Published by: World Tibet Network News, Sunday, Apr 21, 1996

Submitted by: DEBRA@OLN.comlink.apc.org (Debra Guzman)

[This article has been excerpted.]

International Herald Tribune, 28 March 1996

By Mike Jendrzejczyk and Joanna Weschler

Washington: Just as the United Nations Human Rights Commission is about to vote on censuring China for its appalling human rights record, several European governments may succeed in sabotaging the effort by accepting token measures from Beijing instead. If this happens, China's leaders will again escape international accountability and once more economic interests will be allowed to prevail over principle.

The European Union and the United States agreed in February to sponsor a resolution on China at the rights commission's annual session in Geneva, which convened Monday. ...at a meeting in Brussels, France, Germany and Italy took the lead in trying to broker a deal to drop the resolution, under pressure from Beijing. France, ...seeking to sell Airbus jumbo jets to China, is also eager to defuse tension before the visit of the Chinese prime minister...to Paris in April.

China is offering some attractive inducements to persuade the EU to back off in Geneva. Beijing would agree to sign two international human rights treaties - the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights - and would continue efforts to reform its detention laws, which are inherently arbitrary. In addition, three UN agencies would be invited to visit.

...given Beijing's record of breaking its promises on human rights, it would be a mistake for the EU to agree to the deal.

When China was at risk of losing its most-favored-nation trading status with the United States, it promised to give "positive consideration" to a request by the Red Cross for regular, confidential access to Chinese prisons. Then, after President Clinton's disasterous decision to "delink" trade status and human rights in May 1994, negotiations with the Red Cross went into limbo.

Visits to China by UN human rights experts can be helpful, but only if such visits are part of a serious effort to undertake reforms. ...Beijing is holding out the prospect of a visit by the special rapporteur on religious intolerance, but the rapporteur already went to Beijing and Tibet in 1994, and none of his recommendations have been followed. The EU has also been offered a visit by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. But the group had already been invited to China before any negotiations on Geneva, so this is hardly a breakthrough.

Such is the paltry offer by one of the world's most repressive governments six years after the brutal crackdown in Tiananmen Square. While pursuing economic reform, Beijing has...restricted free association, speech and assembly. It...tightened controls on political dissent and crushed efforts by workers, intellectuals, students and others to peacefully exercise their rights. Responding to reports of high death rates in state-run orphanages, the government has mounted a witch-hunt against those who exposed the abuses.

In Tibet, the Chinese government blatently intervened in religious affairs by ignoring the Dalai Lama's choice of a new Panchen Lama and installing its own candidate. Human Rights Watch/Asia...documented a sharp increase in political arrests in Tibet since 1994; there are more political prisoners in Tibet jails now than anytime in the past six years.

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights has for years tried and failed to pass a resolution on China. ...in a "white paper," Beijing argues...over the past four years, "the cause of human rights in China has seen new progress".

But other governments should not settle for anything less than a genuine commitment to the rule of law. The vote in Geneva can send a clear signal ... in the eyes of the world, Chinese economic growth must be accompanied by the protection of basic rights and fundamental freedoms.

Mr. Jendrzejczyk is Washington director of Human Rights Watch/Asia and Ms. Weschler is the United Nations representative of Human Rights Watch.