There should be a trust between a government and the citizens in that country or province. With that being said, there are many issues that arise from government corruption or the exploitation of citizens of that country so a blind trust is not wise. There have been numerous exploitations of citizens in countries across the world throughout the last hundred years. This article will highlight a few cases where the government just went too far and even in some instances, violated their citizens’ human rights.
China
As China is a communist state, there are quite a few exploitations of citizens and unfair treatment of some. There is quite a few cases of discrimination and corruption throughout the Chinese government. Unfair practices include land seizures of people opposing some of the ideals of the government and making their voice heard. The government severely censors the internet and all forms of media only showing their citizens what the government wants them to see. There are executions to an extent that only state officials know the numbers of these executions are unknown but what is known is that China leads the world in capital punishment. Chinese human rights activists take a lot of abuse in particular. They are punished with the exact things that they are trying to prevent which includes torture, intimidation by law enforcement, and even commitment to psychiatric facilities. Women’s rights are a bit comical to even call them rights in China because the women seem to have no choice whatsoever in the matter. Domestic abuse is not seen as an excuse for a woman retaliating in a fatal way. Employment discrimination runs amuck throughout China as well as gender bias as a whole being common. Women’s rights groups are torn apart and interrogated making it very hard to gain numbers because the women fear for their safety and the safety of their families. All of these cases have happened within the last 5 years in China and their capital punishment numbers keep increasing.
Korea
Korea has a black eye in the issue of forced prostitution of their own women. These were called US comfort women which were established after the Korean War for the exploitation of the men in the US military. Some of the thoughts about this were to keep the US troops happy first of all, but there was an even more devious reason. This reason was one of greed, this was shown in 1960 when lawmakers proposed making the forced prostitution more widespread for that of allied troops stationed there. The lawmakers proposed at a government sanctioned assembly to force prostitution on the women so the US soldiers wouldn’t go spend their money in Japan. Imagining lawmakers in any time and place especially today’s world proposing forced prostitution as an economic relief to the country would lead to those representatives receiving sanctions at the least, more likely they would be stripped of their titles and publicly shamed. These comfort women are now seeking retribution for the hardship that they had to face. Their time in the government sanctioned brothels not only deserve retribution but numerous apologies publicly.
As you can see, governments are made up of people and people are fallible by nature. There will continue to be hardships faced by citizens and that is why it is the citizens’ jobs to get the word out about the ways they are being exploited by their government. This may be more difficult in a place as censored as China, but it can be done with skill and secrecy.