The Dislocation of the Chinese Human Rights Movement
A SWORD AND A SHIELD: CHINA'S HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYERS, pp. 141-159, Mosher and Patrick Poon, ed., China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group, 2009
19 Pages Posted: 25 Mar 2010
Date Written: October 2009
Abstract
This article argues that the increasing number of repressive strikes against human rights lawyers, petitioners, and civil society organizations are disquieting symptoms of a wider, intellectual shift that has occurred over the past few years. This shift has included official and academic attempts at a conceptual dilution of rights, for instance through the confusing rhetoric of ‘harmonious adjudication’ and ‘harmony rights;’ and a shift toward anti-rationalism in judicial processes, for instance through the propagation of the ‘Three Supremes’ doctrine and a reversion to more authoritarian practices of settling disputes. Its problematic further consequence has been the human rights movement’s dislocation, its forced migration into spaces and forms of expression far removed from the – in crucial areas - increasingly inoperable law of state institutions.
Keywords: China, human rights, social movements, human rights defenders, harmony
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