2015-09-03
Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, speaks at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Hong Kong, May 13, 2015.
AFP
As Chinese President Xi Jinping gears up for his first state visit to the United States since assuming the presidency in 2013, calls are growing for U.S. and Chinese officials to make meaningful progress on human rights following a series of harsh crackdowns by his administration on critics of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
“Xi has presided over the detentions and imprisonment of numerous civil society leaders, human rights activists, lawyers, and NGO workers, and overseen one of the most repressive periods in the post-Mao era for ethnic and religious minorities,” the Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) network, which translates and collates reports from groups inside China, said in a recent report on its website.
The group called on the Obama administration to “exert some real pressure” on the Chinese government to put an end to systematic rights abuses.
“Making China respect basic human rights and rule of law is critical to ensuring that China honors any commitments it might make to cooperate on issues of climate change, cyber-security, regional security or currency manipulation,” the statement said.
It hit out at previous meetings between the two presidents as lacking substantive pressure and resulting in “no improvements.”
It said Xi stands to gain far more in terms of political legitimacy back home from the symbolic trappings of a state visit than does Washington.
“The visit … will send the wrong signals to China’s embattled human rights communities and persecuted ethnic and religious groups [who] have paid a heavy toll under Xi, and who are … in urgent need of a strong show of moral support,” CHRD said, citing dozens of recent interviews with Chinese rights activists and members of the country’s embattled legal profession, which has been targeted in a nationwide police operation since July 9.
One lawyer told the group: “If the White House lays out the red carpet for President Xi, it sends a clear message to China’s human rights activists that our journey will only become increasingly more arduous.”
The activists cited a 2013 crackdown on anti-corruption activists, continued repressive policies against Tibetans, the treatment of the Turkic-speaking Uyghurs as terrorists and ongoing restrictions on Islamic activities, the detention of activists who commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen massacre and those who showed public support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.
The targeting of NGOs and charities, a crackdown on overseas funding, the detention of the five feminists and the ongoing detention of rights lawyers should also be addressed at any Xi-Obama meeting, they said.
There is also growing concern over the targeting of official and unofficial Christian churches in the eastern province of Zhejiang, where the authorities are forcibly demolishing visible crosses from places of worship and imposing further religious and financial controls.
“Under Xi Jinping’s rule, torture remains endemic in Chinese detention centers and prisons,” CHRD said, adding that law enforcement agencies still torture with impunity in spite of rulings banning evidence acquired under duress.
It called for the release of all political prisoners, lawyers and rights activists detained by Xi’s administration.
Rights situation has grown worse
New York-based Hu Ping, editor of the Chinese-language monthly Beijing Spring, agreed with the CHRD report.
“In the two or more years of the Xi Jinping administration, the human rights situation in China has gotten even worse,” Hu said. “They are now detaining people now for things that they would never have detained them for in the past.”
“They are also detaining people now who would never have been detained before, and making links between things that they never would have seen as linked before.”