Human Rights: November 2007 Archives
By David Shambaugh | International Herald Tribune
November 26, 2007
For Europe, the "China honeymoon" is over. As the 10th European Union-China summit meeting convenes in Beijing this week, and after 15 years of rapidly and dramatically developing ties, there are numerous indications of new strains emerging in the relationship.
Tensions have grown over the past year, for a number of reasons. In particular, there has been a changed mood in Europe about China. This is evident on a number of levels - public, corporate and governmental.
Positive public perceptions of China have dropped dramatically over the past year, dipping 15 to 20 percent in public surveys in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Britain. This is primarily the result of job outsourcing and the ballooning EU trade deficit with China, which is growing at €15 million per hour and likely to rise from €128 billion in 2006 to more than €170 billion in 2007.
Europe's mood has also been affected by publicized incidents of Chinese industrial espionage and attempted hacking into the computer networks of the German chancellor's office and the British Foreign Office (and the Pentagon), as well as concerns over human rights in China, particularly Tibet.
Criticism of China's human rights record has always been harsher among new EU member states in Eastern Europe - particularly the Czech Republic, Poland and Baltic states - which tend to view Beijing through the prism of their Communist past.
European corporations are also increasingly voicing their frustrations with China. A variety of discriminatory trade and investment practices plague European and other businesses in China, particularly the widespread theft of intellectual property and market-access barriers to China's financial services industries, distribution networks and protected industries.
By REUTERS | The New York Times
23 November 2007
Chinese sport officials have warned that world champion hurdler Liu Xiang's achievements will be rendered "meaningless" if he fails to win Olympic gold in Beijing next year, according to the athlete's coach.
"Officials from the State General Administration of Sports once told us if Liu could not win a gold in Beijing, all of his previous achievements would become meaningless," Friday's China Daily quoted Sun Haiping as saying.
"So we have to take everything possible into consideration to keep him in top form."
World record-holder Liu won gold in the 110m hurdles in Athens in 2004 and this year became China's first male track world champion in Osaka, Japan.
Liu, who remains China's best hope of track gold on home soil next year, said he felt the pressure of expectations.
"Much of the time, people don't just want me to win a medal, but to get gold. This kind of pressure is indeed very heavy," the 24-year-old told the Beijing News in a separate report.
"After all, there are currently many outstanding athletes in the 110m hurdles. Any of them could be number one."
Since clocking 12.88 to set the world record in June 2006, Liu has gone from strength to strength, winning nine titles in his last 12 meetings.
GENUINE THREAT
He has been nominated as one of three finalists in the running for the International Association of Athletics Federation's (IAAF) male athlete of the year, alongside America's Tyson Gay and Ethiopian Haile Gebrselassie.
But Dayron Robles of Cuba has emerged as a genuine threat to the Chinese hurdler's Olympic title defense, equaling his best time of 12.92 in 2007 and beating a rusty Liu comfortably on home soil at the Shanghai Grand Prix in September.
China's sports ministry has recently ratcheted up the pressure on the country's athletes.
By Stephen Wade, AP Sports Writer | Star Tribune Minneapolis-St. Paul
November 16, 2007
Chinese police will deal harshly with social or political demonstrations at the Beijing Olympics, a top security official said Friday.
Chinese police will deal harshly with social or political demonstrations at the Beijing Olympics, a top security official said Friday.
With 28,000 journalists expected to attend, the Aug. 8-24 Olympics offer a rare chance for protesters to express grievances against China's communist government on issues including religious freedom, Tibetan independence and global warming.
Liu Shaowu, deputy director of the Olympic Security Command Center, said security forces would stop any form of demonstration at or around venues. He also suggested that protests deemed threatening would be snuffed out far from Olympic sites.
"As for violating China's sovereignty and encouraging separatists and terrorists, definitely we will not allow that,'' Liu told reporters. "We will deal with that according to Chinese law.''
Liu's comments, made at a rare media briefing on Olympic security, are likely to compound concerns that Beijing will use heavy-handed policing at the games.
Defending the measures, Liu said the protest clampdown at Olympic sites is in line with the Olympic charter, which he said forbids "any form of political, religious or racial demonstration.''
By Anita Chang | THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | via CNEWS
November 10, 2007
Outraged Beijing Olympic organizers sought to refute allegations of religious intolerance Thursday, saying Bibles and other religious items for personal use are welcome at next year's Beijing Olympics.
That latitude, however, does not extend to the Falun Gong spiritual movement, banned eight years ago as an "evil cult" and persecuted mercilessly ever since.
Recent reports by a religious news agency and European media that Bibles would be banned at the Olympics touched off an outcry that prompted a U.S. senator to call the Chinese ambassador for an explanation and a Christian athletes group to protest the "deep violation."
Angry Beijing organizers flatly denied the reports, while the Foreign Ministry said they were likely the work of people who wanted to sabotage Beijing's hosting of the Games.
"There is no such thing. This kind of report is an intentional distortion of truth," said Li Zhanjun, director of the Beijing Olympics media centre. Li said texts and items from major religious groups that are brought for personal use by athletes and visitors are permitted.
A notice on the official Beijing Olympics website explaining entry procedures into the country said "each traveller is recommended to take no more than one Bible into China."
Religious services - Christian, Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and Buddhist - will be available to athletes in the Olympic Village next summer, Li said.
However, those policies do not apply to Falun Gong, reasserting China's determination to marginalize, persecute and eradicate the spiritual movement.
Falun Gong was banned after members staged a massive peaceful protest in 1998 outside government headquarters to demand official recognition. The U.S. State Department says practitioners in China face arrest, detention and possible torture, while members overseas maintain a vigorous campaign of protest against China's government.
By Human Rights in China | 中国人权
October 29, 2007
Human Rights in China has learned that Shanghai petitioner and rights defender Mao Hengfeng was subject to another round of abuse at the Shanghai Women's Prison and at a hospital she was taken to earlier this month. Authorities prevented her husband, Wu Xuwei, from visiting her in prison until October 26. He now reports that Mao was beaten and force-fed in retaliation for publicizing mistreatment in July and August this year.
Mao Hengfeng told her husband that on September 13, at the instigation of prison authorities, a fellow inmate beat Mao in retaliation for revealing that she had been held in solitary confinement for 70 days. Mao was covered with bruises from the beating. She also reports being force-fed.
On September 24, prison authorities sent Mao to the Nanhui Prison Hospital. Mao had earlier refused to undergo a check-up because she feared being forcibly injected with drugs; this had been done during her incarceration at a psychiatric institution in the 1980s. At the hospital, Mao was stripped bare and tied to a bed such that she could only move her fingers. She was held this way until October 15, monitored by closed-circuit television, and force-fed by other inmates.
Her husband, Wu Xuwei, was finally able to visit Mao in prison on October 26. He alleges that his visit was delayed for 20 days because the authorities did not want him to see Mao's bruises evident from the September 13 beating. During his latest visit, Mao and her husband were supervised by prison guards, who stopped her from speaking several times when she attempted to go into details about being force-fed.
Dismissed from her soap factory job in 1988 when she refused to abort a second pregnancy, Mao Hengfeng has been petitioning this dismissal and subsequent abuses since 1989. As a result of these activities, she has been forcibly admitted to a psychiatric hospital three times, detained multiple times, and served a one-and-a-half year sentence of reeducation-through-labor (RTL). In early June 2006, officers from Shanghai's Yangpu District Daqiao public security station detained Mao in a guesthouse for violating residential surveillance rules. During her detention there, she broke two table lamps, and on January 12, 2007, was sentenced to two years and six months in prison on the charge of "intentional damage of property." Mao has been subject to a range of abuses in prison, including an excessive 70-day period of solitary confinement in July and August this year which contravened article 15 of the Chinese Prison Law, stipulating a maximum of 15 days.
Human Rights in China condemns the abusive and humiliating treatment which Mao Hengfeng is being subjected to in prison. Human Rights in China is further concerned about reports that prison authorities instigated another inmate to beat, monitor, and force-feed Mao, violating international standards on the rights of prisoners. "Retaliation against inmates who expose abusive conditions is outrageous," said Human Rights in China Executive Director Sharon Hom. "These kinds of abuses in prison violate both domestic law and relevant international standards. Instead of retaliating against the whistle-blower, prison authorities should conduct a full investigation."
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | The New York Times
November 01, 2007
China will not tolerate unauthorized parades, demonstrations or other gatherings during next year's Olympic Games, a police spokesman said Thursday in a warning to groups hoping to use the Games' visibility to publicize their causes.
''Any group or individual who stages a gathering, parade, or demonstration during the Beijing Olympic Games period must respect Chinese law,'' Public Security Ministry press officer Wu Heping said. ''As to those legal activities, police will protect them according to the law. As for those activities that are illegal, we police will handle them according to the law.''
Chinese law technically permits protests and other similar actions, but they require applications that are almost never approved. Those who dare even make such requests can be subject to surveillance, harassment or arrest, especially if the cause involved is seen to challenge Communist Party authority.
By Radio Free Asia
October 30, 2007
A court in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan has convicted of subversion a Tibetan nomad who called for the return of the Dalai Lama at a horseracing festival in August.
Ronggyal Adrak was tried at the Ganzi Autonomous Prefecture People's Court in Dartsedo (in Chinese, Kangding) on Monday, Oct. 29, on charges of seeking to "split" the country and subvert state power during a public meeting Aug. 1 in Lithang county, sources in Lithang told RFA's Tibetan service.
Ronggyal Adrak told the judge from the dock: "When I shouted 'Long live the Dalai Lama' and called for the release of Tibetan political prisoners, I was detained and then formally arrested."
"The main reason was that there is nobody in Tibet who does not have faith in, loyalty to, and the desire to see the Dalai Lama," he told the court. "On the contrary, the Chinese government sends out propaganda saying that the Tibetans inside Tibet have no desire to meet him and have lost faith in him."
"That is wrong, and we have no freedom to say so."
The judge told Ronggyal Adrak that his crimes were "very severe."
Responsible for protest
"You committed the crime of subverting the People's Republic of China. The Dalai Lama, for whom you called for a long life and his return to Tibet, is the same person who is conniving with different foreign leaders and organi-zations to split our country through a variete of means and methods," the judge said.
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