It seems many frustrated communities overseas believe the halo of "world police" is still shining over the United States. One clear sign is the way they turn to the White House online petition system to seek a way out for their discontent with issues that have little American involvement. The top eight petitions on the "We The People" section of the White House website in late May included at least five issues outside of the country.
In those petitions, people ask the White House to get involved in a palette of issues: alleged voting fraud in Malaysia, an unsettled poison murder case in China, alleged voting irregularities in Venezuela, a recent conflict between Taiwan and the Philippines, and a jail death in the Netherlands.
In less than two years since its launch in September 2011, the platform has witnessed more than 200,000 petitions and over 13 million signatures. The huge turnout prompted the White House in early January to lift the threshold for a reaction. Now, instead of needing only 25,000 signatures, petitioners must collect 100,000 signatures - and within 30 days. The reward for reaching the goal is an official response from the White House, which it promises to deliver in "timely fashion." So far, at least 115 petitions have received that reward since 2011, according to the postings on the White House website.
But sometimes, it's not clear how gratifying the responses are. One petition on a domestic issue asked for the Obama administration's involvement in repealing the Defence of Marriage Act - a law banning federal recognition of same-sex marriage. The response from the White House, which came days ago but almost half a year after the benchmark was reached, was basically "you're right" - restating Obama's widely-known stand.
Is there any hope that the White House will get involved in policing any of those out-of-country cases? Take the situation of duelling petitions representing Japanese and South Korean positions on naming the "Sea of Japan". South Korean petitioners want to rename it "East Sea". Both petitions made the threshold last year.
The response came from Kurt Campbell, then assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, who regurgitated in diplomatic language the formal US policy. The White House even provided Japanese and Korean translations. Some of the responses - about 10 per cent of the total - are simple explanations of "Why We Can't Comment." But if the reward is small in terms of gratification, it can be large in terms of media attention.
The Chinese murder case, for example, only drew world media attention after it surfaced on "We the People" in early May. As it wooed nearly 150,000 signatures in less than a month, many more people began paying attention to the plight of a Chinese family whose daughter was poisoned and suffered severe brain damage. The young woman, in her early 20s when the crime happened 19 years ago, had held great promise for her life as a fledgling musician and student at one of China's top universities.
The petition requests the US government find the alleged suspect, said to have been a well-connected woman in China who now lives in the US, and kick her out of the country. To date, the White House has not responded, nor has it answered any of the other four foreign cases that reached the signature threshold this year. Some of the cases are obscure. One demands the US government provide assistance to Taiwan, for a Taiwanese fisherman was killed by the Philippine coastguard in May. Another asks US Congress to introduce an act "to punish all Dutch officials responsible for the death" of Alexander Dolmatov, a Russian political activist who died in a Dutch prison.
Ironically, controversial domestic issues often don't attract strong attention. A November 2012 petition, filed right after Obama won reelection, asks for a ballot recount. But it's taken seven months for it to gather nearly 73,000 signatures. When the "We The People" platform (http://dpaq.de/nBuJj) was first launched on September 22, 2011, it was proclaimed to "give all Americans a way to create and sign petitions on a range of issues affecting our nation."
But no bar was ever set on the nationality of participants, and the platform has evolved truly internationally, allowing postings in languages other than English. Chinese language characters especially stand out as an easy-to-be-recognised group. In fact, China's social-networking websites had fun with the idea of "occupying the White House" through the petition system. And Obama has earned a new title in China's social media: head of China's petition bureau.
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