You’re listening to part two of the interview with the third place winner of the Catholic University Center for Human Rights Annual Human Rights essay Contest by William Saunders, Director of the Center for Human Rights. To read the award winning essays go to humanrights.catholic.edu.

Bill Saunders: I’ll repeat this, but this is a short essay, so you have to be selective, take up one problem, and suggest how to deal with it. What did you do, Jonathan?

Jonathan Froelich: I’d like to glom on to something you said. I work for a lawyer at the army, a very senior level attorney. He was recently explaining to my 9 year old what he did. She asked, “What do you do?”. He replied, “I’m a lawyer. I solve problems for people.” So I think there’s a lot to be said for that this is a problem. I think if we look at it that way, we’re going to be better off and we’re going to be able to come up with a better, more creative solution to kind of look at it.

I just wanted to throw that in quickly. You raised a good point. There was obviously a large list of major human rights atrocities in China, but I picked arbitrary arrest and basically the prohibition against labor unions, doubling up under one item there. I didn’t want to touch the arbitrary arrest thing only because I didn’t quite know how to navigate the United States or the American people trying to give the Chinese government advice on arbitrary arrest. Considering that, and being a law enforcement employee myself my entire career, I’m sensitive to the fact that there are issues with law enforcement in American society. I decided to put that aside and focus on the prohibition against labor unions. What I tried to do, again speaking practically, was sell the Chinese government on the financial benefits of labor unions.

I did some research on unions here, and as controversial as they might have been at their creation and as they continue to be, unions do have certain fiscal benefits. That sort of got me thinking about what is going to resonate with the Chinese government. This isn’t a moral lecture. It’s not a parent telling the child what to do. It’s “you should do this not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s going to be good for your bottom line”.

I think once we were able to make some traction there, which hopefully we would, then we could begin building towards solving these other problems. Instead of trying to tackle this whole gamut of civil rights issues all at once, pick one thing where you think you might be able to make a difference, where you think you might be able to gain a foothold. I’ve been teaching at CatholicU, in addition to being a student, since 2019. What I tell my students, especially those who are interested in national security careers, is think of your career as a construction project. You have to be able to get your building blocks and start building the foundation. 

I think of international affairs, at least in this situation, in roughly the same way. We have to start laying the foundation and incremental progress. We’re not going to be able to build this thing all at once. We need to start with something that is roughly attainable, and this just looked like something that, if I’m thinking about this practical approach, seems like a very practical issue. So let’s start here. Let’s start with prohibition against labor unions. Let’s show China why it’s in their best interest, and then we start building forward progress on some of these other, let’s call them squishier, human rights issues. It’s a process, and this is what I saw as a good first step.

Bill Saunders: Yes. We will publish Jonathan’s essay on the webpage. In fact, it’ll be published when this is released, so you can read the whole thing. I think that’s a good overview.I don’t want to take this away from you, but what’s the sting Jonathan? 

Jonathan Froelich: What’s the sting? This may sting. The sting is just that. Certain people will read this, including my own father, and say, this is going to be really hard. This looks like this is going to be politically weaponized by opponents or whoever happens to suggest this, especially I think, here in the United States. It’s a means to an end. I think we’re often very emotional about this, and as well we should be. However, I think if we have an approach where we keep our emotions, play the right role in the right place, and balance this with other kinds of approaches, I think we’re going to be better off. We just get angry at China, we get angry at Ukraine, we get angry at North Korea, or we get angry at Israel or Palestine; wherever people happen to follow on the political spectrum. In this anger, I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere. So the sting comes in when we’re helping someone that we’ve, the United States, identified as an adversary, whether that be economically, politically, militarily, or civil rights oriented.

That’s where the pain comes in. I think relative to what we could achieve in the long term, the temporary pain will be worth what will hopefully be a long lasting change in how China views civil rights. The other important thing to remember is this is not happening in a vacuum and this goes with almost anything. This isn’t just about human rights. That’s obviously the topic of conversation and that’s why we’re here, but if we can be look at China, obviously balanced a little more, a little more cooperatively, a little more collaboratively, I think we’re making some baby steps towards diffusing a situation which, I can’t speak for anyone myself, but I think a lot of people in national security community in the United States are concerned with an eventuality that includes a war with China.

The more we can try to kind of proactively diffuse that now and on top of that start working towards resolving these abhorrent situations with civil rights in China, so much the better. We’re not just looking at one solution to one problem. We’re looking at multiple solutions to multiple problems just at the same time, which is not simple. That’s really where the sting, the difficulty, and the tediousness comes in of this whole thing.

Bill Saunders: Yes! Thank you for entering it into the contest. Go to our website, catholic.edu/chr, and you’ll find Jonathan’s essay and the other winners as well.  So it gives you something to think about. We want to solve human rights issues, not just talk about them, and Jonathan’s essay gives us something to think about. Jonathan, thank you for being on the Barefoot Lawyer podcast.

Jonathan Froelich: Yes, absolutely. It’s been my pleasure. I met Chen Guangcheng when he lectured in one of Dr. Walsh’s class at CUA. It inspired me because he struck me as very practical, creative, and highly driven. That drove the spirit of my essay just having been in the same room with him, having heard him speak, and hearing about his challenges as well. It was a very inspirational exercise and I appreciate the opportunity to write it, and of course, to be here with you today, sir.

Bill Saunders: Thank you, Jonathan. To our listeners, we’ll see you on the next episode of the Barefoot Lawyer Reports on China.

The Catholic University of America’s Center for Human Rights has published a documentary on the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights. The documentary features world class human rights experts, from former State Department officials to ambassadors and human rights activists. It can be found on our website at humanrights.catholic.edu