France’s Commitment to Human Right
When it comes to human rights, I can’t help but get the distinct impression that France cares about them, as long as caring about them doesn’t hurt the country financially. If standing up for human rights is bad for the country’s economy, well, French leaders rather ignore that nasty expression.
When Chinese protestors took to the streets this weekend calling for a boycott of French goods and the supermarket Carrefour in particular, Paris went into emergency mode to diffuse the situation.
Although criticism of the Chinese crackdown in Tibet had been fiercer in places like the United Kingdom and Germany, the combination of the images from the Paris leg of the Olympic torch relay — where a wheelchair-bound Chinese athlete came under attack by protestors — and Sarkozy’s suggestion he might boycott the Olympic Games opening ceremony had been enough to stir up fierce anti-French sentiment in China.
Sarkozy reacted quickly (more…). On Monday, he sent a message of sympathy to the Chinese athlete involved in the scuffle, Jin Jing, and this week a parade of French emissaries are landing in China, including top Sarkozy diplomatic aide Jean-David Levitte and former Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, carrying messages of conciliation for the Chinese leadership…
On Wednesday an interview with Raffarin appeared in the China Youth Daily, in which he insisted that this was not official national policy. “While President Sarkozy makes efforts to improve France-China relations, the Paris administration is running in the opposite direction to the French government. This is very bad.”
Meanwhile Raffarin told the French daily Le Parisien that this step was “inopportune” and that when he meets with Chinese President Hu Jintao he will assure him of the “continuity” of Franco-Chinese relations. “The message is clear: France’s policy toward China is not changing.”
The article then quotes some newspapers:
The left-wing Die Tageszeitung writes:
“A few calls for a boycott of a French supermarket in China were enough to cause President Nicolas Sarkozy’s commitment to human rights to falter badly. … Naturally it’s easy to talk about freedom when there are no important economic interests at stake. But if it is about civil rights in the giant market that is China, then it is considerably more difficult to stick to big principles.”
The left-leaning Berliner Zeitung writes:
“After the Olympic torch was attacked in Paris because of Tibet, Beijing made its wrath felt in Paris and staged ’spontaneous’ demonstrations in several cities. Sarkozy has shown that he is prepared to grovel, by immediately sending three top-ranking emissaries to meekly renew France’s ‘deep ties’ with China.”
What else is new? Isn’t France the country that wanted to do business with Saddam, even though Saddam had killed tens of thousands Iraqis? Isn’t France also the Western country that has good relationships with virtually every dictator in the world and especially in the Middle East?
If there’s one European country that has no right to act as if it’s morally superior to other Western countries it’s France.
Topics: Europe
Posted by Michael van der Galien at 3:19 pm on Wednesday, April 23, 2008
One Response to “France’s Commitment to Human Right”
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April 23rd, 2008 at 3:45 pm
In this way, France as a nation is a lot like American liberals individually. If France drove a car, I’m sure it would have a faded FREE TIBET sticker plastered on the back of it. Soon to be covered with a sticker for some fresh but pleasantly hopeless cause, now that people are actually demanding that we should, you know, DO something to FREE TIBET.