Brussels, 01/12/2009 (Agence Europe) - The EU's policy with regard to human rights issues in China was criticised at a hearing organised by the European Parliament's human rights subcommittee in Brussels on 1 December. China's worrying human rights record is regularly brought up by the EU at annual summits with China and meetings of the EU-China dialogue on human rights (the most recent meeting of which was held on 20 November), but at the same time, the EU27 is trying to build closer trade and business ties with China. Negotiations are currently underway over a beefed up partnership and cooperation agreement (PCA) between the EU and China, which will go much further than the economic partnership set up with China in 1985.
Chinese dissident and senior policy adviser to the “Human Rights in China” organisation (HRIC, based in New York) Wenquian Gao said that this policy was just like giving China a “free pass on human rights”. He also accused the international community of “falling into the trap” set by Beijing which is promoting “Chinese culture” throughout the world, stating that China is “different from the West and that it should not, therefore, be subject to the same democratic criteria and the same international standards on human rights”. The EU should also stop believing the “myth” that China's economic development will automatically lead to democratic reform and improvements in human rights. On the contrary, the situation is deteriorating further despite China's massive economic development and the huge expansion of its middle classes, says Wenquian Gao. He states that it is clear that the EU's efforts in the human rights dialogue with Beijing have hitherto had “no positive impact” on the ground. The same disappointing verdict was delivered by Katrin Kinzelbach, of the Ludwig Botzmann Institute of Human Rights in Vienna (Austria). The institutionalised dialogue on human rights was only a “marginalised dialogue among officials” and had no, or only very limited, impact on Chinese leaders, she said. At the same time, by agreeing to take part, China was making sure that Europe would not back draft UN resolutions critical of China is this area, she added. “The EU cannot claim to be responsible for the release of any Chinese dissident in the last decade,” Kinselback stated. It would be more effective to make the conclusion of the new partnership agreement conditional on China's ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)
William A. Schabas, head of the Irish Centre for Human Rights, somewhat tempered the “overly harsh” assessment by his colleagues. “It is an unfair assessment that the human rights dialogue and seminars has no impact at all,” he said. With regard, for example, to capital punishment, there has been some improvement recently, including a significant diminution in the number of executions, it cannot be wholly denied that this development has not been the result of regular European protests, Schabas said. Brad Adams of Human Rights Watch, said that the best way for the EU to improve the human rights situation in China would be to speak out on all possible occasions. “Public pressure works,” he argued. It was not enough to criticise things in conference halls, they had to be said in public, he stressed. Adams noted with some concern that new High Representative Catherine Ashton had said she would engage in “quiet diplomacy”. “In China, it would be wrong” since, to get results in democracy and human rights, “we need constant public pressure”. Several MEPs, such as Slovak Eduard Kukan (EPP), argued for a “balanced combination of quiet and public diplomacy”. David Kilgour, joint author of a book, “Bloody Harvest”, on the repression of members of the spiritualist Falun Gong movement spoke of the many forced labour camps in which Falun Gong followers are tortured and killed. Kilgour said that it has been established that organ removal was practised “on a large scale” on these victims for sale to foreign patients who gad travelled to China for transplant operations. (H.B./transl.rt)