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LONDON: The world needs to maintain pressure on China for human
rights reform after the Beijing Olympics, the head of Amnesty
International told Agence France-Presse Wednesday after the group
published its annual report.
Irene Khan said China’s growing weight as a
world power means it can no longer ignore human rights both at home
and abroad after Western criticism of its involvement in hotspots
like Sudan, Zimbabwe, Myanmar and North Korea.
Abuses, including the torture and ill treatment
of prisoners, use of the death penalty, censorship, restrictions on
assembly and repression of minorities is still commonplace in China,
the report said.
Severe restrictions remain on freedom of
religion, freedom, and association in Tibet while peaceful
expressions of support for the Tibetan spiritual and political
leader the Dalai Lama were “harshly punished,” it added.
“I think it will be important to maintain the
pressure on and engagement with China post-Olympics. That will be a
real challenge as it slips off the [news] agenda,” Khan said in an
interview to mark the report’s publication.
Amnesty’s secretary-general said the group had
detected “some improvement” in 2007 in Chinese civil society and
on the death penalty—where there are moves to hold trials and
appeals in public—and for access by foreign media.
Chinese moves to support African Union and
United Nations peacekeepers in Darfur and its help in Myanmar, after
a military crackdown on pro-democracy campaigners last year, were
“glimmers of hope,” she added.
But she said Beijing still had a way to go and
should realize that, even on a business level, promoting stability
in places like Zimbabwe, North Korea, Myanmar and Darfur could be in
their own interests.
“In the longer term, we hope China will begin
to realize the value of human rights,” she added.
Amnesty gave a bleak assessment of the state of
the world’s human rights in 2007, 60 years since the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights was signed.
Unrest in Pakistan, post-election violence in
Kenya and a crackdown against pro-democracy campaigners in Myanmar
showed the West’s “impotence” and the “ambivalence or
reluctance” of emerging powers to tackle human rights head on.
“Injustice, inequality and impunity are the
hallmarks of our world today. Governments must act now to close the
yawning gap between promise and performance,” Khan said in the
report’s foreword.
Pressing issues for 2008 were Darfur, Zimbabwe,
Gaza, Iraq and Myanmar, she added, calling on governments to
recommit to the founding principles of the UN treaty forged in the
aftermath of bitter conflict in World War II.
“The powerful must lead by example,” she
added.
The United States, where a new president will be
elected this year, should close the Guantanamo Bay camp for
suspected Islamist extremists, charge or release detainees and
unequivocally reject torture like “waterboarding.”
The European Union came in for criticism for
“complicity” with the US-led rendition program of “secret and
unlawful detentions,” while Russia was attacked for being
“increasingly intolerant of dissent or criticism.”
-- AFP
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