[08.07.31 Spiked 北京2008系列 之十] 双重标准不是自由的朋友

dakelv

【08.07.31 英国 Spiked 北京2008系列 之十】双重标准绝不是自由的朋友
【标题】Double standards are no friend of freedom 双重标准绝不是自由的朋友
【来源】http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/5532/
【翻译方式】人工翻译
【翻译】dakelv
【声明】本文翻译版权归Anti-CNN和本人所有，转载请注明译者及出处。
【译注】本文是Spiked的 “2008北京：挑战对中国的污蔑”系列文章之十。 这也是我计划翻译的这个系列的最后一篇文章。

【原文】

Thursday 31 July 2008
Double standards are no friend of freedom

Is the concern over Chinese censorshipdriven by a real desire for liberty, or fury that the Chinese haveblocked the words of Western experts?

Brendan O’Neill

To the uninitiated, it may have seemed that the internet connection wasa bit iffy – working one minute, as you browsed Google, butdisconnected the next. In fact, the blocking out of information on the1989 massacre – as well as websites on human rights, large sections ofWikipedia, and web material on Falun Gong (the fresh-air-and-exercisecult) – is part of what is known as the ‘Great Firewall of China’.

In the late 1990s, the Ministry of Public Security of the People’sRepublic of China spent US$800million on developing the Golden ShieldProject (the official title of the ‘Great Firewall’). It is a vastsystem that uses firewalls and proxy servers at the internet ‘gateway’to block certain content, by preventing IP addresses – those belongingto websites with ‘dangerous’ material – from being routed into China(1). To get around it, I ended up having to email colleagues in London,ask them to find and open the articles on Tiananmen Square I wanted toread, and then copy and paste them into an email and send them over.

As someone who has campaigned for free speech my whole adult life –and who edits an online magazine which believes free speech is the mostimportant freedom of all – I was horrified to see sections of theinternet restricted in this fashion. China needs internet freedom, andit needs it now.
So why do I feel uncomfortable with, possibly even angry about, thecampaign by Western human rights lobbyists to highlight internetcensorship in China in the run-up to the Olympics? Because, like somuch of the Western attitude to China today, the global effort to ‘putpressure’ on the Chinese to ‘live up to their Olympic promises on humanrights’ seems to be underpinned by double standards – and doublestandards are no friend of freedom. Instead they denigrate freedom,turning ‘free speech’ and ‘liberty’ into weapons to be wielded by theapparently pure West against its inferiors in the cruel, exotic andbarbarous East.

China’s pre-Olympics censorship of the Web, and its alleged plan tospy on and monitor foreign reporters and others who visit Beijingduring the Games, has caused a storm of controversy this week. Therewas fury in the leader pages of the Western press when it was revealedthat the website of Amnesty International, including its new reportalleging that the human rights situation has worsened in China duringthe Olympics preparation period, is not accessible from the Main PressCentre for the Games in Beijing.

Amnesty says the unavailability of its site – and ‘a number of othersites’ – is ‘compromising fundamental human rights and betraying theOlympic values’ (2). The shock that the Chinese would dare to blockAmnesty’s site in particular was captured in a Guardiancartoon titled ‘China’s Olympic human rights effort’: it showed agrinning (possibly demented) Chinese official using the Olympic flameto set fire to a document titled ‘Amnesty International Report onChina’ (3).


Meanwhile, an American senator has claimed that the Chinesegovernment is planning to ‘spy on’ reporters in Beijing, by monitoringtheir internet use in hotel rooms and what they write (4). In what hasbeen labelled a ‘global drive’ to force through change in China,Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and vast numbers of commentators arecalling on Western governments, the International Olympic Committee andthe commercial sponsors of the Games to use the opportunity of Beijing2008 to pressurise China over its censorship-and-spying antics.

This raises an immediate, possibly ominous question: why is theresuch far-reaching and furious fuss over China’s Olympics-relatedauthoritarianism when other countries that have used the Olympics as apretext to rein in people’s freedoms have escaped internationalcondemnation largely scot-free? It seems the Chinese are continuallyand explicitly judged by a very different standard to white countrieswithin the Western fold.
Some of the news reports on China’s ‘Olympian authoritarianism’ havesaid that such things would have been ‘unthinkable in Athens’ (5). Whatshort – or possibly selective – memories people have. During the AthensGames of 2004, in the name of protecting Greece and internationalathletes from a potential terrorist attack, the Greek authoritiesinstituted a vast and permanent system of spying and surveillance.

The Greek, in tandem with the ‘Olympics industry’ (6), transformedAthens into what one Greek academic labelled a ‘superpanopticon’ – thatis, an open prison where everyone and almost everything was monitoredby the authorities. The Athens Olympics were turned into a ‘testingground for the latest anti-terrorist superpanoptic technology’, whichinvolved ‘exploiting real and perceived terrorist threats to prescribeextremely high security requirements’ (7).


If the Chinese want to spy on people, they could learn a lot fromthe Greek authorities. In 2004, Athens installed a vast computersurveillance network, consisting of thousands of hidden cameras andmicrophones across the city that could analyse dozens of languages forany hint of ‘terrorist chatter’. Under the advice of the Britishauthorities – who, having installed more than 20 per centof the world’s closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras on our tinyisland over the past 10 years, are the undisputed kings of CCTV – theGreek also introduced hi-tech CCTV cameras on the streets and roadsaround the Olympic village (8).

Greece spent an Olympics-record US$1.5billion on security. More than70,000 security personnel, including 16,000 soldiers, patrolled thecountry’s borders and the perimeter of Athens. American troops assistedGreek troops in a mammoth three-week training exercise codenamed Shieldof Hercules 2004, teaching them how to respond to potential‘catastrophic scenarios’ (there was none, of course). The then USambassador to Greece was pleased with the results of the jointAmerican-EU-Greek clampdown in Athens, arguing: ‘The job here is to putas many locks, sirens and alarms on the house called the Olympics sothat the burglar goes to some other house.’ (9)


Do you remember any angry global campaign against the Greeks for‘betraying Olympic values’ with their locks, sirens, alarms, cameras,microphones, fighter planes and barbed wire? No – because there wasnone.

The message of this disturbing double standard – where Greece was assistedby Western elements in its Olympian authoritarianism while China iscondemned by Western elements for its Olympian authoritarianism – seemsclear: it is okay for ‘us’ to sacrifice liberty in the name ofsecurity, but not ‘them’. Our denigration of rights is somehow moreacceptable – more legitimate, well-meaning, ‘evidence-based’ perhaps –than theirs. Inexorably, unwittingly, the judgement of China by anentirely different standard to Western countries is rehabilitating theold, foul idea that Easterners are in some way more naturally wickedand malicious than we Westerners: a ‘cruel race’, as Bridget Jones’ mumreferred to them.
Likewise, China does not have a monopoly on internet censorship.Across the globe, nervous and isolated elites have reacted to the riseof the internet – this open, worldwide, border-shattering means ofcommunication – with angst and authoritarianism.

In Britain and America, under the ostensible guise of ‘protectingchildren from harm’ – that is, protecting kids while they are using theinternet and also removing child porn from the internet – semi-officialbodies like the Internet Watch Foundation have demanded the removal ofhundreds of websites and webpages. As Marjorie Heins pointed out in herimportant book Not in Front of the Children: ‘Indecency’, Censorship and the Innocence of Youth,for almost 150 years authoritarian governments have used children as apretext for censorship, as a kind of ‘moral shield’ – and thatcontinues in the relentless effort to regulate the internet today (10).


Often, Western censorship of the internet is more sophisticated thanChinese censorship. Where in China a vast government-funded wallreduces potentially interesting content to blank error pages, in theWest we have the rise of frequently non-state funded filtering systems– ‘intelligent software’ and internet-blocking technology that can beinstalled on computer networks to keep at bay ‘offensive’ content,which can include everything from sexual images to swear words to JamesJoyce’s Ulysses (it has indecent language).

As the pro-freedom campaign group Electronic Frontier Foundation has argued, the spread of filtering systems ‘promotes a normof censorship’. The American Civil Liberties Union – which successfullyoverturned the 1996 Communications Decency Act, America’s own attemptto crudely censor the internet – argues that rating systems andfiltering and blocking technology, often installed outside of theauspices of the state, can pose an even ‘more insidious threat to freespeech’ (11). Today it has been announced that British MPs want YouTubeto vet its content and filter out anything ‘offensive’.


Again, double standards seem to be at play in the debate aboutChina’s internet censorship. Unwittingly perhaps, the obsessive focuson China’s censoriousness gives the impression that the West, beingapparently free and liberal, has the moral authority to lecture theChinese about freedom of speech. It is a bit like entrusting ReggieKray to dictate to Ronnie Kray about the best way to treat businesscompetitors.

This is why I am uncomfortable with the current crusade againstChinese authoritarianism – because double standards denigrate the ideaof freedom rather than making it a reality. The implicit treatment ofChinese authoritarianism as being somehow culturally ingrained, andmore morally offensive than anything done in the West or byWestern governments around the world (in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan),denigrates the humanity and universality of freedom; it turns ‘liberty’into a weapon of realpolitik to be aimed and fired at theChinese by Western politicians, corporations and commentators whothemselves have turned a blind eye – or actively supported – therolling back of rights.


It treats freedom as something that can be delivered to the Chineseon a silver platter by their caring superiors in the West, when in factonly the Chinese masses themselves – with the support of people in theWest who genuinely care for liberty and freedom of speech – can makeChina a free country. It is in the process of demanding freedom andfighting for it that people become free. They cannot be made free by anAmnesty document, a strong-worded condemnation of the Communist Partyof China by President Bush, or by Silvio Berlusconi’s decision to optout of the Olympics opening ceremony. To imagine that the Chinesepeople can be liberated by such actions only flatters the moralpretensions of morally bankrupt Western elites and underestimates thehistory-making potential of the Chinese people themselves.

Reading the coverage of the Chinese censorship-and-spyingcontroversy, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that some in the Westare really angry because the Chinese have dared to block access totheir apparently sacred documents. That is why there is such widespreadalarm that Amnesty’s material won’t be accessible from the BeijingMedia Centre, complete with images of ruthless Chinese officialsburning Amnesty documents – as if this is the only or the mostimportant form of censorship enacted by the Chinese regime. This skewedfocus reveals what seems to lie behind the current crusade againstChinese authoritarianism: a desire to preserve and elevate thearguments, even the ‘divine truth’, of elite Western experts overforeign governments.


I want freedom of speech for all the Chinese so that they can openlydiscuss their political and social problems and resolve them; some seemmore interested in defending the freedom of Western NGOs to lecture theChinese about how they must change. The current moral crusade againstChinese authoritarianism may flatter Western activists, but it will notliberate China.


Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked.



(1) Internet censorship in the People’s Republic of China, Wikipedia
(2) IOC Caves In To China’s Demands On Internet Censorship, Amnesty International, 30 July 2008
(3) China’s Olympic human rights effort, Guardian, 30 July 2008
(4) Senator: China orders hotels to help spy on Internet users, CNN, 30 July 2008
(5) Olympics reporters find Web censored, Toronto Star, 30 July 2008
(6) Security and Surveillance in the Athens 2004 Olympics, International Criminal Justice Review, Vol. 17, No. 3, 220-238 (2007)
(7) Security and Surveillance in the Athens 2004 Olympics, International Criminal Justice Review, Vol. 17, No. 3, 220-238 (2007)
(8) Fortress Olympics, by Brendan O’Neill, Rising East, January 2005
(9) Fortress Olympics, by Brendan O’Neill, Rising East, January 2005
(10) Not in front of the children?, by Sandy Starr
(11) Not in front of the children?, by Sandy Starr


【原文截图】

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【译文】

双重标准绝不是自由的朋友

对不知情的人来说，网络连接时好时坏  -- 当你浏览谷歌时，一分钟以前还是好的，而一分钟后连接就断了。事实上，屏蔽与1989有关的信息，人权网站，维基百科的大部分内容以及有关法|轮|功的晚上信息，是所谓“中国大防火墙”的一部分。

1990 年代末，中华人民共和国公安部斥资8亿美元用来开发“金盾工程”（“大防火墙的官方名称”）。这是一个巨大的系统，它在因特网网关处使用防火墙和代理服务器通过阻止转发那些包含“危险”信息的网站的IP来达到屏蔽部分内容的目的。为了避过防火墙，我最后不得不发电邮给我的伦敦同事，让他们找到并打开我想阅读的信息，粘贴到邮件里，然后发给我。


作为一个自成年以来就致力于言论自由运动的人，作为一个主张言论自由是最重要的自由的网络杂志的编辑，看到因特网的一部分受到如此的限制，我感到非常震惊。中国需要网络自由，时间就是现在。那么，我为什么对那些在奥运期间对中国网络限制发难的西方人权活动家的做法感到不舒服，甚至是气愤呢？这是因为，就像今天西方对中国的态度中的大部分一样，来自全球的对中国“施加压力”以促使其履行申奥时所作出的人权方面的承诺的努力是受到双重标准的驱使的，而且双重标准绝不是自由的朋友。相反，它是对自由的一种玷污，它使“言论自由”和“自由解放”变成了貌似纯洁的西方对付低他们一等的残忍、古怪和野蛮的东方的武器。


中国在奥运之前对网络言论的监控，以及据称在奥运期间监控外国记者和到北京访问的游客的计划，在本周引发了一场争议的风暴。当西方媒体得知在北京奥运主场馆访问不到大赦国际的网站，包括那份指控中国在奥运备战期间人权状况恶化的新报告，他们在头版表达了自己的愤怒。


大赦国际说，对他们以及“其他一些网站”的屏蔽是对基本人权和奥运精神的破坏”（2）。《卫报》一副题为“中国奥运期间的人权努力”的漫画表达了对中国竟然胆敢屏蔽大赦国际网站的震惊。在这幅漫画中，一个面带冷笑（或许是疯狂的）中国官员用奥运火炬焚烧大赦国际的一份题为《大赦国际中国报告》的文件。

同时，一个美国议员声称中国政府正计划通过监视记者在宾馆里使用网络的情况和他们所写的东西来“监视”驻北京的记者。在一个逼迫中国做出改变的所谓“全球化运动”中，大赦国际、人权观察和舆论界的很多人呼吁西方政府、国际奥委会、以及奥运的赞助商利用北京2008 年奥运这个机会来对中国监控和监视言论的丑行施加压力。


我们不仅立即要问这样一个令人生畏的问题：为什么中国与奥运有关的独裁做法引起了如此广泛的愤怒关注，而另一方面那些通过奥运来加紧对人民自由权利限制的其他国家却没有得到国际社会的谴责，反而逍遥法外？看起来西方社会公然地、不断地用和白人国家截然不同的标准来审视中国。有些有关中国“奥运独裁”的新闻报道声称这种事情如果发生在雅典是不可想象的（5)。人的记忆是多么短暂，或者是多么的具有选择性。在2004年雅典奥运期间，希腊当局以保护希腊和外国运动员不受恐怖袭击为由，建立了一个巨大和永久性的监视和监控系统。


希腊和“奥运工业”串通一气（6），使雅典变成了学者口中的“超级全景监狱” -- 也就是一个几乎每个人和每件事都被官方监控的露天监狱。雅典奥运会变成了“最新反恐超级全景监狱技术的试验地”，在这个基地里，“当局利用真实的和假想的恐怖主义威胁来推行级别非常高的安全措施”（7）。


如果中国当局想要对人民实行监控，他们可以从希腊当局那里学到很多东西。在2004 年，雅典安装了一个巨大的计算机监控网络，这个网络包括数千隐藏在城市各地的监控镜头和麦克风，他们可以对十几种语言进行分析，并从中寻找任何与“恐怖有关的谈话”。在英国当局的建议下（我们的当局在过去10年里所安装的闭路电视监控系统占全球总数的20%，是名副其实的闭路监控电视之王），希腊当局还在奥运村附近的道路两旁安装了高科技的闭路电视系统（8）。

希腊在奥运安全方面花费了15亿美元，这在奥运史上是创了记录的。大约7万安全人员，其中包括1万6千士兵，在希腊的边界以及雅典四周巡逻。美国军队用三周的超长时间帮助希腊部队搞代号为“2004大力神之盾”的训练演习，演习的内容是教授希腊部队如何应付可能发生的“灾难性场面”（这种场面当然没有出现）。当时美国驻希腊大使对美-欧-希腊在雅典进行的镇压活动的结果表示满意，他声称：“这里所做的工作就是把尽可能多的锁、警报器和其他报警装置安在一个被称为奥运的房子里面，这样盗贼就去光顾其他房子了（9）。


你记得有国际上的运动组织对希腊通过用锁、警报、报警装置、监控摄像头、麦克风、战斗机和铁丝网对“奥运精神的背叛”行为表示过愤慨吗？没有，因为从来没有过。

希腊在奥运期间的独裁做法得到了西方国家的帮助，而中国在奥运期间的独裁做法得到了西方国家的谴责。这种令人不安的双重标准所传达的信息是非常明确的：“我们”可以以安全的名义来牺牲自由，但是“他们”不行。我们对权力的践踏和他们比较起来是更可以接受的，是更合法的，用意是更好的，是更以事实为根据的。通过使用一个完全不同的标准来评价中国的行为无情地、不知不觉地使那个认为东方人从某种意义上天生地比我们西方人更邪恶、更恶毒的陈词滥调得以死灰复燃。用 Bridget Jones她妈的话来说，他们是一个“残忍的种族”。同样地，对网络言论进行监控也不是中国的专利。在全球范围内，那些不安和闭塞的精英们对因特网这种开放、全球性、打破边界的通讯形式所表现出来的是焦虑和独裁做法。


在英国和美国，在“保护儿童不受伤害” （也就是保护儿童使用因特网时不受伤害，同时把儿童色情信息从网上清除掉）的幌子下，诸如因特网观察基金这样的半官方组织已经提出要求清除数百个网站和网页。在她的著作《不要再孩子面前：“不雅”，审查制度和青少年的无辜》里，Marjorie Heines指出，近150年来，独裁政府们一直用儿童作为审查制度的借口和某种“道德盾牌”，这种做法一直延续至今，并在今天对因特网的不懈的规范中的到体现。


通常情况下，西方对因特网的管制比中国的管制更复杂一些。在中国，一个由政府出资的巨大防火墙把可能有趣的内容变成了空白的出错网页，在西方，出现了通常是非政府资助的过滤系统 -- 也就是可以在计算机网络上安装并且可以把包括色情图片、脏话、以及詹姆斯·乔伊斯的《尤利西斯》（里面包含不雅语言）在内的内容拒之门外的“智能软件“和因特网屏蔽技术。


正如自由运动组织电子阵线基金所认为的那样，过滤系统的传播“促进了一种言论监控的模式”。美国民间自由联盟与1996年成功地推翻了试图残酷地推行网络言论监控的美国“通讯端正法”。这个组织认为分级系统和过滤和屏蔽技术，这些通常未经国家赞助而实施的技术，是对“言论自由的一种更具隐藏性的威胁”（11）。据称，今天的英国议员希望Youtube清理网站的内容，把任何“令人不愉快的”内容都过滤掉。

在中国因特网审查制度的问题上，双重标准又大行其道了。也许在不知不觉中，西方对中国审查制度的过度专注给人们传达了这样一种信息，那就是自由的西方具有在言论自由问题上教训中国的道德权威。这就好像委托Reggie Kray去告诉Ronnie Kray 对待商业竞争对手的最佳方法。【译注：Reggie Kray 和 Ronnie Kray 是上世纪五六十年代统治伦敦东区的孪生黑道兄弟。出自维基百科英文版。】


这就是为什么我对目前针对中国独裁做法的声讨感到不安的原因 -- 因为双重标准是对自由思想的践踏，而不能使其成为现实。这种对中国独裁做法的隐含的处理是有文化上的渊源的，从道德上讲，它比西方世界里所发生的任何事情，或者西方社会在世界上的任何所作所为（在波斯尼亚、伊拉克和阿富汗）都要更有侮辱性质，因为它践踏人性和自由的普遍性。它把“自由”变成了西方政客、大企业和舆论界向中国开火的现实政治的武器，而这些人自己对人权的倒退不是视而不见就是助纣为虐。


它把自由当作一个可以由关心体贴而又高人一等的西方人用银盘传递给中国人的一种东西，而事实上只有中国人自己，通过那些真正关心言论自由和自由本身的西方人的帮助，才能使中国成为一个真正自由的国度。人民是在要求自由并为之斗争的过程中才能获得真正的自由。中国人不会因为一份大赦国际的文件、一份布什总统措辞严厉的谴责中国共产党的发言，或者贝鲁斯科尼宣布退出奥运开幕仪式的决定就能获得自由。认为中国人民能通过这些行动而获得自由只不过是对西方那些道德上已经破产的精英在道德上的自以为是的意淫而已，而且同时也是对中国人民创造历史能力的一种低估。

在读了有关中国政府新闻审查和监控行为的争议文章之后，我们不得不得出这样的结论，那就是西方有些人感到愤怒的真正原因是中国人竟然敢屏蔽西方人自认为神圣的文件。这也就是为什么大赦国际的文件从北京新闻中心不能被访问这一事件搞得满城风雨，而且又配以中国官员焚烧大赦国际文件的残忍的图像，似乎这是中国政权实施审查制度的最主要方式一样。这种带有偏差的关注焦点显示了目前对中国独裁政权的讨伐背后的东西： 那就是西方精英专家在外国政府面前抬高自己的观点，甚至是“天赐真理”。


我想要看到的是所有中国人都享有言论自由，这样他们可以公开评论他们面临的政治和社会问题并去解决它们。有些人似乎对为西方非政府组织的自由进行辩护更感兴趣，因而对中国人应该做出什么样的改变而指手划脚。现今对中国独裁统治的讨伐可以达到奉承西方活跃人士的作用，却不会使中国获得自由。

Brendan O'Neill是Spiked杂志的编辑。