Aryeh Neier for PS Say More

The PS Say More Newsletter | [View this message in a web browser]( [PS Say More]( Welcome to Say More, a weekly newsletter offering readers exclusive insights into the ideas, interests, and personalities of some of the world’s leading thinkers. In each issue, a Project Syndicate contributor is invited to expand on topics covered in their commentaries, address new issues, and share recommendations about everything from books and recordings to hobbies and social media. This week, Project Syndicate catches up with [Aryeh Neier]( President Emeritus of the Open Society Foundations and a founder of Human Rights Watch. In [last week's edition]( of Say More, [Angus Deaton]( the 2015 Nobel laureate in economics and a professor emeritus at Princeton University, discussed how to tackle America’s “deaths of despair,” suggested which philosophers every economist should read, and addressed what US voters need to know before November’s presidential election. Beginning next week, Say More will be available exclusively to PS subscribers. To enjoy unlimited access – not only to Say More but also to our On Point suite of long reads, book reviews, and insider interviews, The Year Ahead magazine, the full PS archive, and much more – [subscribe now](. Aryeh Neier Says More… Project Syndicate[Aryeh Neier]( The revival of authoritarianism in China under President Xi Jinping, to which you recently [called attention]( has been widely reported internationally, but also widely ignored, owing largely to China’s massive economic clout. Now, however, the consequences of China’s internal repression are going global in the form of a deadly outbreak of a new coronavirus, COVID-19, that Xi’s regime sought to [downplay]( evidently putting its own reputation ahead of immediate action to contain the bug. Will this episode force the international community, or at least key players such as the European Union, to reconsider their business-first approach to Xi’s China? Aryeh Neier: We don’t yet know whether COVID-19 will lead to a global pandemic, but the possibility is frightening. As I note in my new PS commentary, if the Chinese authorities’ initial reaction to the virus had not been to cover it up, it may have been contained. This underscores, yet again, how dangerous it is when governments suppress information and, more broadly, when they lack the public accountability that is an essential characteristic of an open society. But governments will not reconsider how they deal with China without extensive public discussion. And, unfortunately, that level of debate is unlikely to emerge unless our worst fears of a COVID-19 pandemic are realized. PS: Any progress would require international human-rights leadership, especially from the United States. As you’ve [pointed out]( that is in short supply nowadays. It seems farfetched to expect a reversal from President Donald Trump, who is ramping up immigration policies that themselves violate recognized human rights, such as the right to asylum. What steps would his successor need to take most urgently – whether beginning in 2021 or 2025 – to restore US leadership on human rights? AN: For starters, Trump’s successor must eschew his practice of praising “strongman” leaders, such as Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, China’s Xi Jinping, Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, India’s Narendra Modi, the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. It encourages their abusive practices. Moreover, the US can be a credible advocate of human rights internationally only if respects human rights at home. That means ensuring that immigration policy (and practice) does not discriminate on religious or racial grounds; treating migrants humanely; protecting, rather than suppressing, the votes of racial minorities; reducing the number of incarcerated people; and not celebrating US war criminals as heroes. PS: You’ve [condemned]( the International Criminal Court’s failure to fulfill its role as a force for transnational justice, pointing out that though it has initiated proceedings against multiple heads of state, none has been convicted. “Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir was indicted a decade ago for crimes against humanity and genocide in Darfur, but was never apprehended,” you lamented. Now, Sudan’s rulers have agreed to hand Bashir over to the ICC. Regardless of the outcome of his trial, does this mark a turning point? AN: Recent developments in Sudan – including the possibility that the current government will turn Bashir over to the ICC – are very encouraging. It is a welcome reminder that it may take a long time to bring to justice those who commit war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, but that does not mean they have gotten away with it. In fact, three other former African heads of governments – Liberia’s Charles Taylor, Chad’s Hissène Habré, and Rwanda’s Jean Kambanda – are spending the rest of their lives in prison for such crimes. Likewise, hundreds of officials of Latin America’s military dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s are now in prison for human-rights abuses, as are scores of perpetrators of atrocities in the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Like Bashir, many of them escaped justice for a long time – but not forever. As for the ICC, getting custody of Bashir would greatly enhance its credibility and thus its effectiveness. PS: The ICC had to wait for Sudan’s leaders to cooperate. Similarly, when the International Court of Justice ordered measures to prevent the genocide of the Rohingya in Myanmar, it was unable to enforce its decision. This highlights, yet again, a major weakness of international human rights law: its lack of teeth. What would it take for the ICC to overcome this weakness and call to account those responsible for the atrocities against the Rohingya? AN: Unlike the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals at the end of World War II, today’s tribunals generally have to launch proceedings before obtaining custody of their defendants. Since they lack enforcement powers, they must depend on governments to hand over defendants like Bashir. This is a significant handicap, but it is not insurmountable. The [International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia]( (ICTY) was able to bring to trial every living person it indicted. The [International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda]( and the [Special Court for Sierra Leone]( were also largely successful in obtaining custody of defendants. These tribunals owe their success partly to their own performance: the more effective they were, the more prestige they accumulated – and the more willing to cooperate governments became. That said, prosecuting those responsible for the crimes against the Rohingya would be difficult, not least because Myanmar is not one of the 123 countries that have accepted the ICC’s jurisdiction by ratifying the Rome Statute. Furthermore, a UN Security Council resolution to refer Myanmar to the ICC would be vetoed by China and perhaps Russia. But all is not lost: the ICC’s prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, has found a partial solution. Myanmar’s deportation of the Rohingya to Bangladesh on the basis of race is a crime against humanity, and Bangladesh has ratified the Rome Statute. Given this, Bensouda has proposed proceeding with an investigation focused on deportation. A pre-trial chamber of the ICC has already ruled in favor of this approach. It is now up to Bensouda to prosecute a case as quickly as possible. If she delays too long, her chances of securing cooperation from the relevant authorities will decline. By the Way... PS: Where are the most serious violations of human rights currently occurring, but being largely overlooked? AN: Abuses against Muslim minorities in China and Myanmar are now well known. But abuses have also increasingly been perpetrated against Muslims in India since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s re-election last May, and yet have received far less attention. In Jammu and Kashmir – a disputed Muslim-majority territory whose special (semi-autonomous) status the Modi government suddenly revoked last year – India’s military have carried out mass detentions and torture of detainees. Prolonged communications blackouts in Jammu and Kashmir also violate residents’ human rights. In Assam, the government published a National Registry of Citizens that excluded some two million people – mostly Bengali Muslims who have lived in India for more than four decades – rendering them stateless. A few months later, the government approved a new, overtly discriminatory amendment to the citizenship law that fast-tracks citizenship for people fleeing persecution in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh – as long as they are not Muslim. It is appalling that such measures have been adopted in a parliamentary democracy with a vibrant civil society. PS: You [challenged]( Yale professor Samuel Moyn’s argument that advocates for human rights should not ignore rising economic inequality, saying that this is an issue for democratic processes. But Moyn’s argument is not uncommon, especially on the left. Bernie Sanders, for example, is campaigning for the US presidency on a promise to make health care a right. Should human rights include such entitlements? AN: As a citizen, I am very concerned about economic inequality. I favor increased government support for health care, higher education, and housing for the poor – all measures that would support greater equality of opportunity. But I do not believe that citizens in a democratic society would – or should – accept external demands regarding how much support to provide or how to pay for it, and that is what establishing these entitlements as fundamental human rights would effectively do. Instead, such matters should be decided by each country, through a democratic political process. Such economic objectives differ from rights like freedom of speech and principles like the prohibition of torture. These matters should not be subject to the will of the majority. They must be regarded – and protected – as fundamental human rights. PS: From Syria to Xinjiang to the US border with Mexico, it seems like the cause of human rights has suffered some serious setbacks in recent years. What have been its biggest recent successes? AN: There are not many places where human rights have been strengthened recently. The most encouraging developments have taken place in two large East African countries: Ethiopia and Sudan. There has also been an easing of repression in Uzbekistan, and some favorable developments in Slovakia. In other central European countries, as well as Turkey, new municipal governments are defending human rights, even as their national governments violate them. Despite this relatively meager record, I am not altogether pessimistic, not least because I regularly meet talented young people who are eager to devote themselves to defending human rights. I believe that, in time, they will make a difference. PS: Many people know who Nelson Mandela and Václav Havel were. But who are some of the unsung heroes of the global human-rights movement? AN: The human-rights movement has many unsung heroes – so many that I am reluctant to list just a few, as it means leaving out others whom I admire greatly. A significant component of the human-rights movement developed in Russia during the Soviet period, and then spread to the rest of the USSR. Three particularly prominent figures – who led the creation of the Moscow Helsinki Group and Memorial, Russia’s leading human-rights groups – are Sergei Kovalev, Lyudmila Alexeyeva, and Arseny Roginsky. All three paid a high price for their human-rights leadership, which extended into the post-Soviet era. Kovalev, who is about to turn 90, spent seven years in prison and three years in internal exile. Alexeyeva, an historian who died in 2018 at age 91, spent 12 years in exile from the Soviet Union. Roginsky, who died in 2018 at age 72, spent four years in prison. In the former Yugoslavia, the Serbian activist Nataša Kandić stands out for her tireless efforts to document war crimes in the 1990s, at great personal risk. Her efforts were integral to the ICTY’s subsequent prosecutions. Now 74, Kandić continues to fight for accountability. In China, I would highlight Liu Xiaobo, who died in 2017 at age 61, while serving an 11-year prison sentence for circulating a human-rights petition. Liu is not entirely unsung: he won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize while in prison. But his [record]( – including averting many deaths during the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 – merits wider recognition. In Pakistan, the lawyers and sisters Asma Jahangir and Hina Jilani deserve to be acknowledged for their efforts to defend human rights and, specifically, women’s rights since the early 1980s. Early in their careers, they challenged violations by Pakistani dictator General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. Jahangir was imprisoned for those efforts. Beyond Pakistan, both women served in key United Nations posts focused on defending human rights. Jahangir died in 2018 at age 66, but Jilani remains active in the fight for human rights in Pakistan and around the world. In Latin America, two exceptional human rights defenders are José Zalaquett and Juan Mendez. Zalaquett, who just died at age 77, was a Chilean lawyer who resisted the dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, in the courts, resulting in his exile. He subsequently became a leader of many public and private human-rights bodies, and among the global human-rights movement's most inspirational figures. Mendez, now 75, is an Argentine lawyer known for his work defending political prisoners. He is a rare survivor of a “disappearance”: in 1976, Argentina’s military dictatorship had him arrested and subjected him to torture and administrative detention for more than a year. After being exiled in 1977, he also became a global leader of the human-rights movement. In Africa, I would highlight Archbishop [Desmond Tutu]( now 88. Another Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Tutu is among the more widely known figures on this list. A leading opponent of apartheid in South Africa, he served as Chair of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a post he used to condemn abuses by the African National Congress just as firmly as he denounced the apartheid regime’s brutality. Again, I could name many more. Neier Recommends We ask all our Say More contributors to tell our readers about a few books that have impressed them recently. Here are Neier's picks: [The Light That Failed]( Light That Failed: Why the West Is Losing the Fight for Democracy]( By [Ivan Krastev]( and [Stephen Holmes]( This is, in my view, an important account of liberalism’s failure to take hold in Russia, and of the recent rise of xenophobic nationalism in countries like Hungary and Poland. Among other things, the authors discuss how imitation of the West acquired a hostile character. [Arendt and America]( and America]( By Richard H. King Published in 2015, this book shows how twentieth-century political theorist Hannah Arendt’s encounters with American political culture shaped her most important intellectual contributions. [Blood in the Water]( in the Water:]( [The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy]( By Heather Ann Thompson Though this book – which won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for History – deals with an episode that took place long ago, it is the best book on the prison experience in America I can recall reading. From the PS Archive From 2019 Neier condemns the indictment of 16 civil-society leaders in Turkey for their role in the 2013 Gezi Park protests. Read the [commentary](. From 2016 Neier says that extrajudicial killings in the Philippines' "war on drugs" are a crime against humanity. Read the [commentary](. [The International Human Rights Movement: A History]( From Princeton University Press [The International Human Rights Movement: A History]( By Aryeh Neier First published in 2012, this book traces the development of the human-rights movement, beginning with the anti-slavery campaign in England in the second half of the eighteenth century. In view of the crucial developments that have occurred in the last eight years, a new edition will be published this April. Around the Web In case you missed it, here are some other places around the web where Neier's work or ideas have appeared. In this interview, Neier – a former executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union – reflects on his hiring of Ruth Bader Ginsburg to direct the Women’s Rights Project and her tenure at the ACLU. Read the [transcript](. In a speech at Hunter College. Neier describes the achievements and challenges of the international human-rights movement. Watch the [video](. [Compelling. Concise. 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