For half a year China has cut off internet access to the Xinjiang region of North West China. Recently a trickle of the wired world has been allowed to creep back. My friend Josh, who lives in Xinjiang, has suffered near irreparable psychological damage that I hope he can overcome. Still, one fact remains: The withdrawal of internet services is not a human rights violation.
Human rights violations in China are numerous and well documented, so there is no point in defending the indefensible. Locking up citizens because they blog their views is a human rights violation, but not because they use the internet: Their rights are violated because they are not permitted freedom of speech. The fact that they use the internet is incidental, as they could have wrote a dazibao (large character poster), or used some other media.
For the U.S. to link the restriction of Internet access to a human rights violation is puzzling to me. I have heard sounds bites of Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, say much the same. Particularly odd is this International Herald Tribune op ed commentary in the New York Times:
To pull the plug on the Internet for 20 million of its citizens is not simply bad policy, it’s a violation of human rights. And although for now China is unlikely to change its heavy-handed approach to Internet censorship, it is appropriate to remind the Chinese government that persistence in these policies will result in the same phenomenon happening in Xinjiang — exodus.
While I largely agree with the article, the insinuation of a human rights violation for Xinjiang’s 20M citizens is difficult for me to swallow. There will be no exodus for the residents of Xinjiang as most have no financial means to move, and if they did they would not be permitted by the Chinese government. Nothing has and nothing will happen in the future solely because of the lack of internet. There are many countries and areas of the world that still do not have widespread internet access. Are their human rights being violated?
There are few things in life you need to live. Food, water, shelter, clothing. There are other things in life that allow dignity as a human being. Then there are the “nice to have”. The internet is clearly in the last category.
