A week ago, China expressed anger at Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for having the temerity to visit the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh ahead of elections there. Since then, the Chinese press has increased the tension with reports that India’s planned Agni-V ballistic missile will be able to hit China’s most northern city, Harbin. The underlying suggestion is that China is a potential target for Indian aggression.
China is not doing itself any favors by taking such an anti-Indian stand. It is making itself look distinctly aggressive toward a country from which it has nothing to fear. The issue of the missiles in particular makes no sense. China’s nuclear arsenal is massive compared to India’s and, unlike the Agni-V which will only be ready for testing in early 2011 and probably not deployed for at least another year, its Dong Feng-31A missile is already in use and can hit targets 11,200 km away. All of India’s cities are thus easily in range.
As for the Arunachal visit, since when does the prime minister of India have to have China’s permission to visit a part of his country? China’s claim to the state is no excuse for its outburst. The claim has no basis in international law and the rest of the world does not recognize it. Arunachal is as much a part of India as Kerala or West Bengal. End of story. Manmohan Singh was acting entirely appropriately in going there and for the best of reasons — to campaign on his party’s behalf in the upcoming elections.
China is in no position to lecture others about disputed territories. Its control of Tibet is far from undisputed. But no government would be so undiplomatic as to protest if the Chinese prime minister visited the capital, Lhasa. Certainly not India. Nor, indeed, would New Delhi (or Islamabad for that matter) huff and puff if a Chinese minister visited the eastern part of Jammu and Kashmir which China occupies — not out of weakness but because that is not the way governments behave in such matters.
When, a couple of months ago, an independent Chinese think-tank suggested that India should be dismembered, it could be dismissed as the ravings of mad nationalist unconnected to the government. Not now. These latest offerings are official. They come from the Foreign Ministry and the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the ruling party.
It is very disturbing to see China ratcheting up the tension. It is bad policy. It has already backfired by making it look menacing and could so easily get out of hand. In fact, in 1962, the two countries fought a brief border war over Arunachal. That might seem an impossibility today but unless the brakes are applied now, it could at the least end in a cross-border shouting match and an arms build-up — with the international community forced into diplomatic emergency mode in order to calm matters down. There are enough problems in the world as it is without one more. Wiser and more temperate heads are needed in Beijing. Otherwise it will not be just India that views China as a threat; others in Asia will as well.
Sealing the courtroom
Excerpts from an editorial that appeared in Saturday’s Washington Post:
Judge Ricardo Urbina of the US District Court for the District of Columbia has been holding closed-door hearings in the case of five Blackwater security contractors accused of gunning down unarmed Iraqi civilians. A reporter from The Post learned of the hearings, which appear not to have been listed on the public docket; Urbina declined the newspaper’s request to lift the secrecy order.
Urbina explained that he needed to close the hearings to prevent witnesses and prospective jurors from getting wind of the information likely to arise in these hearings. Urbina is conducting a weeklong pretrial hearing in which the government is being challenged to prove that the evidence used to indict the former Blackwater contractors was obtained independent of statements made by the men shortly after the 2007 shootings that left more than a dozen Iraqi civilians dead and nearly two dozen injured. Those statements were made to State Department agents who promised the guards that the statements would not be used to criminally prosecute them.
Urbina may be right that closing the courtroom may have been the only way to protect grand jury material. After all, one way for the government to prove it did not use the guard’s immunized statements is to cite independent information gleaned from grand jury testimony. But it is not clear to what extent, if any, Urbina considered anything short of complete secrecy, such as closing off only parts of the hearing.
The judge, however, is on very shaky ground in claiming that a closure was necessary to shield witnesses and jurors, especially because well-established court procedures exist to deal with these possibilities. Witnesses called to testify at trial typically provide sworn statements before they are called to the stand. Either side may challenge a witness’ credibility if there is a discrepancy between testimony and previous statements. And the jury selection process routinely is used to cull from the pool prospective members who have heard or read about the case.
Urbina also mishandled the process that led to the secrecy order. The Supreme Court has ruled that the public must be notified about a possible closure and given a chance to argue against it before a judge takes the drastic step of excluding the public from a criminal hearing. Notice was absent in this case. And while The Post was permitted a brief, 15-minute hearing before the first Blackwater matter was to commence, this is not the kind of deliberate and thorough review the justices contemplated.
