World Tibet Network News Thursday, March 05, 1998

Washington, D.C. March 5, 1998 (ICT) - As both houses of Congress Thursday

consider resolutions urging President Clinton to pursue a United Nations

resolution on China's human rights practices, the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial

Center for Human Rights called on the administration to initiate this effort

without further delay. The Senate is scheduled to debate a China resolution

at 12pm Thursday in the form of an amendment to a transportation bill (ISTEA)

and the House International Relations Asia and Pacific Subcommittee meets at

2pm Thursday to mark up a similar resolution. Both resolutions urge U.S.

action on China at this year's session of the U.N. Commission on Human

Rights, which begins March 16 in Geneva.

"The administration's commitment to seek a resolution addressing China's

human rights abuses at the Commission on Human Rights is the last piece of

a U.S. human rights policy toward China that has already lost most of its

teeth," said James Silk, director of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center

for Human Rights. "There can be no principled justification for abandoning

the effort this year when, as the administration acknowledges, China has

failed to make meaningful progress on meeting its human rights obligations."

The U.N. Commission on Human Rights, the world's leading international

human rights forum, meets for six weeks every spring. Each year since

China's brutal suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Democracy Movement,

the U. S. has joined a multilateral effort to gain consideration and

passage of a Commission resolution about the human rights situation in

China. Each year, the proposed resolution makes moderate criticisms of the

Chinese government's human rights practices and modest recommendations for

improving them.

The government of China has conducted an intense international lobbying

campaign every year to prevent the Commission from considering the China

resolution. China has often released a few political prisoners and taken

other small positive steps in the period leading up to the annual Commission

session. Only in 1995, when the United States engaged in an early and

aggressive effort, has China failed to block consideration of its human

rights record. That year, the resolution fell one vote short of passing.

In a letter to President Clinton last month, the RFK Memorial Center for

Human Rights and eight other human rights organizations stated: "Beijing has

demonstrated that it is sensitive to external pressure and criticism of its

human rights record. China would not have made even these minimal

concessions without the prospect of the Commission resolution. The value of

the resolution is its utility as a tool to help bring about further

improvements."

The Clinton Administration has stated repeatedly that only significant,

concrete improvements in the human rights situation in China would justify

reconsideration of the U.S. commitment to seek passage of a Commission

resolution on China.

Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on September 17,

1997, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Stanley

Roth, said: "[I]f we can get significant progress, not minimal, then we can

make a judgment that it wouldn't be necessary to go forward. . . . [I]t

would have to be a significant degree of progress that would, I think, have

considerable public support and congressional support. It could not be pro

forma."

Only a month ago, on February 3, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy,

Human Rights and Labor John Shattuck, testifying at a hearing before the

House Subcommittee on International Relations and Human Rights, said: "We do

not see major changes. We have not characterized China as having

demonstrated major changes."

Ten days ago, on February 23, the European Union, which has sponsored and

supported the China resolution in the past, announced that it would not do so

this year. The EU cited several recent steps that China has taken as reasons

for dropping the resolution: China's signing of the International Covenant on

Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: its invitation to the U.N. High

Commissioner for Human Rights to visit China; its negotiations with the

International Committee of the Red Cross over possible future visits to

China's prisons; the 1997 visit to China by the U.N. Working Group on

Arbitrary Detention; and the release from prison of prodemocracy activist and

Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award laureate Wei Jingsheng.

"We can welcome China's recent gestures without pretending that they are the

significant steps the United States has consistently said it would take to

stop pursuing the U.N. resolution," said Silk. "And it is important to keep

Wei Jingsheng's release from prison in perspective. He was forced to leave

the country. If he tries to return to China, he will be imprisoned again.

He has stressed that thousands of others remain in harsh prison conditions

merely for exercising their fundamental human rights. And he has stated

unequivocally to the U.S. government that his release should not serve as an

excuse to abandon the Geneva effort."

###

Sean Crowley

Communications Director

Robert F. Kennedy Memorial

1367 Connecticut Ave., NW

Suite 200

Washington, DC 20036

Phone:(202) 463-7575, ext. 241

FAX: (202) 463-6606

Email: crowleys@rfkmemorial.org