Political Prisoners

One of the headlines running on the Foreign Policy website today (and for the last several days) is “Planet Gulag: The world has many Liu Xiaobos. Here are 15 who matter.” The 15 come from the countries you would expect the self-righteous “democratic” West to castigate for “lack of human rights”: China, Burma, Vietnam, Iran, ex-Soviet republics, even tiny little Bahrain. But some of the things these governments accuse these dissidents of sounds an awful lot like the language used to describe the likes of Julian Assange and Bradley Manning.

I wonder. Will Manning or Assange ever make that list? Or will it simply be axiomatic that no one arrested for opposing a Western regime will be arrested for actually opposing the regime? Instead, will they be arrested for other “crimes,” such as endangering national security?

On that note, I’m reminded by something a spokesman for the Chinese government said top the BBC about Liu Xiaobo: “Every government has ways of dealing with people who the state deems are threats to the security of the state and the safety of the people.” Indeed they do.

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12:59 pm on December 13, 2010