CHINA: WEI JINGSHENG SPEAKING ON BEHALF OF THE TRANSNATIONAL RADICAL PARTY SAYS TO THE UN COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS THAT DIALOGUE WITHOUT PRESSURE WILL NOT GET CONCRETE RESULTS.

Geneva, 8 April 1999. Wei Jingheng, former political prisoner who spent in Chinese jails 18 years for advocating the "5th modernisation" - democratisation, has delivered an oral statement on behalf of the Transnational Radical Party to the 55th session of the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva in the framework of its discussion on country situations.

He said not to oppose the United Nations and the many countries' effort of effective dialogue with the Chinese government on the question of human rights. But he underlined being against secret dialogue, especially against giving up pressure in favor of dialogue.

For example, after the Tiananmen Massacre in June 4th, 1989, all the countries in the world have carried out sanctions against China. Under pressure and without dialogued at the time, the Chinese government sentenced the student leaders Wang Dan and Wang Youcai to 3, 4 years of prison. But in recent years when other countries are favoring dialogue to pressure, Wang Dan was arrested for writing articles not even political in nature, and Wang Youcai was arrested for making preparations to register a political party; both of them received harsh sentencing of 11 years. This difference clearly shows that Dialogue without pressure will not get concrete results.

Since China has signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, it should release all the dissidents and non-official publishers arrested recently. Only then will China prove it indeed respects its own law as well as the United Nations conventions, only then does it prove itself to be a sincere correspondent of the human rights dialogue.

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