Human Rights: October 2007 Archives

By Ashleigh Patterson | CTV.ca
28 October 2007

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will host the first-ever formal meeting between a Canadian prime minister and the Dalai Lama -- a controversial move that could signal an unprecedented push for Tibetan autonomy.

The 72-year-old exiled spiritual leader will visit Ottawa today and publicly meet with Harper in the Prime Minister's Office on Monday.

That meeting is expected to go further than former prime minister Paul Martin's informal private talk with the Tibetan leader in 2004 -- the first time the Dalai Lama had ever met with a Canadian prime minister.

"For us, no matter what they talk about in the meeting, the significance is that they are meeting," Norbu Tsering, president of the Canadian Tibetan Association of Ontario, told CTV.ca from Toronto.

October's visit will be the Dalai Lama's sixth trip to Canada and his third to Ottawa since he began travelling to the West in the 1970s:

• The Dalai Lama first visited Canada in 1980 and was met by then-governor general Ed Schreyer.
• In 1990, he visited Ottawa for the first time and met former secretary of state for multiculturalism Gerry Weiner on the government's behalf.
• The Dalai Lama's 1990 visit prompted an amendment to Sino-Canadian diplomatic policy, which was officially established in 1970. Canada continued to recognize the People's Republic of China as the official government but would take no position on territorial claims.
• In 2004, former prime minister Paul Martin courted controversy by becoming the first Canadian leader to meet the Dalai Lama. The one-hour talk on human rights took place at the home of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Ottawa. Martin's predecessor, Jean Chrétien, refused such a meeting.
• The Dalai Lama was personally recognized when he last visited Canada in 2006 and received an honorary Canadian citizenship -- a measure protested by Chinese officials. He joins Holocaust hero Raoul Wallenberg, Nelson Mandela and, most recently, Burmese democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi in receiving the honour.

Currently, Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade recognizes China as the legitimate government of both China and Tibet -- but has "great respect" for the Dalai Lama.

Dermod Travis, executive director of Canada Tibet Committee, says western nations have made a distinct shift in recent years toward a negotiated solution for an autonomous Tibet within China.

>> Read the complete article

The Epoch Times
October 24, 2007

A confronation between monks in Zhaibung Monastery and the police broke out on October 17. Four days after the confrontation, the largest monastery in Lhasa, Tibet is still sealed off with over 1,000 monks and dozens of pilgrims inside. Over 3,000 armed police have surrounded the monastery.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Ends Celebrations for Dalai Lama's Award

According to the Central News Agency's (CAN) report, on October 16, monks in the monastery attempted to celebrate inside the monastery President Bush giving the Dalai Lama a Congressional Gold Medal on the 17th. Authorities put a halt to the celebrations.

On the morning of the 17th, after the monks chanted Buddhist scriptures in the Coqen Hall, they attempted to hold another celebration. A confrontation ensued when armed officers injured a monk in the head trying to stop the celebration. About 900 monks were involved and there were about 350 armed officers inside and about 1,000 outside the monastery at the time. The monks were not allowed to leave the monastery. The military blocked traffic west of Lhasa leading into the downtown to prevent the monks going downtown to protest.

It was reported that there was confrontation between civilians and police in Neqoin Monastery, an affiliate monastery outside the walls of Zhaibung Monastery. Some people said the police shot at people in the street of Lhasa but those in the Temple claimed they didn't hear any gunfire.

>> Read the complete article

By Stephen Collinson | AFP | via (uncensored) Yahoo! News
October 18, 2007

President George W. Bush Wednesday called for an end to "religious repression" in China as he defiantly became the first US leader to appear in public with the Dalai Lama.

The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader accepted the Congressional Gold Medal, lawmakers' highest civilian honor, in a formal ceremony in the US Capitol's ornate Rotunda -- a move certain to further enrage leaders in Beijing.

Bush praised the 72-year-old Buddhist icon for keeping the "flame" of Tibet's people alive, and called on Beijing to open political talks with him about the region's future.

"They will find this good man to be a man of peace and reconciliation," Bush said in the decorous room beneath the soaring dome of the US Capitol building, watched by lawmakers, Tibetan exiles and Buddhist monks.

"Americans cannot look to the plight of the religiously oppressed and close our eyes or turn away," Bush said.

"That is why I will continue to urge the leaders of China to welcome the Dalai Lama to China," said the president, in a ceremony broadcast live to China by radio, television and the Internet by Voice of America.

The Dalai Lama reiterated that he was not seeking independence from China but wanted greater autonomy, and he said he was sorry that his presence in the United States had ruffled Sino-US relations.

"The consistency of American support for Tibet has not gone unnoticed in China," he said during the ceremony.

"Where this has caused some tension in the US-China relations I feel a sense of regret."

Bush had earlier provoked a fresh outburst of anger from Beijing, for his previous private meeting on Tuesday with the Dalai Lama, a style of encounter preferred by previous US presidents.

The Dalai Lama fled to India following a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959, and currently lives in the northern hill town of Dharamsala, which is also the seat of his government in exile.

China has ruled Tibet since sending troops into the region in 1950, and officially "liberating" it from feudal rule a year later.

Senate Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell praised Bush for appearing at the public event with the Dalai Lama.

"US presidents have met privately with the Dalai Lama for years, but it wasn't until today that any of them had lent the prestige of the office to a public event," McConnell said.

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi earlier warned that Bush's private meeting with the Dalai Lama and the Congress ceremony represented "a severe violation of the norms of international relations."

He accused the United States of having "severely hurt" China's feelings and interfered in its internal affairs.

>> Read the complete article

By Joseph Kahn | The New York Times
October 14, 2007

Lake Tai, the center of China's ancient "land of fish and rice," succumbed this year to floods of industrial and agricultural waste.

Toxic cyanobacteria, commonly referred to as pond scum, turned the big lake fluorescent green. The stench of decay choked anyone who came within a mile of its shores. At least two million people who live amid the canals, rice paddies and chemical plants around the lake had to stop drinking or cooking with their main source of water.

The outbreak confirmed the claims of a crusading peasant, Wu Lihong, who protested for more than a decade that the region's thriving chemical industry, and its powerful friends in the local government, were destroying one of China's ecological treasures.

Mr. Wu, however, bore silent witness. Shortly before the algae crisis erupted in May, the authorities here in his hometown arrested him. In mid-August, with a fetid smell still wafting off the lake, a local court sentenced him to three years on an alchemy of charges that smacked of official retribution.

Pollution has reached epidemic proportions in China, in part because the ruling Communist Party still treats environmental advocates as bigger threats than the degradation of air, water and soil that prompts them to speak out.

Senior officials have tried to address environmental woes mostly through pulling the traditional levers of China's authoritarian system: issuing command quotas on energy efficiency and emissions reduction; punishing corrupt officials who shield polluters; planting billions of trees across the country to hold back deserts and absorb carbon dioxide.

But they do not dare to unleash individuals who want to make China cleaner. Grass-roots environmentalists arguably do more to expose abuses than any edict emanating from Beijing. But they face a political climate that varies from lukewarm tolerance to icy suppression.

Fixing the environment is, in other words, a political problem. Central party officials say they need people to report polluters and hold local governments to account. They granted legal status to private citizens' groups in 1994 and have allowed environmentalism to emerge as an incipient social force.

But local officials in China get ahead mainly by generating high rates of economic growth and ensuring social order. They have wide latitude to achieve those goals, including nearly complete control over the police and the courts in their domains. They have little enthusiasm for environmentalists who appeal over their heads to higher-ups in the capital.

Mr. Wu, a jaunty, 40-year-old former factory salesman, pioneered a style of intrepid, media-savvy environmental work that made Lake Tai, and the hundreds of chemical factories on its shores, the focus of intense regulatory scrutiny.

In 2005 he was declared an "Environmental Warrior" by the National People's Congress. His address book contained cellphone numbers for officials in Beijing and the provincial capital of Nanjing who outranked the party bosses where he lived.

But Mr. Wu was far from untouchable. He lost his job. His wife lost hers. The police summoned, detained and interrogated him. The local government and factory owners also tried for years to bring him into the fold with contracts, gifts and jobs. When party officials offered him a chance to profit handsomely from a pollution cleanup contract, a friend warned him not to accept. Mr. Wu, who needed the money, said yes.

>> Read the complete report

By Michael Weisskopf | TIME Magazine
October 13, 2007

Next summer's Olympics will showcase a China of glittering skyscrapers and overstuffed store shelves. But the government responsible for this economic miracle continues to imprison political activists, restrict religious freedom, tightly control the media and Internet, and protect its citizens only haphazardly from pollution and unsafe food and consumer products, a congressional panel reported Friday.

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China credited Communist Party leaders with increasing legal protections for those who abstain from unauthorized political and religious activities, but noted the safeguards are selectively enforced. "Against persons the Party deems to pose a threat to its supremacy, officials wield the legal system as a harsh and deliberately unpredictable weapon," the panel concluded in its annual report on the state of human rights and rule of law in China.

With the Games seen as a mark of its arrival, Beijing is under pressure from foreign activists to comply with international standards from the workplace to air quality. Friday?s report added leverage for human rights reforms because of the official U.S. imprimatur: the CECC consists of nine senators, nine House members and five senior Administration officials appointed by the President.

The commission veered from its central focus to such recent issues as food and product safety, which also affects foreign consumers of Chinese exports. The report praised Beijing for reforms, but complained of "inadequate and inconsistent implementation, corruption and a lack of regulatory incentives." Worse, the government discouraged consumer organizations and harassed people for reporting problems with consumer products. Likewise, environmental reforms have been hampered by uncooperative local authorities and official suppression of green activists and the free flow of information, the report said.

Human rights came in for the toughest criticism. Despite a 2005 pledge to "provide relief" for its political prisoners, Beijing continued to detain and imprison democracy activists as well as those attempting to organize workers in labor unions not approved by the government. Police routinely detain people for days without formal charge or more justification than to avoid protests or "social unrest," it said.

A database set up by the commission to monitor political and religious prisoners numbered 4,060 cases as of September.

The past year saw a tightening of the screws on religion, the report said, with Beijing continuing its "campaign of persecution" against the Falun Gong spiritual movement. Protestant church gatherings that didn't register with the government were shut down, and Catholics blocked from contact with the Vatican. Independent clergy were detained and coerced.

Tibetan Buddhists faced greater repression in recent months, said the report, as authorities continued to detain and imprison Tibetans for peaceful expression and nonviolent action -- at least 100 such cases were identified.

>> Read the complete article

By REUTERS | The New York Times
October 11, 2007

U.S. President George W. Bush, risking Chinese anger, will host exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama at the White House next week.

Bush will welcome the Dalai Lama on Tuesday, a day before he accepts the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor Congress can bestow.

The White House had previously announced that Bush and his wife, Laura, would attend the award ceremony on Capitol Hill.

China views the Dalai Lama, who fled his homeland in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese Communist rule, as a separatist.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner says he only wants greater autonomy for the predominantly Buddhist Himalayan region.

China reacted angrily when the U.S. Congress decided to give the Dalai Lama the medal, denouncing the decision as interference in its internal affairs.

"The Chinese government strongly opposes the U.S. Congress giving the Dalai Lama a so-called award," said government spokesman Liu Jianchao.

The award ceremony will be the first time Bush will have appeared in public with the Dalai Lama, who has visited the White House before but always for private meetings.

>> Read the complete article

By REUTERS | The New York Times
October 09, 2007

China, in its latest tirade against Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, on Tuesday accused the exiled Nobel peace prize laureate of supporting "evil cults" like Falun Gong and Japan's Aum Shinrikyo.

China has ruled the mountainous Himalayan region of Tibet with an iron fist since Chinese troops marched in there in 1950.

The Dalai Lama fled into exile in India after a failed uprising against communist rule in 1959 and is branded by China as a "separatist." He says he only wants greater autonomy for the region.

In a lengthy signed commentary in English carried by the official Xinhua news agency, the piece said the Dalai Lama "not only has no hatred toward evil cults but instead shows a great deal of compassion for them."

The Dalai Lama supported Shoko Asahara and his Aum Shinrikyo cult, who carried out a sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 which killed 12 and made thousands sick, Xinhua said, in a piece signed by somebody calling themselves Shi Shan.

"It was the support and connivance of the 14th Dalai Lama who took the foe for his friend that made Asahara feel secure in the knowledge that he had strong backing," Xinhua said, in typically strong language.

"It is the 14th Dalai Lama's own deeds that have step by step betrayed his real intentions and political ambitions put under the guise of Buddhism and peace," it added.

The Dalai Lama also provided succor to the Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned by China as an "evil cult," and its leader Li Hongzhi, Xinhua said.

"... Even such an evil cult leader who is denounced by many people and had to flee abroad to escape the punishment of laws secured compassion and admiration from the 14th Dalai Lama," it added.

Critics have accused China of repressing religious freedom in Tibet and other parts of the country, but Beijing counters by saying it guarantees religious freedom and invests large amounts of money every year to modernize the underdeveloped Tibetan region.

Last month, China chided German Chancellor Angela Merkel for hosting the Dalai Lama and demanded Berlin take action to repair damage to bilateral ties.

By Jill Savitt | salon.com
October 04, 2007

Slick P.R. moves around the '08 Olympics can't hide the fact that China is still complicit in the Darfur genocide.

The Chinese government can be very persuasive when it wants to be. China persuaded the International Olympic Committee to award Beijing the 2008 Olympic Games -- marking the first time in more than 20 years that the Games will be held under an authoritarian government.

Now, China is attempting to persuade world leaders, the media and the public that Beijing has suddenly become a leader for peace in regard to Darfur. But there are many signs that China's recent efforts have been little more than a public relations campaign to spare the Olympic host from continued negative publicity about its complicity in the Darfur genocide.

For four long years, China was a major, if not the chief obstacle to international efforts to bring security to Darfur. Beijing blocked, vetoed or diluted resolutions at the U.N. Security Council that would have authorized a protection operation or sanctions on Khartoum for continued intransigence.

Suddenly this spring -- as China's role in Darfur was discussed publicly in light of the upcoming Olympics -- China took some new, high-profile steps to address Darfur. Beijing appointed a special envoy for the region. It announced that it would send 300 engineers to Darfur, and in a major turnaround China voted on July 31 for a U.N. resolution authorizing an African Union-United Nations "hybrid" force of up to 26,000 troops and police for Darfur.

Beijing insists -- in media interviews and in face-to-face meetings with Darfur advocates, including myself -- that its new and improved positions on Darfur have not come in response to pressure from activists pointing up the hypocrisy of simultaneously sponsoring a genocide in Africa and an Olympics at home. Beijing has said its position on Darfur is based on principle.

But if China's Darfur policy is indeed based on principle rather than public relations, there is far more it could do to help bring security to Darfur. It could begin by speaking honestly about the realities on the ground there. After a visit to Darfur in May, China's special envoy Liu Guijin said, "I didn't see a desperate scenario of people dying of hunger." Rather, Mr. Liu said the people of Darfur thanked him "for the Chinese government's help in building dams and providing water supply equipment."

Since then, in fact, the security situation in Darfur has gone from bad to worse. Humanitarian organizations are pulling out their personnel, and African Union forces were recently attacked and killed by a splinter group of rebels.

China could put a moratorium on oil ventures with Khartoum. Beijing contends that its purchase of oil from the regime in Khartoum -- more than $1 billion each year -- and its massive investment in infrastructure should be viewed as entirely separate from the violence and murder in Darfur. But it is oil revenues from China that continue to fuel the Sudanese regime's buying of planes and bombs, and its backing of hired killers, the Janjaweed.

China could suspend arms sales to the Sudanese regime, and demand that all other nations follow suit. Human rights reports document that weapons sold by China to Khartoum have been used against the innocent people of Darfur. This fact is all the more troubling given that by selling arms to the regime, China is recouping some of the money it spends in Khartoum buying oil.

China could publicly urge the regime to disarm the Janjaweed and cease aerial bombing campaigns. It could also criticize the Sudanese regime's harassment of the world's largest humanitarian operation -- and cry foul when humanitarian workers are ousted, as happened recently to the director of CARE in Sudan.

While China has widely touted its U.N. vote for the "hybrid" force, it has of course been silent about the central role Beijing's diplomats played in weakening the resolution -- by stripping provisions that would have applied sanctions and provided a mandate to disarm threatening combatants.

China was persuasive enough to convince the international committee that it is worthy of being an Olympic host. Now it must act like one, and live up to the grand slogan it has chosen for the '08 games -- "One World, One Dream" -- especially when the stakes are so much greater than athletes winning medals.

By AlertNet | Reuters Foundation
October 05, 2007 

Beijing police have detained two relatives of a jailed housing rights activist, and prison officials are also mistreating an ethnic Mongolian political prisoner, according to human rights groups.

Ye Mingjun and Ye Guoqiang, son and brother of Ye Guozhu, sentenced for organising protests against forced evictions for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, are being held incommunicado, Amnesty International said in a statement.

Police came for Mingjun at his house on Sept. 29, and later told his family he was being held for "inciting subversion of state power", Amnesty said.

The police had detained Guoqiang earlier in the day for protesting forced evictions, also for the Olympics, in a southern part of Beijing, the group added.

"They are held incommunicado, putting them at high risk of torture or other ill-treatment," said Amnesty, which has previously warned Guozhu has been beaten and tortured with electric shocks in jail.

The government has been cracking down on dissent ahead of a key Communist Party meeting that opens on Oct. 15.

>> Read the complete report 

By David Barboza | The New York Times
October 03, 2007

A prominent human rights lawyer in Beijing says he was abducted, beaten and threatened over the weekend by a gang of men who demanded that he and his family leave the city.

The lawyer, Li Heping, has gained renown here for his defense of environmental activists, imprisoned lawyers and church leaders, and has also considered representing a member of Falun Gong, the banned religious sect.

Human rights groups say Chinese lawyers, activists and dissidents are often subjected to harassment, beatings or threats of long jail terms for pressing claims that seem to challenge the government and the nation's legal system.

In a telephone interview on Tuesday, Mr. Li said his abductors did not say why they were beating him.

"I don't know why they did it," Mr. Li said. "They just told me to leave Beijing. They didn't tell me why they did it."

The abduction of Mr. Li, 37, was first reported by Radio Free Asia, a nonprofit group in Washington that broadcasts news to Asian countries in local languages, and that often reports on human rights cases and minority causes in China.

Mr. Li's ordeal began Saturday, on the eve of a national holiday week observing the 58th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China and as Shanghai was preparing to play host to the 2007 Special Olympics.

Radio Free Asia officials say they received a tip about the kidnapping that day and then contacted Mr. Li.

In the telephone interview on Tuesday night, Mr. Li said he was followed after leaving his office late Saturday by a group of men who eventually grabbed him, put a bag over his head and drove him to a location where they beat him in a basement, sometimes tormenting him with a high-powered electric rod.

Later, he said, the abductors drove him to another location in the suburbs of Beijing, where they left him and told him that he and his family ought to leave Beijing immediately.

Mr. Li said he later visited a hospital because he was suffering from hearing loss and swelling in his face.

Doctors told him he may have suffered serious head injuries, he said. Mr. Li also said he reported the incident to the police.

After being released by his abductors, Mr. Li said he returned home to discover that some of his personal belongings were missing, including legal files and his license to practice law.

In a statement released to a human rights group, Mr. Li said: "As a lawyer, I had the chance to experience electric punishment and torture. I was rolling on the ground and they continued laughing and beating me. This torture lasted about four or five hours."

Human Rights in China, an organization based in New York, issued a statement by its executive director, Sharon Hom, saying, "As the international community increases its scrutiny of China in the lead-up to the Olympics, it is appalling that this kind of attack on lawyers continue."

The statement went on, "These attacks raise serious concerns about the will and ability of the Chinese government to protect lawyers' personal safety and right to practice law, which are essential elements of a system of rule of law."