(New York)—The United States should sponsor a resolution at the U.N. Commission on Human Rights criticizing China’s systematic violation of human rights, Human Rights Watch said today. As in past years, China has sought to deflect criticism of its rights record at the 53-member U.N. body, which on Monday began its six-week annual session in Geneva.
Over the past few days, Chinese officials reportedly spoke several times with their U.S. counterparts—including Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice—to discourage the United States from tabling a resolution on China at the Commission. Earlier this month, a Chinese official announced that his government was against a U.S. resolution, adding that the United States should “think three times before acting.”
“China’s implicit threat of deteriorating bilateral relations should not keep the United States from condemning human rights abuses when and where they occur,” said Brad Adams, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia Division. “If President Bush needs more proof of China’s abusive practices, he need look no further than the litany of violations detailed in the U.S. State Department’s annual human rights report.”
China has also requested that the U.N. Commission on Human Rights stop its practice of singling out countries for their poor human rights records. Sha Zukang, China’s U.N. representative in Geneva, on Monday said that the Commission should devote itself to dialogue and cooperation instead of “naming and shaming.”
To stave off a resolution at the U.N. human rights body, the Chinese government has engaged in its long-time practice of “hostage politik,” or releasing a few well-known political prisoners without changing its ongoing abusive practices. In recent weeks, China released Tibetan nun Phuntsog Nyidron a year before her 17-year sentence was to run out. Originally charged with “counterrevolutionary propaganda and incitement,” she had her sentence extended for joining other imprisoned nuns to smuggle out a tape of songs they recorded about their love for their homeland and devotion to their families.
At the same time, Wang Youcai, serving 11 years for organizing and registering the first opposition political party since 1949, had five years taken off his sentence. And Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur businesswoman, was given a year’s reduction of her eight-year sentence for mailing her exiled husband copies of newspapers that could easily be bought on the streets of their home city of Urumqi in Xinjiang.
Meanwhile, China continues to flout international and domestic human rights standards. The government leveled exorbitant fines on HIV-positive activists in Henan in January, placed new curbs on Internet news discussion sites in February, and in March unlawfully detained a so-called underground bishop in Heilongjiang. There has been an upsurge in both forced evictions and the arbitrary detention of advocates for those evicted.
“The United States should be wary of trading a human rights resolution for more empty promises,” Adams said. “None of the three prisoners China released should have been imprisoned in the first place.”
Human Rights Watch urged the United States to commit itself to an all-out effort to line up co-sponsorship and the votes necessary to secure a resolution condemning China at the Commission.
“Without a meaningful lobbying effort, sponsorship is an empty exercise,” Adams said. “The U.N. Human Rights Commission presents a rare forum for full public scrutiny and public pressure on countries that abuse their citizens, and China’s record should be addressed in full view of the world.”
