By Cindy Sui
BEIJING – International human rights groups and Tibetan activists Friday urged British Prime Minister Tony Blair to put rights issues in the spotlight during his trip to China next week.
Blair is coming to China at a “critical time” for Tibet, said Alison Reynolds, director of the London-based Free Tibet Campaign. Recent meetings between Chinese leaders and envoys of the exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama, have restarted a process of talks stalemated for a decade and it is vital the momentum continues, she told AFP.
“Some say the recent meetings are not genuine, but are just ways for China to silence international criticism… This is a very good chance for Tony Blair to push this towards a real process of discussions and negotiations,” Reynolds said in Beijing. “We believe he has the potential to influence.” Two envoys of the Dalai Lama, who is planning to visit Britain next year, paid a two-week visit to China in June and said they were “greatly encouraged” by their meetings with China’s new leaders.
Reynolds said her group also wants Blair to raise abuses against Tibetans, including recent imprisonments and the execution of a Tibetan in January following a closed trial for alleged involvement in a bombing incident. The Dalai Lama and his followers fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule and are exiled in India. China, which has occupied Tibet since 1951, has been accused of trying to wipe out Tibet’s Buddhist-based culture through political and religious repression and a flood of ethnic Chinese immigration.
The London-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), meanwhile, called on Blair to pressure China to improve human rights and civil liberties, which it said has deteriorated. HRW noted sharp increases in rights violations in China this year, including Internet censorship and arrests, renewed crackdowns on Tibetans, intolerance of peaceful labor protests, and police violence against farmers protesting the government’s handling of the AIDS crisis.
“China has been acting as if the world isn’t watching human rights in the country deteriorate,” Brad Adams, HRW’s Asia director said in a statement. “This is an important moment for Mr Blair to loudly express his government’s concerns.” HRW asked Blair to also highlight China’s “misuse” of the war against terrorism to crackdown on people peacefully expressing dissent in China’s Muslim-populated Xinjiang province and elsewhere.
He also said Blair should raise China’s forced repatriation of North Korean refugees and call for an independent investigation of the Henan province blood scandal that resulted in the transmission of HIV to hundreds of thousands of poor farmers who sold blood.
Blair arrives in Beijing on July 20 and is scheduled to meet President Hu Jintao and military chief Jiang Zemin before going to Shanghai and then Hong Kong.
