The Daily Grasshopper

Last week I wrote about the release of the U.S. State Department's annual survey of human rights abuses around the world - "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices." You can read the original essay, "What's Not News Today," here:

http://www.netway.com/~pkeaney/040103notnews.html

To their credit, the editors of the New York Times followed up on the short blurb they ran last week with a lead editorial today on the subject of the report. "A Global Catalog of Wrongs" can be read in its entirety here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/07/opinion/07MON1.html

Here are some of the key paragraphs:

"Around this time each year, the State Department produces a remarkable document detailing the human rights practices and problems of almost every country in the world. Dispensing with the niceties of diplomatic language, the report looks at friend and foe alike with candid scrutiny.

Among the nations that come in for criticism are a number of members of President Bush's Coalition of the Willing for the invasion of Iraq - embarrassing company in a campaign whose aims include liberating the Iraqi people from dictatorship. Uzbekistan routinely tortures detainees and some have died in custody. Eritrea has ended freedom of the press and restricts religious freedom. Azerbaijan arbitrarily detains dissidents and rigs elections. Significant violations are noted in such other coalition members as Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Georgia, Macedonia, Rwanda, Uganda and Ethiopia. In all seven, the overall human rights situation was rated as poor...

China is much freer than before. But its sheer size makes it the world's No. 1 quantitative violator of human rights. Beijing executed more than 3,000 people last year, many without due process. It uses torture, forced confessions, imprisonment in psychiatric hospitals and lengthy detentions with no right to communicate with family members or lawyers."

The focus on China is significant for many reasons, not the least of which is that the Times has a new series starting today called "The World's Sweatshop," which will focus on the state of workers in the world's most populous country. The first installment describes the horrific conditions that most Chinese manufacturing workers endure. Here is a portion of the report, "China's Workers Risk Limbs in Export Drive," something we should all keep in mind the next time we're out shopping and run across the "Made In China" label:

"Xu Xing Metals seems typical. Its 50 workers press metal into strips for thermal cups, working in a dimly lit shed where bars cover broken windows. The floor rumbles with the pulse of six metal presses. Workers have to shout over the roar to be heard.

Li Jiahao, a 38-year-old master craftsman at Xu Xing, said he had long worried about safety, especially since his boss discovered he could save money by using wastewater instead of fresh water for the machines' cooling systems. Wastewater clogged the machines' pipes, requiring constant cleaning, Mr. Li said.

'I told him somebody was going to get his arm caught unclogging the filter,' Mr. Li said. 'He said I had no right to speak.'

Mr. Li was scooping grime out of a cooling pipe one day in mid-March when the machine's rollers clipped his shirt, dragging his arm into the metal press, elbow first. When co-workers wrenched him free, he could see his hand popping out of his shirt but felt nothing - the arm was hanging by a few tendons. It had to be amputated.

Recuperating at the First People's Hospital, where he is teaching himself to write and use chopsticks left-handed, Mr. Li said his boss at Xu Xing, Hu Xu, had paid for his medical care but refused to discuss compensation. 'The boss claims this was operator error, not a safety problem,' Mr. Li said."

The whole article deserves to be read. I'll continue linking to the series for those who don't buy the Times. Here's the first installment:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/07/international/asia/07CHIN.html

You may recall that I wrote about China early on in the "Daily Grasshopper" series (http://www.netway.com/~pkeaney/012303bushboxes.html). I pointed out that China had been granted Permanent Normal Trade Relations status by the Clinton administration, at the behest of the Business Roundtable, and over the protests of human rights activists who worried about abuses like those enumerated in the State Department report and the New York Times article. Of course, big business won the day, and China is now the world's leading exporter to the U.S., as "millions of eager Chinese entrepreneurs help fill the shelves of Wal-Mart and Target with sneakers and DVD players that get better and cheaper year after year," the Times informs us.

Although the Times deserves some credit for its willingness to look into the gruesome realities faced by Chinese men and women working as wage slaves for multinational corporations like Wal-Mart, there is a missing angle. The article refers to "an endless supply of transient workers" in places like Yongkang, the "hardware capital of China." The reporter, Joseph Kahn, notes matter-of-factly that the workers "do not have the right to organize unions or, in some cases, even discuss workplace hazards." Later on we are told that "the riskiest jobs in Yongkang, as in war, go to green recruits, fresh from the farm."

Why are these Chinese leaving the farm? There are many reasons, but one that deserves our attention is the role being played by massive dam projects, such as the Three Gorges River dam, which is the largest in the world. Our old friend, the World Bank, is implicated in more than a few cases. Here's part of a report from a September 25, 2000, Financial Times article on World Bank projects and their impact ("World Bank schemes cost 2.6m Their Homes"):

"Figures compiled by the bank for a report dated last October suggest 223 of its projects under way last October would result in the involuntary resettlement of 681,000 households and more than 2.6m people. A majority of the projects are in the bank's East Asian and Pacific (EAP) region, and most of them in China."

http://www.probeinternational.org/pi/wb/index.cfm?DSP=content&ContentID=1372

The International Rivers Network tells a similar tale on their website:

"Today there are more than 20,000 large dams (higher than 15 meters) in China, more than any other country in the world. Evidence of the last 50 years shows these dams have not guaranteed flood control. In most cases the dams have had destructive social consequences including the forced resettlement of over 10 million people. Dams in China have suffered some of the world's largest failures and in one season, dam collapses in Henan province caused 230,000 fatalities."

http://www.irn.org/programs/china/

Foreign investment in dams in developing countries is creating a situation similar to the one being caused by agricultural subsidies in countries like Mexico: millions of peasants are being forced off their land, into manufacturing zones that are springing up to take advantage of "an endless supply of transient workers."

The Three Gorges project is nearing completion. According to IRN, the reservoir in the Yangtze River Valley will start to fill on Thursday. Here's part of their press release, from last week:

"The reservoir of the controversial Three Gorges Dam in China’s Yangtze Valley will start filling on April 10, aggravating already serious human rights problems in the resettlement areas. A new report documents that the resettlement problems of this publicly funded dam have not been resolved, and that project construction is linked to systematic human rights violations. At the annual session of the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, International Rivers Network and Friends of the Earth International have called on China to suspend submergence until the project’s human rights problems have been resolved. They have also called on Western governments that fund the dam to ensure that the project comply with international norms.

So far, 640,000 people have been resettled for the Three Gorges Project. An investigative report published by International Rivers Network (IRN) reveals that the record of compensating and rehabilitating the affected people has been abysmal in many areas, and does not meet international standards. 'Land and jobs to rehabilitate affected people are no longer available', says Doris Shen, coordinator of IRN’s East Asia program. 'In many cases, resettlement funds have been diverted into other investments, or into the pockets of local officials.'"

http://www.irn.org/programs/threeg/index.asp?id=030403.reservoir.html

Not even the World Bank is backing the Three Gorges project - but U.S. investment bank Morgan Stanley Dean Witter is. Read more about the campaign against the U.S. investors behind the dam at the IRN site:

http://www.irn.org/programs/threeg/index.asp?id=030120.background.html

Around the world, peasants are being forced out of the agricultural economy and into the industrial economy, following a model of "progress" that has been repeated around the world at various times in human history. Often, economic necessity forces the issue, as was the case in Mexico, where corn farmers couldn't compete with the subsidized product coming from their northern neighbor. In other cases, massive development projects like the Chinese dams are the culprit. In still other cases, such as in Colombia (one of the leading recipients of U.S. military aid), "death squads" linked to the armed forces clear indigenous people off their land with the threat of or use of violence. In each case, two things are usually accomplished: the land can be put to more profitable use, and the peasants become part of the "endless supply of transient workers," with benefits accruing to the usual suspects.

PK
http://www.dailygrasshopper.com