Published by: World Tibet Network News, Monday, August 5, 1996

BEIJING (Aug. 5) XINHUA - A leading official from the China Society for Human Rights Studies today said that an account by Human Rights Watch/Asia in its July 10th report "China: the Cost of Putting Business First" was "sheer lies."

"Human Rights Watch/Asia's unwarranted attack on China in the Tibet issue and the crackdown on crime was 'deliberately fabricated' and confused right with wrong," the official told a Xinhua reporter.

The official said that Human Rights Watch/Asia gratuitously slandered China with its accusation in a report published on January 7, about the situation of children in Chinese child welfare institutions.

Since that time, the official said, Chinese departments and UN organizations that understand the actual situation of Chinese children, along with many US adoption agencies, as well as individual citizens who visited Chinese child welfare homes, have refuted the lies and slanders of Human Rights Watch/Asia with the true facts. As a result, Human Rights Watch/Asia has been embarrassed, the official said.

A closer examination of the Human Rights Watch/Asia report published in July revealed that it was no different from the January report, fabricating rumors and distorting the facts, the official said, pointing out that the contents and individual cases in the report are "do not at all tally with the actual situations", and referring to some of them as "slanderous rumors," and others as "deliberate misrepresentations".

In the report, Human Rights Watch/Asia fabricated stories, saying that "In February 1996, the Chinese government issued a directive to close politically active monasteries", clearly referring to the Tibetan issue, the official pointed out.

According to the relevant Chinese departments, the government never issued such a directive, the official pointed out, noting that Tibet now has a total of more than 1,400 monasteries and nunneries of various kinds, and not one was closed this year.