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 mnesty
International's recently released human rights report gives special
attention to one of the world's most serious violators - China.
Although China has signed and ratified several UN human rights treaties,
"serious human rights violations continue in China; arbitrary detention
and torture are widespread, and freedom of expression and association
remain severely curtailed," the report states.
Amnesty's report, released May 30, details serious constraints on
religious freedom: "In China, the crackdown on religious groups
and ethnic minorities continued unabated. Hundreds of followers
of 'heretical' religious or spiritual movements were arrested and
reportedly tortured. …Thousands of people were arbitrarily
detained for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression,
association or religion. …Torture and ill-treatment of prisoners
continued to be widespread," the report notes.
While China claimed a near elimination of poverty in its recent
White Paper, Amnesty documents China's abysmal record on labor unrest
and repression: "The enormous social costs of economic restructuring
continued to provoke social unrest during 2000. The absence of effective
social welfare provisions left many of the millions of workers who
had lost their jobs in recent years facing acute poverty." One example
cited how "Peasants from eight rural towns in Shaanxi province were
beaten and illegally detained for refusing to pay excessive taxes
imposed by local Communist Party officials."
China's record on religious freedom is even more abysmal, the report
finds. "Evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics who worshipped
outside the official 'patriotic' churches were the victims of a
continuing pattern of arrests, fines, and harassment. Scores arrested
in recent years remained in prison or labor camps."
A spate of arrests of China's Roman Catholics who worship outside
the state-sponsored Patriotic Church drew an angry response from
Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, chairman of the U.S. Catholic Conference's
international policy committee. Cardinal Law registered a formal
protest to China's ambassador to the United States. "By all accounts,
there seems to have been a marked increase in the number and severity
of actions taken by the State against many of our fellow Catholics
in China, as well as against other religious believers there," Cardinal
Law said. "This is a very disturbing development."
The report also charged that China is arresting those who use the
Internet to document the country's human rights abuses or other
politically sensitive issues. "While it is harder for China's police
to catch those who violate the PRC's regulations prohibiting freedom
on the internet, China's Internet police are relentless in their
pursuit against those who attempt to freely express themselves,"
said Richard Long, the editor of Washington, D.C.-based VIP
Reference, the most popular Chinese language e-mail news service.
Long breaks through China's firewall daily to open a window of hope
for people inside China who are struggling for freedom of expression.
Still on Amnesty's agenda is seeking justice for the Tiananmen Square
crackdown in spring of 1989, when Beijing erupted with the largest
spontaneous demonstrations in China's history. The pro-democracy
movement had spread to more than 30 cities around China before the
world witnessed the horrors of the government's bloody repression.
As the Chinese people fled from the tanks and guns, they asked and
still ask the international press to let the world know the truth.
They still ask the world not to forget. As the Amnesty report states,
"The authorities once again suppressed all attempts to mark the
anniversary of the June 1989 crack-down on pro-democracy activists
when hundreds of civilians were massacred and tens of thousands
of others were injured or arrested." Amnesty has joined Ding Zilin,
the Founder of Tiananmen Mothers' Campaign for Accountability, by
"calling on the government to bring those responsible to justice,
and provide compensation for the victims and their families."
The report's section on the repression of reformers and dissidents
tells how "(p)eople continued to be detained and sentenced to terms
of imprisonment or ''re-education through labour'' for peacefully
promoting reforms. Other sections cover torture and ill-treatment
of detainees, denial of due process, and unfair trials, illustrating
the "extent of deaths in custody as a result of torture," and how
"authorities continued to flout the criminal procedure law in many
cases."
Earlier this year, Amnesty reported on China's enforcement of its
"one couple/one child policy," describing how "birth-control officials
hung a man upside down, whipped and beat him with wooden clubs,
burned him with cigarette butts and branded him with soldering irons."
The report states, "the death penalty continued to be used extensively
and arbitrarily. Political interference was common. Often mass executions
were carried out before major events or public holidays as a warning
to others." This grisly and lucrative business is a warning to criminals,
dissidents, and others, as China's government schedules executions
to facilitate forced organ harvesting, forwarding payments for organ
transplants back to China's military.
Treatment of dissidents in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region
is particularly harsh, the report states. "Executions of Uigher
political prisoners labeled as 'separatists' or 'terrorists' by
authorities continued." Disturbing details tell how "the targets
of abuses were mainly Uighurs, the majority ethnic group among the
predominantly Muslim local population. There was an increase in
religious persecution by the authorities. Islamic groups and prominent
individuals in the Muslim community were subjected to repressive
and often brutal measures. Thousands remained imprisoned."
The report also illustrates intensified repression of religious
activists in 2000 in the Tibet Autonomous Region. "Hundreds of Buddhist
monks and nuns were believed to remain in prison at the end of the
year. Many prisoners were forced to work long hours in harsh conditions."
Harry Wu, a former political prisoner in China and founder of the
Laogai Research
Foundation, called on the United States government and other
countries to "seriously consider the contents of the Amnesty International
report and the ramifications of cooperation with a government that
perpetrates such policies."
"As human-rights organizations and other international entities
work for the promotion of human rights worldwide, this report demonstrates
that such work must begin in China, the nation that executes more
people every year than the rest of the world combined, maintains
the world's largest system of forced labor camps and continues to
terrorize the world's largest population," Wu said. "The report
from Amnesty International signifies the continued commitment of
this group to provide the world with accurate information on gross
human-rights violations in China and around the world."
Many of China's people are grateful to those who report on their
often-ignored tragedies. These reports offer them strength. They
know that they are neither alone nor forgotten. They congratulate
Amnesty International's 40th anniversary and all those who join
in their fight for freedom.
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