Editorials
Thursday, April 23, 1998

China sends another
dissident into exile

CHINA'S release and expulsion of a prominent dissident offers another crumb to critics of Beijing's human rights record in advance of President Clinton's scheduled June state visit. Only people who haven't been paying attention will be deluded by this gesture. China still imprisons thousands of dissidents and has shown no signs of reform.

Wang Dan was on China's most-wanted list after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests were crushed by the army with heavy loss of life. He was arrested in a nationwide dragnet and jailed for four years. Upon his release, he continued to speak out for freedom and democracy and was detained again in 1995. A Beijing court sentenced him to 11 years in prison in October 1996.

Wang is the second prominent dissident to be released and exiled to the United States in the last five months. The first, Wei Jingsheng, was released last November after the visit of President Jiang Zemin to the United States, in what was obviously a prearranged gesture. In both cases, the government hoped to counter criticism of its repressive policies while ridding itself of potential troublemakers through exile. Wang was released and exiled on medical parole, but doctors at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit gave him a clean bill of health. Clearly Wang's problems were political, not medical.

In December 1996, Chinese officials said that 2,026 persons were in Ministry of Justice prisons for "counterrevolutionary" affairs. But that wasn't the whole story. The figure didn't include forced labor camps, detention centers where the accused can be held for years before trial, "old age" homes where elderly religious dissidents are imprisoned, or those under house arrest after release from prison.

After years of pressing China on human rights, the United States has little to show for the effort beyond tokens like Wang Dan. If this is all Clinton can get as the price for a visit to China, the Communists are getting the better of the bargain.

Russia’s No. 2

MEMBERS of Russia's lower house parliament have little if anything to gain by rejecting President Boris Yeltsin's nomination of a youthful and politically inexperienced technocrat as his prime minister. The Duma's confirmation tomorrow of Sergei Kiriyenko to the post would assure the government's stability while leaving unsettled larger questions about Russia's political and economic future.

Kiriyenko's lack of previous public exposure and his boyish appearance stunned observers when Yeltsin announced his nomination following the sacking of the veteran Viktor Chernomyrdin. Since then, the 35-year-old reformist has earned respect from some skeptics, refusing to buckle under on key economic issues while handling himself with grace and ease.

A former regional banker, Kiriyenko showed his mettle in his few months as deputy prime minister, taking on Russia's gas monopoly.

The Duma has voted twice to reject Kiriyenko's nomination. According to Russia's constitution, a third vote of rejection would allow Yeltsin to dissolve the lower house, schedule new elections and appoint Kiriyenko as prime minister without any parliamentary consent. Thus the Duma would simply vote itself out of office by casting a third vote of rejection. While Communists might be able to garner more seats in a new election, they are unlikely to take the risk.

Attention will be focused after Kiriyenko's probable confirmation on the makeup of the rest of Yeltsin's cabinet. The retention of Kiriyenko's mentor, Boris Nemtsov, in a high post would signal continuation of the Kremlin's course toward a free market system. It also could indicate affirmation of the battle against what Nemtsov has branded "oligarchical capitalism" rather than the "democratic, people's capitalism" desired by most Russians.

Confirmation of Kiriyenko would be further proof that even Communists who exercise some control over the Duma recognize there is no going back to the Soviet system, despite the sputtering economy. Concerns about the functioning of government in the event of any recurrence of Yeltsin's health problems should dissipate as Kiriyenko grows in stature.

Harriet Bouslog

HARRIET Bouslog, who died Saturday at age 85, helped make labor history in Hawaii. With her law partner, Myer Symonds, she defended striking longshore, sugar and pineapple workers organized by the ILWU in the post-World War II years, at a time when the union was battling the Big Five companies that dominated Hawaii's economy. They successfully challenged the constitutionality of an unlawful assembly act under which 400 workers had been arrested.

Bouslog and Symonds also represented ILWU officials before hearings of the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee and the "Hawaii Seven" charged under the Smith Act with conspiring to advocate the overthrow of the government. The seven, including ILWU leader Jack Hall, were convicted in a seven-month trial in 1952-53, but their convictions were overturned by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Norman Meller, University of Hawaii political science professor emeritus, recalls that during the late 1940s and 1950s anyone associated with the leadership of the ILWU "was pretty well tarred as if not a Communist, a sympathizer." In that atmosphere, it took courage to defend constitutional rights, but Harriet Bouslog was not intimidated.

With the passage of time both the ILWU leaders and their attornies were accepted by the community. In 1979 she and Symonds received the Allan F. Saunders Award of the American Civil Liberties Union for their contributions. Symonds died in 1989.

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