China, N. Ram and Human Rights

In an interesting article in the Hindu today (no other newspaper would publish rubbish like this) N Ram says that all round development is itself a sign of progress in human rights. For a novel take on the human rights issue, this is hard to beat. By this logic, the erstwhile Soviet Union was a shining example of human rights for the people since overall development (in the sense of infrastructure and so on) in the Soviet Union was close, if not the same as in Western Europe and America, and way ahead of any of the developing countries like India which had full fledged democracy and a free press. Never mind the few sent off to the Gulags... they were irrelevant and expendable presumably. In itself, this is not surprising considering that N. Ram is, as usual, parroting what the Chinese leaders want to hear. What is absolutely hilarious however, is that he was speaking at a Beijing Forum on Human Rights' !! You might as well have a 'Jewish Welfare Forum ' run by Hermann Goering!