October 3, 2002

A new US watchdog commission has taken Beijing to task for human rights abuses, including the imprisonment of political dissidents and religious leaders.

In its first report yesterday, the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China also raised concerns about Beijing's treatment of ethnic minorities, conditions facing workers, intimidation of journalists and censorship.

[...]

The report comes just weeks before US President George W. Bush will host President Jiang Zemin at his Texas ranch.

The commission urged Mr Bush to keep rights issues on the discussion table and called on the US government to provide financial and technical help to rights organisations active in China.

While acknowledging China has come a long way in the past two decades of economic reform, "China's leaders still do not respect fundamental international standards on many rights for the Chinese people", the panel said.

[...]

On religious freedom, the US panel highlighted Beijing's suppression of Falun Gong, and the case of Pastor Gong Shengliang, founder of the banned South China Church, who was sentenced to death last year [...].

The first of the panel's 13 "priority recommendations" called for Mr Bush, administration officials and members of Congress "to continue to raise human rights issues, as well as individual cases of victims of human rights . . . whenever they meet with Chinese government officials".

Other recommendations urged:

Congress and the administration to make greater use of the media to promote human rights, workers' rights and the rule of law in China;

The Bush administration to encourage China to co-operate fully with the UN officials investigating allegations of the use of torture to extract confessions;

Congress to provide funding for training programmes to help US church groups better support Chinese religious leaders.

The panel also called for US support for legal clinics focused on Chinese labour concerns.

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