Jottings from the Granite Studio

Via CDT, the Boston Globe has an article today on a petition signed by over fifty scholars and activists calling for a stop to the persecution of human rights activists in China.

“The Sept. 29 open letter posted on the Web site of the New York-based Human Rights Watch organization chiefly bore the signatures of some 40 well-known China scholars, including the Council on Foreign Relations’ Jerome Cohen, Harvard’s Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Yahuda of the London School of Economics.

‘We note with concern the sharp increase in official retaliation against such advocates and their families through persistent harassment, banishment, detention, arrest and imprisonment,’ the letter said. ‘We … write to urge your commitment to ensuring the civil rights of advocates for social justice.’

As the article notes, these kinds of public denunciations from foreign scholars of China are quite rare, especially for historians who don’t want to lose access to valuable archival materials. It’s a sad compromise, but one that most of us make.