US, China set for human rights talks resumption

Friday, May 14, 2010

Reuters
By Paul Eckert
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File photo: US Prez Barack Obama and Chinese PM Hu Jintao in Beijing. AP

Washington-- The United States and China will resume a formal dialogue on human rights on Thursday after a two-year hiatus during which the countries have worked to keep ties stable amid disputes over Tibet, Taiwan, Internet freedom and the value of the yuan currency.

Although the first such talks under the Obama administration follow ethnic unrest in East Turkistan (Ch: Xinjiang) and Tibet and an overall deterioration in conditions in China, the Asian nation’s growing economic power and international clout make it easier for it to shrug off critics, human rights experts said.

The US State Department said the two-day meeting in Washington would address areas including religious rights, rule of law and Internet freedom, an issue that put Google Inc on a collision course with Beijing last year and led the Web search giant to quit the Chinese market.

The dialogue, which was frozen between 2002 and 2008, is expected to include cases of Chinese lawyers and human rights activists who have been detained or harassed by their government, the State Department said.

“This is about helping them understand and identify issues that are part of our core agenda but also clearly areas of weakness that China will have to improve on as it goes along,” State Department spokesman PJ Crowley said this week.

“This not about lecturing,” he said. “It’s about helping them understand why we think these issues are important.”

In a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the US group Human Rights Watch urged the United States to raise specific cases of detained lawyers and activists, as well as to prevent the talks from being “largely a rhetorical shell” as they are seen by much of the rights community.

“Over the past year, the Chinese government has tightened controls on Uyghurs and Tibetans, launched attacks on lawyers and human rights defenders, maintained a chokehold on media freedom, and bolstered government surveillance and censoring of Internet communications,” the letter to Clinton said.

The Buddhist region of Tibet was roiled by ethnic unrest ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, while Muslim Uyghurs rioted last year in violence that left nearly 200 people dead.

China “has even obstructed civil society organisations, including groups working with victims of the May 2008 Sichuan earthquake and child victims of the 2008 toxic melamine milk scandal,” Human Rights Watch said in the letter.

The plight of activists was underscored anew this week when China’s top   AIDS  activist, former health ministry official Wan Yanhai, fled to the United States with his family, citing pressure from authorities, said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.

China’s delegation, led by Chen Xu, the director-general of the Foreign Ministry’s Department of International Organisations and Conferences, will be hosted by Mike Posner, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labour in talks that will also involve outside experts.

Complaints about China’s government increasingly fall on deaf ears as a booming economy amid a recession in the West has given Beijing confidence and diplomatic muscle at a time of rising nationalism among Chinese, analysts say.

After decades of double digit economic growth, showcased by the Beijing Olympics and the Shanghai Expo, “the average Chinese citizen today is more well-disposed towards the Chinese government than the average American citizen is towards the American government,” said Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group political risk consultancy.

Richardson of Human Rights Watch acknowledges the unfavorable winds for meaningful rights talks.

“It’s absolutely true that they have become even more intransigent on human rights issues over the last couple of years as they are feeling very confident, and there are a lot of debates about whether these dialogues are really a useful exercise,” Richardson said.