Speaking in Tokyo’s Suntory Hall on Saturday on the first leg of his visit to Asia, President Barack Obama stressed the importance of promoting human rights in the region.
When 15-year-old Wang Xiaomei made the long trip from Gansu province to Beijing last year, she hoped to find justice for her family. Instead, she met with abuse.
Since taking office, President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton-both of whom mustered some criticism of China's rights record while they were candidates-have said that human rights shouldn't "interfere" with other issues in the U.S.-China relationship, knuckled preemptively under Chinese pressure not to meet the Dalai Lama, and generally behaved as if the United States has no power in the bilateral relationship.
In Copenhagen this month, Human Rights Watch presented its proposal for institutional reform to monitor host countries' compliance with international human rights norms. We also believe that the IOC should make host city contracts public.
In a year that’s seen the arbitrary detentions of Chinese legal activists and government critics like Gao Zhisheng and Liu Xiaobo, the Aug. 23 release of Xu Zhiyong, the head of the Open Constitution Initiative (Gongmeng), should be cause for celebration.
While the Chinese government has carried out a great deal of legal reform in the past decade, particularly as it prepared to join the World Trade Organisation in December 2001, less progress has been made towards a stable and predictable legal system.
The case of Liu Xiaobo, one of China’s best known human-rights activists, highlights the hollowness of the Chinese government’s sunny rhetoric on respect for rule of law.
The eruption of ethnic violence in China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, the most deadly recorded in decades, seems to have taken both Beijing and the world by surprise. It should not have.
Who says the Chinese government isn't susceptible to pressure? Its last-minute suspension of an order requiring the pre-installation of Internet filtering software called into question the popular notion that China is chronically impervious to pressure.
The recent arrest of Liu Xiaobo, a mild-mannered and witty writer in Beijing, shows that the government still lacks the confidence to tolerate political criticism.
Speaking in Tokyo’s Suntory Hall on Saturday on the first leg of his visit to Asia, President Barack Obama stressed the importance of promoting human rights in the region.
When 15-year-old Wang Xiaomei made the long trip from Gansu province to Beijing last year, she hoped to find justice for her family. Instead, she met with abuse.
Since taking office, President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton-both of whom mustered some criticism of China's rights record while they were candidates-have said that human rights shouldn't "interfere" with other issues in the U.S.-China relationship, knuckled preemptively under Chinese pressure not to meet the Dalai Lama, and generally behaved as if the United States has no power in the bilateral relationship.
In Copenhagen this month, Human Rights Watch presented its proposal for institutional reform to monitor host countries' compliance with international human rights norms. We also believe that the IOC should make host city contracts public.
In a year that’s seen the arbitrary detentions of Chinese legal activists and government critics like Gao Zhisheng and Liu Xiaobo, the Aug. 23 release of Xu Zhiyong, the head of the Open Constitution Initiative (Gongmeng), should be cause for celebration.
While the Chinese government has carried out a great deal of legal reform in the past decade, particularly as it prepared to join the World Trade Organisation in December 2001, less progress has been made towards a stable and predictable legal system.
The case of Liu Xiaobo, one of China’s best known human-rights activists, highlights the hollowness of the Chinese government’s sunny rhetoric on respect for rule of law.
The eruption of ethnic violence in China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, the most deadly recorded in decades, seems to have taken both Beijing and the world by surprise. It should not have.
Who says the Chinese government isn't susceptible to pressure? Its last-minute suspension of an order requiring the pre-installation of Internet filtering software called into question the popular notion that China is chronically impervious to pressure.
The recent arrest of Liu Xiaobo, a mild-mannered and witty writer in Beijing, shows that the government still lacks the confidence to tolerate political criticism.