor Bulletin mentioned 2,509 strikes and protests by workers and employees in China. The main reason for these strikes is said to have been because of many factory closures and layoffs.

In 2011, many migrant workers did not return to their workplace in Guangzhou, in southern China, after the New Year holidays. The reason for this is said to have been that more job opportunities had been created in the hitherto poorer provinces. Thus, many no longer had to go to other areas to work and earn a living. It is said to have been 30 to 40 percent fewer migrant workers, normally 10 to 15 percent, although China's authorities had raised the minimum wages. As a result, foreign companies moved their production facilities to Southeast Asia into "cheaper" provinces or even abroad. China experts at the investment bank Credit Suisse called this change a "historic turning point" both for China's economy and possibly for the world.

Pro-democracy protests

Further information: Democracy movements of China

Democracy Wall

Main article: Democracy Wall
See also: Beijing Spring

The Democracy Wall movement of November 1978 to spring 1981 is usually regarded as the beginning of China's contemporary democracy movement. The Democracy Wall movement focused on the elimination of bureaucratism and the bureaucratic class. Although Democracy Wall participants agreed that "democracy" was the means to resolve this conflict between the bureaucratic class and the people, the nature of the proposed democratic institutions was a major source of disagreement. A majority of participants in the movement favored viewed the movement as part of a struggle between correct and incorrect notions of Marxism. Many participants advocated classical Marxist views that drew on the Paris Commune for inspiration. The Democracy Wall movement also included non-Marxists and anti-Marxists, although these participants were a minority. Demands for "democracy" were frequent but without an agreed-upon meaning. Participants in the movement variously associated the concept of democracy with socialism, communism, liberal democracy, capitalism, and Christianity. They drew on a diverse range of intellectual resources "ranging from classical Marxist and socialist traditions to Enlightenment philosophers, [socialist] experiments in Yugoslavia, and Western liberal democracy." Significant documents of the Democracy Wall movement include The Fifth Modernization manifesto by Wei Jingsheng.

1986 student demonstrations

Main article: 1986 Chinese student demonstrations

1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre

Main article: 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre

In the Spring of 1989, hundreds of thousands of students, laborers and others gathered in Tiananmen Square to mourn the death of CCP General Secretary Hu Yaobang. The non-violent gathering soon morphed into a riot advocating greater transparency, reform, and eventually, democracy. In the early morning of 4 June 1989, the People's Liberation Army was mobilized to disperse the crowds by using weapons to open fire on the crowd, killing several hundred to thousands of Chinese citizens.

2011 Chinese pro-democracy protests

Main article: 2011 Chinese pro-democracy protests

In February 2011, a month of pro-democracy protests took place in Beijing, inspired by the Tunisian Revolution.

2011 Wukan protests

Main article: Wukan protests

In 2011, the village of Wukan temporarily threw out its unelected leaders, and elected its leadership for a period.

2022 Sitong Bridge protest

Main article: Beijing Sitong Bridge protest

On 13 October 2022, a protest on Sitong Bridge in Beijing was held by a protestor who posted a banner on the bridge and burnt tyres. Information on the protest spread rapidly on online social media and was quickly censored by Chinese authorities. Similar protest slogans subsequently appeared as graffiti in other cities in China and via AirDrop.

2022 protests against COVID-19 lockdowns

Main article: 2022 COVID-19 protests in China

In November 2022, following the 2022 Ürümqi fire, solidarity protests against the government's Zero-COVID policies erupted in Ürümqi and across the country. In Shanghai, hundreds chanted "Step down, Xi Jinping! Step down, Communist Party!"

Falun Gong

Further information: Persecution of Falun Gong

Among the most vocal and consistent opponents of the CCP rule in the last decade are practitioners of Falun Gong. Falun Gong is a qigong-based practise of meditation with a moral philosophy based on Buddhist traditions. It was popularized in China in the 1990s, and by 1999, it was estimated to have 70 million practitioners.

Some among the CCP's leadership were wary of the group's popularity, independence from the state, and spiritual philosophy, and from 1996 to 1999, the practise faced varying degrees of harassment from CCP authorities and Public Security Bureaus and criticism in the state-run media. Falun Gong practitioners responded to media criticism by picketing local government or media offices, and were often successful in gaining retractions. One such demonstration in April 1999 was broken up by security forces in Tianjin, and several dozen Falun Gong practitioners were beaten and arrested. In response, on 25 April Falun Gong mobilised the largest demonstration in China since 1989, gathering silently outside the Zhongnanhai central government compound to request official recognition and an end to the escalating harassment against them. Falun Gong representatives met with Premier Zhu Rongji, and reached an agreement. Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin reportedly criticized Zhu for being "too soft," however, and ordered that Falun Gong be defeated. On 20 July 1999, the CCP leadership initiated a campaign to eradicate the group through a combination of propaganda, imprisonment, torture, and other coercive methods.

In the first two years of the crackdown, Falun Gong practitioners in China responded by petitioning local, provincial, and national appeals offices. Efforts at petitioning were often met with imprisonment, leading the group to shift tactics by staging daily, non-violent demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. These demonstrations, which typically involved practitioners holding banners or staging meditation sit-ins, were broken up, often violently, by security agents. By late 2001, Falun Gong largely abandoned protests in Tiananmen Square, but continued a quiet resistance against the persecution campaign. Although the group claims to have no political orientation or ambitions, it has since 2004 actively advocated for an end to CCP rule.

Hong Kong

Main article: 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests

The 2019–20 Hong Kong protests convinced Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam to suspend a bill that would have made it legal for Hong Kong to extradite criminal suspects to the mainland. The street protests were massive, with the 16 June protest consisting of 5 percent (according to the police) or 30 percent (according to organisers) of the full population of Hong Kong. Protestors objected to the proposed bill on the grounds that the mainland PRC "justice system is marked by torture, forced confessions, arbitrary detentions and unfair trials."

Online protests

See also: Internet censorship in China

Chinese dissidents have increasingly embraced the internet as a means of expressing and organizing opposition to the government or CCP leadership, and technology tools have become a principle way for Chinese citizens to spread otherwise censored news and information. Although the internet in China is subject to severe censorship and surveillance, the relative anonymity and security in number that it offers has made it a preferred forum for expressing dissenting views and opinions.

A number of prominent Chinese dissidents, scholars, and rights defenders, and artists maintain blogs to which they post essays and criticisms of the CCP. One innovative use of the internet as a medium for protest was a video created by artist Ai Weiwei, in which different Chinese citizens were filmed reading the names of victims from the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, who died due to poor school construction.

Several high-profile instances of human rights abuses have sparked online protests. The 2009 arrest of 21-year-old Deng Yujiao, who killed a local government official in self-defense when he tried to sexually assault her, sparked outrage among Chinese netizens, resulting in some four million posts online. Charges against Deng were eventually dropped in response to the outcry.

Internet vigilantes dubbed "human flesh search engines" seek to exact justice against corrupt authorities or other individuals by posting personal information about the offenders, and inviting the public to use this information to humiliate and shame them.

In 2008, a pro-democracy manifesto authored by a group of intellectuals titled Charter 08 circulated online, eventually collecting approximately 10,000 signatures and earning one of its authors, Liu Xiaobo, a Nobel Peace Prize. The Falun Gong-affiliated Epoch Times maintains a website that allows Chinese citizens to post anonymous, symbolic withdrawals from the CCP, Communist Youth League, or Young Pioneers. The site claims tens of millions of people have posted such statements, though the number is not independently verified.

Anti-Japanese protests

Further information: Anti-Japanese sentiment in China and China–Japan relations

The 2005 anti-Japanese demonstrations showcased anti-Japanese sentiment. These anti-Japan protests demonstrated the mood of the Chinese against Japan. These protests broke out in China and spread from Beijing to the southern province Guangdong. Demonstrators are said to have been furious about Japanese war history books and have thrown stones at the Japanese embassy in Beijing. More than 10,000 Chinese are said to have joined a rally in Beijing and protested against the distortion of Japan's wartime past and against Tokyo's candidacy for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Several thousand Chinese are said to have marched through Beijing and called for a boycott of Japanese goods.

Government's responses

Chinese authorities have pursued a variety of strategies to quell protests. This includes the use of coercive measures of suppression, censorship, the imprisonment or "re-education through labor" of dissidents and activists, and the creation of a vast domestic security apparatus. Authorities have also attempted in some cases to address the causes of frustrations, such as by launching anti-corruption drives, seeking to reduce income inequality in rural areas and developing impartial mechanisms for dispute resolution via the courts or state arbitration/mediation. For example, of the nearly 700,000 labor disputes in 2008 that were subject to court or state arbitration/mediation just under 300,000 resulted in pro-labor decision, just under 300,000 in split decisions and the remainder in pro-business decisions.

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