There is this Soviet joke –
Stalin made a report and said, “Communism has appeared on the horizon of the Soviet Union …….”
The old worker didn’t know what the horizon was and went home and asked his son. The son said, “A horizon is a line that can be seen but never walked.”
Communism is an illusory, unattainable utopia. What about human rights? Are human rights also an unattainable utopia?
No, it is not. Human rights are not a horizon.
The Chinese Communist Party’s favorite phrase when rebutting criticism of its poor human rights situation is – “No country’s human rights situation is perfect.” At first glance, this seems to be true. But the question is, just as no one is perfect, does that mean there are no good people or bad people in the world? Of course not. There are good people and bad people in this world.
Confucius said: “Ren is far from it? I want to be benevolent, so I am benevolent.” You are determined to be a good person, you are a good person. This is not to say that if a good man becomes a judge, he can guarantee that he will always see the light and never make a wrongful case. The person is not God, no one can guarantee that he will always be a judge, absolutely no wrongdoing. The reason why a good judge is called a good judge is that he is sincere, out in the open, seriously follow a set of reasonable principles, institutions and procedures, and do their best.
Take the case of George Floyd, a black American who was killed by a police officer last year. We all agree that police officers have the right to use coercive force when they enforce the law. But you can’t ensure that every police officer uses the right amount of coercive force, you can’t prevent a police officer from using excessive violence, and you can’t even prevent a police officer from using excessive violence intentionally. So what should we do?
The U.S. approach is, first, to have independent, free media – including self-published media – that can provide timely public coverage of the situation. Second, police departments equip on-duty officers with body-worn video recorders to leave a record of the scene for verification purposes. This gives the court, and the public, as much of the truth as possible. Further, both the prosecution and the defense have access to lawyers with expertise to argue equally in the courtroom. Finally, a jury is selected at random to render a verdict. If a party does not agree, it can appeal, and so on.
If a country has achieved all the above institutional arrangements, then we can say that it has achieved justice and human rights protection. Kant often quoted that it is impossible to get straight wood from a bent tree. Aristotle reminded people to distinguish the problems of the system from the problems of people themselves. Because of the imperfection of human nature, and because of the high and low quality of people, even with all the above institutional arrangements, we still cannot completely exclude the possibility of making mistakes. But in terms of institutional arrangements, we can only do so much. Of course, there is still room for further improvement, for example, in the technical aspects can be improved, including the quality of people, although it is impossible to achieve perfection, but can always continue to improve. But in principle, in theory, we should say that by doing all the above, we have achieved justice and human rights protection. It is like a person who acts according to this kind of good principles, he is a good person; even though he may still make mistakes and there is still room for improvement, he is still a good person. That he is a good person and not a bad person is certain and unquestionable.
Human rights are not an unattainable horizon; they are only the foundation of a modern civilized society. The fact that a society has achieved the protection of human rights in no way means that it has achieved the ultimate good, that it has achieved perfection; it only means that it has avoided the greatest evil. The protection of human rights is the most important foundation of a modern civilized society, one that we can achieve whenever we want to, and there is no reason not to. China today still does not have this foundation, and we must work for the realization of human rights guarantees in China.
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