Seattle Times: Groups urge tough questions for Hu

September 3, 2005

Hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners perform a slow-motion meditation in a park in Taipei. Hundreds of Falun Gong followers in Taiwan and Hong Kong held peaceful protests Sunday as they marked the [sixth] anniversary of Beijing's ban on the movement.

Leading human-rights groups have called on President Bush to press China's visiting president next week over what they say are widespread abuses of political prisoners, including Tibetans, Muslim Uighurs and members of the Falun Gong movement.

"Failing to mention [rights] in a very strong way will give the wrong information to President Hu Jintao that the United States is not concerned about the way Chinese government is treating its own people," Amnesty International official T. Kumar told a news conference in Washington, D.C.

In a letter echoing Amnesty's concern that the U.S. had lowered the priority of rights in dealings with China, Human Rights Watch urged Bush to press Hu on issues including freedom of religion, freedom expression and rule of law.

"While there has been progress in many areas of Chinese life, the human-rights situation in China remains dire," the group wrote.

Sources familiar with U.S. planning for Hu's visit say Bush is personally concerned about human rights and especially freedom of worship and will raise those issues with Hu in an agenda largely devoted to North Korea and trade issues. Hu arrives in Seattle on Monday for a two-day visit before leaving for Washington, D.C. Among those planning demonstrations in Seattle are local followers of Falun Gong and those supporting independence for Taiwan and Tibet.

Though China's economic boom has lifted millions out of poverty, attracted billions in foreign investment and furnished the masses with cellphones, computers and even cars, the explosive growth hasn't brought about major political change. People deemed a threat to China's one-party state still are routinely jailed.

A key advocate in the United States for such prisoners has been John Kamm, head of the nonprofit Dui Hua Foundation in San Francisco. An intermediary between Washington and Beijing on human-rights matters, Kamm has, over the past 15 years, helped persuade China's communist leaders to show clemency toward hundreds of prisoners of conscience.

Last year, he was awarded a $500,000 MacArthur "genius" grant for his work.

"If we've achieved nothing else, I think we've impressed on the Chinese government that people around the world care about individuals," said Kamm, 54.

The Chinese Justice Ministry, which oversees China's prisons, declined to say how many people are serving terms for political offenses. But Kamm estimates there are between 15,000 and 25,000 political or religious prisoners in China, about half jailed for their links to Falun Gong.

"The pace of political change has not kept up with the pace of economic change," Kamm said. "China's economic development, in my opinion, has not translated into improvements in civil and political rights."

Kamm and his small band of researchers scour China's newspapers and Internet sites in search of names of citizens jailed for political or religious reasons. Then he presents those prisoner lists to Chinese officials asking for information, better treatment or reduced sentences.

"If you ask about a prisoner, they become an important prisoner in the Chinese system," said Kamm. "If you know that simply asking about a prisoner helps them, why not ask about as many as possible?"

Sharon Hom, who heads the New York-based advocacy group Human Rights in China, said Kamm's direct lobbying helps individuals but doesn't address the deeper problem.

"The relationship, backdoor approach does not contribute to the kind of systemic reform and building of rule of law that's ultimately needed for real institutional protections for human rights," Hom said.

Kamm counters that his advocacy for individuals helps promote transparency, accountability and humane treatment in Chinese prisons. He points out that earlier this year, China for the first time voluntarily released a list with names of 56 political prisoners.

Independent human-rights groups say that practitioners of Falun Gong in China have been sent to labor camps, subjected to physical and psychological torture and killed since the Chinese government cracked down on the movement.

While the situation in China attracted much attention in 1999 and 2000, it has largely fallen off the radar screen as the Chinese government has repressed the movement there, human-rights officials say. The newspaper said that has led to demonstrations in New York, which play out in parks and on street corners from City Hall to the Museum of Natural History.

Material from Reuters, The Associated Press and The New York Times was included in this report.