Brussels, 11/05/2007 (Agence Europe) - Just before the new session of discussions in Berlin on 15 and 16 May in the context of EU/China dialogue on human rights, a platform of NGOs and victims of the Chinese communist regime denounce the lack of progress made since dialogue was launched in 1996. NGOs involved are: Internationale Gesellschaft für Menschenrechte (Germany), Société internationale des droits de l'homme (France), Human Rights Without Frontiers Int'l (Belgium, China), Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in China, Support Human Rights in China (Sweden), Centre d'information ouighour (Belgium), Network for Human Rights in China (Norway), World Uighur Congress (Germany), and Falun Gong Association (Belgium). During a press conference in Brussels on 10 May, attended by Edward McMillan-Scott, MEP (EPP-ED, UK), the platform of NGOs called on the German EU Council Presidency to condemn human rights violations by the Chinese regime and to call effective measures to ensure respect of human rights in China before the Olympic Games are held in Beijing. “For over 57 years, hundreds of millions of Chinese people have been victims of the Chinese communist regime because they have disagreed with the Communist ideology (dissidents, human rights defenders and so on) or they have resisted the official atheist propaganda and have gone on practising their belief”, the European platform of NGOs stress in a press release, citing Muslims, Buddhists, Catholics, Protestants and, especially, practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement created in 1992 which is the subject of fierce repression because it competes with the Chinese Communist Party as a social organisation. “Deprived of the protection of the rule of law and of their basic freedoms, they have been brutally persecuted and submitted to inhuman treatments (including organ harvesting)”, she adds. She goes on to deplore: “The international community offered China to host the 2008 Olympics with expectation of its improving its human rights, which was also its promise in public. In reality, as documented by Amnesty International, the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games have been used by the regime to further oppress people in China rather than improving their individual and collective rights”. (eh)