It seems that people often seek connections. Whether through shared experiences, ethnicities, beliefs, values, or nationalities, people look for comfort in oneness and unity. Stateless people, in Hannah Ardent’s piece, Sovereignty, are depicted as desperate, aimless wanderers because they, against their will, do not have a nationality that ties them to other people or a government. However, in her argument, Ardent excludes a population that contradicts her description of the archetypal stateless person. This population that sits in opposition to Ardent’s characterization are citizens that consciously attempt to break away from state regulations because of their dissatisfaction with the state that they live in. The people that attempt to separate themselves from certain aspects of a state could be considered stateless, as they do not identify themselves as law abiding, nationalistic citizens. Dissidents and activists in China present a unique juxtaposition to stateless people that crave a nationality, as described by Ardent. These Chinese citizens are dismayed by the governmental state of affairs, try to separate themselves from state laws as a form of protest, but when caught by the government, are forced to associate with the state system through jail time or torture.
In recent months, the Chinese government has taken a heightened interest in civilians that act out as an attempt to break away from or disrupt the state. The cause of this governmental “crackdown” can be traced to Chinese officials’ fear that the events that took place in the Middle East this past spring would cause their citizens to have their own rebellion, in what a post on the Internet dubbed, the “Jasmine Revolution” (Branigan).
In order to rid of the threat of this “revolution,” the Chinese government increased its number of “enforced disappearances,” and is looking to make it legal for activists and dissidents to disappear into police custody and go for months without being seen (Wines). Ai WeiWei, an artist and outspoken critic of the Chinese government, was taken into police custody April 3, and did not appear for two months after he mysteriously vanished. Other Chinese activists and dissidents have been missing for much longer-- Gao Zhisheng, a human rights lawyer, vanished for over a year (Zirulnick). The recent increase in these types of disappearances threatens the human rights of Chinese citizens, as even the most peaceful of protests against the state can suddenly result in jail time or torture.
From the perspective of the Chinese government, these disappearances are successful on two accounts. Foremost, enforced disappearances rid of possible threats to society for as long as the government deems necessary. Additionally, less apparent, but possibly more devious, as deputy director of the Asia Pacific sector for Amnesty International, Catherine Baber, says, when released back into society the activist or dissident is “‘physically free but clearly muzzled,’” she adds, “‘and that's not anyone's idea of freedom’” (Calum). At this point, the activist or dissident is clearly under state control. After suffering the discomfort of prison, or even pains of torture, a citizen is much more likely to follow state rules and cultural norms than attempt to break away again.
The struggle between state officials and activists and muckrakers in China contradicts a central argument of Ardent’s piece, in which she states, “If a small burglary is likely to improve [a stateless person’s] legal position, at least temporarily, one may be sure he has been deprived of human rights. For then a criminal offense becomes the best opportunity to regain some kind of human equality…” (Ardent 286-87). Ardent makes clear that a stateless person desires to break the law in order to gain a connection to a state, and to regain a definitive nationality. Ardent continues, “Even if he is penniless he can now get a lawyer, complain about his jailers, and he will be listened to respectfully” (Ardent 286-87). According to Ardent, a stateless person wants to be under sovereign rule to have an identity, even if this means committing a crime in order to go to a state jail.
Ardent’s examples that create a connection between statelessness and crime leave out the concept of a person acting against the law as a way to un-identify with a state rather than to identity with it. Liu Xiaobo participated in the Tiananmen Square protests, Ran Yunfei blogged and wrote in his magazine about his qualms with the government, and Tan Zuoren investigated the causes and effects of the 2008 earthquake in relation to the lack of governmental aid (Zirulnick). These three “dissidents” are prime examples of people that act against the state and its laws in order to break away from sovereign rules and nationalist identities.
For both the civilian that steals a loaf of bread to become part of the state system and the person that speaks against the government to break away from state rules, there are consequences. The person that steals has displayed the extent of their desperation. For instance, the Roma, Eastern European gypsies, are placed in schools for the mentally handicapped because they are not considered true citizens. Many Roma drop out of school, and become criminals because, through this lifestyle, they feel more like citizens, and may have a glimmer of hope at becoming part of the state by being sent to prison (“Hard traveling”). This cycle of suffering (from statelessness to jail time) makes for a harsh existence, even if, ultimately, the person feels they have gained a national identity.
The person that goes against the government for the purpose of protesting the state also endures consequences. Similar to the aforementioned Chinese dissidents, these people may gain public fame and vast recognition as heroes to some, but the realities are bleak. Not only may the individual be forced to admit to crimes through torture, but also when (if) they are eventually released from imprisonment, their likelihood of speaking out again has been diminished.
In addition to a range of consequences, a more overarching topic that connects people who desire a state and people who crave to be removed from the state is freedom. Stateless people may be wanderers, but they can act as they wish, speak out, be activists or dissidents because even jail time is not seen as a punishment. Yet, people that have a state, although bound to rules, customs, and regulations, are protected by the state and are grounded in something concrete. They have laws and a cultural status quo that hand them an identity.
In the case of freedom, the dialectic that I am left questioning is if an individual has more freedom when stateless, and does not have an obligation to a government or rules, or if a person has more freedom when bound to a state because at least then an individual has a well-defined identity, and is not trapped in the desperate search for status and nationalism. Struggles to break away from the state and attempts to fit in contrast on the exterior, but through my research, I found that these two seemingly opposite desires connect based upon the broad concept of what it means to be free.
References:
Ardent, Hannah. 'The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man', in
Imperialism. Print.
Branigan, Tania. "Crackdown in China Spreads Terror among Dissidents."
Guardian.co.uk. Guardian News and Media, 31 Mar. 2011. Web. 6 Sept. 2011
Calum, MacLeod, and TODAY USA. "Dissidents still face threat in China." USA Today
n.d.: Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 6 Sept. 2011.
"Hard travelling." Economist 396.8698 (2010): 55. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO.
Web. 6 Sept. 2011.
Wines, Michael. "Advertise on NYTimes.com More Chinese Dissidents Appear to
Disappear." The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 2 Sept. 2011. Web. 6 Sept. 2011.
Zirulnick, Ariel. "Five famous jailed dissidents in China: Ai Weiwei to Liu Xiaobo."
Christian Science Monitor 12 Apr. 2011: N.PAG. Academic Search Premier.
EBSCO. Web. 6 Sept. 2011.
While dissents have certain issues with their government, in most cases they are not trying to "break away from sovereign rules and nationalist identities", but rather change the government in their favor.
ReplyDeleteThe Chinese dissents for instance are not trying to break away from China and create their own state, instead they just want to change the authoritarian Chinese government into a more democratic one. They are not throwing away their citizenship, because they gain too many benefits being in a state. They are not throwing away their identities as Chinese citizens, but rather merely trying to change the image the world has of China.
This is the case with most dissents, they simply want a different government or law.Outrage usually does not boil enough to prompt a full scale revolution such as the American Revolution. In which the patriots did in fact break away from British sovereign rules and form their own country; along with throwing away their British identity. But this is not a common occurrence in history; where people completely wanted to separate from the state, form their own government, and threw away their old national identity in order to create a new identity.
For it is much easier to change laws and government than it is to separate, make a new country and identity.
From Hannah Schiff who was not able to post because of technical difficulties:
ReplyDeleteTony, you make a great point. To add onto your thoughts, Ellie pointed out to me earlier this week that Martin Luther King Jr. was not trying to break away from the United States, rather he was attempting to change the U.S. into a better, more equal place for everyone. So, I agree with your argument that most activists and dissidents do not desire a new state, but rather they want an improved one.
In my blog post, rather than thinking of a stateless person in concrete terms, someone who does not legally belong to a state, I considered statelessness in more of an abstract way. My goal was to expand the definition of statelessness by qualifying how people who do not identify with their state’s laws or ideology could be dubbed, “stateless,” as they do not abide by laws imposed by the government, or feel a strong nationalistic connection to their state.
For instance, MLK Jr. is a prime example of an activist (considered a dissident by some) who was trying to make a difference in the U.S. in order to feel more a part of the state in which he was living. During slavery as well as the civil rights era, the treatment of African Americans excluded them from the state to the point at which they may have felt “stateless.” In order to remedy this feeling of statelessness for African Americans, MLK Jr. acted as an activist to change the state’s laws, not break away from the state altogether.