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Comment by math_and_stuff | Hacker News Reader

Why say 'align with western values' instead of 'respect human rights'? Freedom of speech and assembly are encoded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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Because the issue they are protesting is extradition and the rule of law being maintained; HK has a western style rule of law, mainland has practically no rule of law to speak of.

I think the distinction trying to be made here is that Chinese, Hongkongers, and Taiwanese people don't see themselves as westerners. Posters aren't saying that they shouldn't fight for basic human rights, but rather that basic human rights aren't "western", they are human. We being westerners should be proud that we have laws like this, but that doesn't mean we need to impose everything western on others. It also doesn't mean that our fight for basic human rights is fundamentally western. Just the same way it isn't American, British, German, etc. They are basic human rights after all, and last I checked these people are still humans.

TLDR: basic human rights doesn't mean you have to identify as western.

The UN, particularly at that time (1948), was a creation and creature of the western world. The drafting committee was chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt: http://research.un.org/en/undhr/draftingcommittee. Of the nine drafters, six were from a western country (US, UK, France, Australia, and Chile). Two (the ROC delegate and the Lebanese delegate) were educated in the US. (The ROC delegate moved to New Jersey and lived there until his death). The other delegate was from Russia, which is a mostly western country.

You're using "west" as in western aligned? If not Australia and Russia are most definitely not western geographically. I've also never heard of Russia mentioned as western or grouped with other western countries. There's a lot of political tension between Russia and the "west" some I'm surprised to hear you say that.

"Western" is generally defined in terms of historical/cultural affiliation, not geography. Almost 90% of Australia's population is of English/Irish/Scottish descent, and Australia's laws, institutions, and culture are directly descended from Britain.

Russia is harder to pin down. Historically, they self-identified as western, even though the geographic center of Russia is actually in Asia.

Human rights written by westerners.

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