Published by: World Tibet Network News, Saturday, Apr 20, 1996

Submitted by: "Carol J. Brighton" <74124.3026@CompuServe.COM>

By Will Harper

The Berkeley Voice 1996

Berkeley has perhaps made a Chinese town its first step-sister city.

Tuesday night the City Council followed the recommendation of the Peace and Justice Commission and voted to make the town of Changde in the Hunan Province a sister city and then immediately suspended the relationship.

Michael Sherman, the commission's chairman, said while the resolution may appear counter-productive, he and other commissioners wanted to show people from Changde that Berkeley cared about them but also wanted to respect the concerns of those critical of China's human rights record.

"Normally, I would support these kinds of ties of getting both communities to know each other, but the situation in China is so repressive today we felt that none of our concerns would get to the people over there .... because there is no freedom of speech, the press or assembly in China," Sherman said.

The Peace and Justice Commission, which oversees Berkeley's 13 sister city relationships and passes resolutions concerning human rights and foreign policy, initially voted on March 4 to make Changde a full-fledged sister city.

But Sherman said in the two intervening weeks up to the commission's following meeting, reports surfaced of human rights abuses by the Chinese government.

The city also received a flood of letter from activists worried that Berkeley approved of the Chinese government's oppressive tactics.

"In a repressive regime like China a sister city relationship is one with the (government) officials and those selected and and condoned by them," Dean Alper of the International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet said in a March 19 letter to Mayor Shirley Dean.

But Ann Fagan-Ginger, another member of the Peace and Justice Commission, disagreed. She said by creating a sister city relationship with Changde, Berkeley could provide a model of local democracy for the town.

"This is step backward in our understanding that the sister city relationship is city to city. It's not city to nation. Berkeley legally can't establish a relationship with the Chinese government," Fagan-Ginger said.

Fagan-Ginger said Berkeley has established sister city relationships with cities located in repressive countries like the town of San Antonio de los Ranchos in El Salavador.

But Sherman said the situation in El Salvador was different because when the sister city tie was established between Berkeley and San Antonio Los Ranchos in the '80s, the country was in the midst of a civil war. As a result, he said, there were effectively two governments at the time: one run by leftist guerillas, another by the U.S.-supported, right-wing ruling party.

San Antonio Los Ranchos was under guerilla control, Sherman said.

Last September, following a visit to Changde by the mayor, the City Council asked the commission to consider making the Chinese town a sister city.

The commission will review China's human rights record every 12 months to see if it can lift the suspension on the sister city relationship with Changde.

Copies of the resolution and its listed concerns about human rights abuses in China are being sent to President Bill Clinton, senators Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein, Secretary of Human Rights Tim Wirth, and Li Teng, the premier of China.

The City Council also approved another commission recommendation to boycott goods made in Chinese prisons.

Councilwoman Polly Armstrong abstained on all the China-related votes, saying the council should focus on the city's problems before it directs its attention elsewhere. "My theory is that until we get our own problems straightened out in Berkeley, we have no time to interfere with other people's problems in other places."