(New York) — Human Rights Watch said today that Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji's visit to Washington should be an occasion for urging China to promote human rights abroad as well as for protesting China's human rights record at home.
"While Premier Zhu is here, President Clinton should publicly and privately reiterate the concerns he raised in Beijing last June," said Sidney Jones, Asia director of Human Rights Watch. "But he can also urge Zhu to address human rights issues beyond China's borders by condemning ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, supporting an international tribunal to try the Khmer Rouge leadership, and ratifying international human rights treaties." She noted that while Chinese officials often argue that human rights is an internal affair, China has repeatedly taken a stance on rights concerns abroad, from opposing apartheid in South Africa to condemning the treatment of ethnic Chinese in Indonesia.
China's treatment of its own citizens should be President Clinton's first priority, uman Rights Watch said. When President Clinton visited China, he spoke about the need for freedom of association, expression, and religion. He said the 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square was wrong. He wondered aloud whether something could be done for some 2,000 prisoners serving sentences for "counterrevolution," a political crime wiped from the statutes last year. He raised the issue of Tibet.
In the intervening nine months since the Clinton visit, there has been no progress on any of these issues. Indeed, the Chinese government's intolerance of dissent has only intensified, as the Human Rights Watch chronology of developments over the last six months clearly shows. Not only have dozens of political activists been arrested, but as the tenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown on June 4 approaches, there has been a perceptible tightening of controls on the media and all forms of expression.
Jones applauded the Clinton administration's decision on March 26 to sponsor a resolution critical of China's human rights practices at the annual meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, now underway in Geneva, and urged the administration to lobby as hard to get the resolution passed as China will lobby to have it defeated.
At the same time, the U.S. has been one of many countries urging China to participate more actively in the international system of human rights protection, even though the U.S.'s own participation, particularly in the realm of becoming a party to international treaties, is poor. President Clinton and Premier Zhu together could significantly strengthen that international system if they agreed to jointly advocate any or all of the following:
- an end to ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and a commitment to massive humanitarian aid for refugees in the Balkans. China's veto in the Security Council prevented the placement of U.N. monitors in Macedonia, and its own concerns over nationalist movements in Tibet and Xinjiang and over the independence movement in Taiwan have led it to take Serbia's side in the Kosovo conflict.
- establishment of an international tribunal for the Khmer Rouge, a measure the Chinese government has publicly opposed.
- ratification of two major international human rights treaties, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. The U.S. has not ratified the latter, which President Carter signed in 1977. China, which signed both in the last two years, has not yet ratified them either.
- signing of the December 1997 international treaty banning landmines and signing of the treaty establishing an International Criminal Court. China and the U.S. have been in a minority of the world's nations, opposing both.
Premier Zhu will also be meeting with American business leaders in Chicago, New York, Washington and elsewhere during his U.S. tour. Human Rights Watch has encouraged business leaders to press for basic human rights improvements in China, including greater respect for internationally recognized worker rights. Failure to allow unpaid, underpaid, and unemployed workers to peacefully express their grievances could lead to greater explosion of worker unrest than there is already, Human Rights Watch warned.
For Further Information:
Sidney Jones (1-212) 216-1228
Mike Jendrzejczyk (1-202) 371-6592, x113
