Popular support for significant legal and political reform in China has grown substantially in recent years, and many of your remarks and those of other senior officials in recent months have asserted, in your words, that “the government takes seriously people’s aspirations and demands. This session of the NPC, the first under the new Chinese Communist Party leadership, is an opportunity to demonstrate the extent of these stated commitments to enacting crucial legislative reforms to improve human rights protections in China. We urge that the NPC take immediate legislative action on four major issues on which there is broad support for [reform/legislation], as reiterated in recent months by senior Party and government leaders. These are 1) abolish re-education through labor; 2) abolish the hukou household registration system; 3) adopt a comprehensive domestic violence law; and 4) ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

We write in regards to the forthcoming visit of Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping. We urge that you raise the human rights situation in China, which Ambassador Locke has recently characterized as “worsening,” in all your public and private interactions.

We write on behalf of Human Rights Watch regarding the status and well-being of Chinese citizens of Uighur ethnicity who were forcibly returned from three different countries on August 6 and August 8, 2011.