The president of the European Parliament’s Tibet Intergroup, MEP Thomas Mann, strongly opposed German chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s offer to the Chinese government to lift the ban on arms sales.
“The way how chancellor Schröder amateurishly proceeded, leads to the sole conclusion that his China policy excludes the fundamental principle of human rights. This is unacceptable”, according to Mr. Mann. He demands of the German government to keep up the 14-year-old arms embargo against the PR China.
“The embargo is closely linked with the basic guidelines of respecting human rights. A lift would make the impression that there have been improvements concerning the human rights violations in China. This is not even barely the case”, says Mann, who has been president of the Tibet Intergroup in the European Parliament since 1999.
Instead of – as the chancellor did – ill-consideringly issueing statements, was it much more necessary to fully ascertain and discuss the PRC’s human rights situation on the respective national as well as EU-level, which were the closing remarks of Mann.
After having violently crushed the pro-democracy movement in Beijing 1989 the EU and the USA imposed a weapon embargo against China. According to amnesty international the number of carried out death sentences in the PRC has risen to 15.000 during 2002/2003.
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