Experts urge US to engage China in human rights[Thursday, 5 August 2010, 10:53 a.m.]
Dharamshala:
A panel of human rights and legal experts have asked the US government
to strengthen their efforts to engage China in improving its human
rights situation and rule of law, which the panel said has “stalled or
suffered reversal” with the crackdown on critics and ethnic minorities.The
panelists briefed the Congressional-Executive Commission on China
“Political Prisoners in China: Trends and Implications for US Policy”
at Dirksen Senate Office Building on 3 August. (View a recorded video of this hearing)“Roughly
since the beginning of 2008, there has been a palpable sense that
earlier progress toward rule of law in China has stalled, or even
suffered a reversal,” Reuters quoted researcher Joshua Rosenzweig of the Dui Hua Foundation as saying.”There
is mounting evidence that a crackdown is under way, one particularly
targeting members of ethnic minorities, government critics and rights
defenders,” he told the panel.The Dui Hua Foundation, which
works to win medical parole or early release for political prisoners,
has compiled a list of 5,800 people imprisoned in China for nonviolent
expression of religious and political beliefs, Rosenzweig said.The
Chinese legal system’s lack of transparency prevents a full tally of
the political prisoners, but available statistics show a “troubling
trend” that the crackdown has targeted not only political activists but
the lawyers who defend them, said Jerome Cohen of the New York
University School of Law.The experts told the panel that
Washington should turn what are now annual human rights talks with
Beijing at least twice a year, raise the rank of officials
participating and raise specific prisoners’ cases rather than engage in
the abstract discussions the Chinese have preferred to date.Other
panelists were Wan Yanhai, Director of Beijing Aizhixing Institute,
expert on HIV/AIDS, human rights and civil society in China, and Sophie
Richardson, Asia Advocacy Director, Human Rights Watch.The
Congressional-Executive Commission on China, a panel comprised of US
lawmakers and senior administration officials, was set up in 2000 under
legislation accompanying China’s entry into the World Trade
Organisation.The Commission issued a special report titled Special Topic Paper: Tibet 2008-2009 on 22 October 2009.
The report provides expanded coverage and in-depth analysis of key
developments and trends in Tibet during the peaceful protests and
builds on the Commission’s 2009 Annual Report. The report said
in March 2008 the Tibetan people expressed their rejection of Chinese
government policy and official campaigns to “educate” Tibetans about
their obligations to conform to policy and law that Tibetans believe
harm their cultural identity and heritage.
