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Comment by haswell | Hacker News Reader

> China does not recognize Human Rights and so it is difficult to say they are "breaking" them.

Whether or not China recognizes human rights doesn’t have any bearing on whether or not they are breaking them.

The international community recognizes human rights at least on some level, and it’s not particularly useful to use China’s perspective as a lens here any more than it would be useful to judge other atrocities throughout history through the eyes of the perpetrators.

Edit: Adding [0] for consideration as some responses seem unaware.

- [0] https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...

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A right without enforcement is just a nice idea. I don't think we've ever had anything close to international human rights. It is not remotely obvious how a framework of global human rights would work in current times.

Poorly, and with lots of violations, is how I imagine the framework would work, but by having such a framework we have something that we can refer to, something that we can point to when countries aren't living up to it.

Yes, it is just a peace of paper, except that it is also not once it becomes something to fight for and something that people believe in.

The US declared itself independent while British troops were in the country. It asserted rights against somebody else who didn't recognize them.

And that worked well enough that later people would refer to those assertions when debating freeing the slaves, and it was that which MLK was able to refer to in his speech.

I won't live long enough to see international human rights become a norm and neither will anybody else alive right now. But that doesn't mean that it isn't important that we start creating the norm now.

> A right without enforcement is just a nice idea.

There was a time that all of these were just "nice ideas" in the US

- Same sex marriage

- Women having the right to vote

- People of color having the right to freedom

- And on the list goes

Most of these rights were not enforced, or even recognized until people fought either with pens or with weapons and progress was made.

I linked to the UN's framework for this in my parent comment, and while I agree that this is an incredibly hard problem to address globally, we shouldn't discount the value and power of "nice ideas".

This is poor logic, even if we agree on the ultimate result.

> Whether or not China recognizes human rights doesn’t have any bearing on whether or not they are breaking them.

"Whether or not your country recognizes Sharia doesn't have any bearing on whether or not you are breaking it and you should be prosecuted for breaking it."

See how stupid your logic sounds when it is told from another perspective?

If you want to fight for something at least try to understand what makes you right and the other one wrong.

> when it is told from another perspective?

The difference is that the other perspective is wrong, and ours is much closer to being correct (even if it still has problems).

So that is why your statement is silly.

And before you say it, no, I do not care about any of your arguments about cultural relativism.

I am perfectly happy, saying that people who, for example, want to kill gay people, have morals that are wrong, and that our morals, which are that we shouldn't do that, are correct.

Are you able to do that?

You are mixing "Rights" and "Laws" in your analogy, which are often directly at odds with each other.

Rights are laws.

In US they are written into Constitution which is the law and which is source of these rights and basis for enforcing them.

"Human rights" are part of international law which is an agreement signed by multiple countries -- a form of law.

>which is source of these rights

Not in the American tradition.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights..."

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/rights-constitut...

the "international community" is dominated by an affluent western minority that had no qualms about pillaging the rest of the world for centuries with no regards for human rights. _This_ is the Chinese - no, the foreign - perspective. If we think it's not useful to consider then so be it, we'll be locked in cold war for the foreseeable future. Personally I think there are more productive methods than hypocritical grandstanding.

don't understand why it's down voted. seems to be a valid argument. care to clarify?

Looking back at what other countries did centuries before is a weak argument for justifying what one does today. The “international community” includes more than a western minority when it comes to the issue of Hong Kong.

yes, basically the argument against 'whataboutism'. however I have a hard time to process the idea of 'follow what I told you, not what I have done' attitude.

The affluent Western minority is led by an anti-colonial rebellion whose record on this issue, while nowhere near perfect or even an absolute good, is the best of any major power in the history of humanity.

When China says "You know what, China? No. We will not break our own agreement. How could you even suggest that? Hong Kong is sovereign" (as the United States recently did in McGirt v. Oklahoma), then we can talk about whataboutism. Until then, that kind of argument is utterly unconvincing.

Sure is easy to give ourselves a good grade when we're also the judges. Shall we discuss track records of interference in external affairs? How many foreign regimes have we toppled in comparison?

Always disappointing to see such vitriolic rebuttals to the mere idea of considering a Chinese perspective.

The issue is its not a Chinese perspective, it's the CCP perspective. The Hong Kong narrative inside the mainland is heavily guided by the media in China. You average Chinese person either has no opinion or just repeats the Party line, because they don't know much else.

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