Beijing no defender of freedom

The shining hope of a new millennium lies in ruins, buried beneath the debris of the World Trade Center towers, and a new generation is called to defend civilization from a foe bent on its destruction.

As the coalition to put an end to terrorism begins to build, China is seeking to push its skewed view of human rights as the only legitimate one, portraying the harsh crackdowns on civil liberties that have become its hallmark as fully justified.

Beijing's strategy for taking advantage of last week's tragedy is two-fold.

First, it seeks to win the world's acquiescence in its harsh treatment of Xinjiang's Muslim separatists, the beleaguered Tibetan minority in the west, and, more importantly, to force Washington to deny Taiwan the means to defend herself in return for China's support of the anti-terrorist coalition.

Second, and for the long term, it seeks to win the much larger debate over the freedom of the individual.

Always thinking ahead, Bei-jing sees this entire episode as an opportunity to win carte blanche from the international community to continue to treat its own citizens as part of a mindless collective. The Chinese Communist Party is well aware that free-thinking people are a threat to its stranglehold on political power.

In Beijing's view, anyone who questions China's xenophobic, one-party state must be done away with -- and the terrorist attacks last week on the beacon of democracy are to be used to legitimize that effort by exploiting the West's new-found vulnerability -- its now evolving crisis of security.

This is one of the mine fields of the emerging period of history. It will be a challenge to modern civilization to maintain civil liberties and freedoms in the face of the now all too evident terrorist foe.

China will try and persuade the free peoples of the world that stifling dissent, limiting freedom of information, freedom of movement, freedom of the press, freedom of religion has been justified all along, and that the democracies should follow suit for the sake of their own security.

This we must not do.

The terrorist attacks last week were attacks on a way of life that Beijing continues to oppose. The irony that China is seeking to turn the battle against global terrorism into further justification for the abuse of its own citizens must not be lost on policy makers around the world when they seek Beijing's support.

Unless China chooses to participate on the basis that innocent people should not be slaughtered for the sake of making a political statement, then the world should let Beijing stew on the sidelines as the freedom-loving people of the world defend their hard-won liberty without its help.

Will Mittler is a freelance writer based in Taipei.