Recently, thousands of documents were retrieved from Chinese police servers by an unknown hacker. The findings were presented by 14 media organizations in Europe, the United States and Japan. This is the first time the world has seen pictures from inside the camps in Xinjiang province, where an estimated one to two million members of the Muslim Uighur minority are being detained. In other countries the reactions are strong – but not in Norway. Norwegian hypocrisy is extensive and institutionalized. Norway shops dictators like others shopping for clothes. Until recently, Putin was a pretty decent killer that Norwegian state-owned companies could do business with. The government still thinks that Chinese President Xi Jinping is a great guy, and is doing everything in its power to reach a free trade agreement with the world’s most powerful dictatorship. Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt has met Belarus’s opposition leader Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya several times, and is critical of Lukashenko’s regime – which is good. But just as the Dalai Lama did not get to meet the government in 2014, neither did Dolkun Isa, the leader of the World Uyghur Congress, meet Huitfeldt when he visited Norway in May. Of Isa’s delegation of four, which MDG met in our premises in the Storting, all had family members who are or have been detained, and who have been subjected to brutal abuse and torture. Several have disappeared without a trace. It is these stories that Støre, Huitfeldt and the government do not want to hear, and which they will not comment on when the media now – again – ask. There was one sentence in particular one of Isa’s advisers said, which for me sums up the situation of Uighur spokesmen and organizations trying to get democratic politicians to speak: “There are many former foreign ministers who want to meet us.” She said it with a crooked smile. This is the reality for those who fight for the values Norway says we value most. Since 2010, it has unfortunately been Norwegian political practice to crawl for the world’s most powerful dictatorship. The effect of China’s punitive measures against Norway after the Liu Xiaobo Peace Prize must have astonished even the dictatorship’s strategists. For no democratic country has, in the same way as Norway, submitted to the will of the Communist Party. Norway’s submission reached its formal culmination with the Joint Declaration, popularly known as the Normalization Agreement, from 2016. Here the dictatorship’s interests are put in clear text before Norway’s, and it is explicitly stated that Norway shall not do anything contrary to China’s interests. The text is entirely about Norway’s obligations to the Communist Party – which in turn does not commit to anything. The content of this agreement is so inflamed that in a debate in the Storting on 15 February, Foreign Minister Huitfeldt completely avoided commenting on it. Instead, Norway’s leading diplomat used the speaking time to make critics’ motives suspicious. In the same debate, Huitfeldt stated that human rights should have no bearing on the extent to which Norway should become more closely linked to the Communist Party’s dictatorship through a free trade agreement. This is the old solidarity Labor Party’s policy in 2022. The truth is that this has been going on for a long time. The Communist Party showed in 1989 what happens when the people demand democracy in China, with the massacre in Tiananmen Square. Western democracies chose to side with the dictatorship – not the Chinese people. Since then, short-term profits and political convenience have consistently trumped human dignity, democracy and our own security policy interests. Putin’s and Xi’s terrorist regimes, in turn, have supplied Europe with fossil energy, cheap products and market access. As recently as 2011, the then Prime Minister Wen Jiabao called for increased democracy in China. Today, something like that would be unthinkable. The reason for this is that China under Xi Jinping has become increasingly authoritarian, with invaluable political and economic support from the democratic world. By not making demands on those we deal with, but accepting all conceivable brutality, the West has weakened democracy and strengthened the dictatorship. We see the result now, with Putin’s war against Ukraine. President Xi has been at odds with Vladimir Putin before and after the invasion. Xi and Putin are waging a joint war against the West and democracy, with uncertain outcomes. Ukrainians and Uighurs are now dying to defend the values we ourselves depend on for our freedom. Meanwhile, Norway earns huge sums on gas exports as a result of the war against Ukraine, and has no qualms with the role of war profiteer. The increased revenues will be used by the government to subsidize a continued sky-high energy consumption in Norway, which in turn exacerbates the problem by contributing to increased demand. We demand that the government change course. In cooperation with our allies, Norway must use our seat on the UN Security Council to deal with China’s abuses against its own people. And we must terminate the dangerous Normalization Agreement with China, and end the negotiations on a free trade agreement. History knocks heavily on Norway’s door. Are there any adults at home?
ttn-69
Norway does not see the difference between friend and foe – Expression
