Juan Gelman is a poet, is widely regarded as being a human rights campaigner and when he was younger he was an active participant in revolutionary Peronism. Regular readers of this increasingly neglected blog will know that I don’t have a high opinion of Gelman.
However, even I was surprised by the depths he stoops to in a piece published in Pagina/12 today. It’s an acceptance speech for some bauble awarded to him under the auspices of the Chinese government. Here are some choice quotes:
On the 13th of April last the Chinese government published a national action plan for human rights which guarantees the basic civil rights of the entire population including women, children, the disabled and ethnic minorities…
In the introduction to the action plan the government recognizes that “China has a long way to go with its efforts to improve human rights.” As it proceeds along this path the death penalty will undoubtedly be abolished, the independence of the judiciary will be strengthened, censorship of publishers and the media will be softened, political prisoners who have not committed acts against the security of the state will be released, those responsible for disappearances, especially those of children, will be caught and punished and other relaveant measures will also be adopted…
The USA and western powers support terrorist groups and separitists who are trying to break China up into weak feudal domains and satrapies, the better to dominate them. Tibet and Taiwan form part of China since time immemorial.
Can Gelman possibly believe that the Chinese government is going to abolish the death penalty? And note that he only hopes for a softening of censorship and thinks its fine to hold political prisoners if they have committed acts against state security. Guess who will be deciding whether they have or not? Yup, the judiciary whose non-existent autonomy he’d like to see augmented.
As anybody who has read a tiny bit of history knows, some of the most infernal regimes have had constitutions bursting with good intentions and have claimed to be passionate defenders of human rights. The Soviet Union was one such and Cuba today is another. Rather than judge the government of China on its decades of repression, torture and mass murder, the sainted Gelman decides to judge it on yet another blast of hot air from the regime.
So, if you’re Taiwanese and you’d like to continue to enjoy the benefits of living in a liberal democracy, well, screw you. The great panjandrum of the human rights movement in Argentina thinks you should forget about all that nonsense and rejoin the motherland, where you’ll do well to keep your opinions to yourself if you don’t want to end up in a “reeducation” camp.
And if you are a Tibetan or an Uighur who doesn’t regard yourself as part of the Chinese nation, who doesn’t want your culture and people to be turned into theme park amusements for tourists and would like to assert your national rights, you are in even worse luck. As far as Gelman is concerned you can quite literally fuck off and die. All you are is tool of imperialism.
Gelman is a hypocrite and fraud who never saw an anti-American dictatorship – no matter how monstrous – he didn’t like. This article also gives us a fair insight into what Argentina would look like today if he and his comrades and triumphed in the struggles of their youth.
