China’s Shame
China’s people are grateful to those who report on their often-ignored tragedies.

By Ann Noonan, policy director for the Laogai Foundation
June 13, 2001 8:55 a.m.

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.