Sweden: China’s Human Rights Situation Condemned at the International Human Rights Day Gathering

The annual International Human Rights Day was on December 10th. Many Swedish International Human Rights organisations gathered at Gothenburg University and held a report session on “Human Rights Courage, Consciousness and Action”. The session was organised jointly by the Swedish United Nations Committee, the Swedish Red Cross, the Swedish division of International Service for Human Rights (ISHR), the Swedish division of Amnesty International, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and the Uppsala Association of International Affairs (UF). Almost one hundred volunteer human rights activists took part in the conference.

Mr. Manyang Wu, a China specialist from the ISHR, was invited to speak regarding “The situation in China before the Beijing Olympics”. American Professor Brian Palmer was also invited to talk about “The Price of Freedom of Speech”, whilst Ms. Karin Strandas, president of the Swedish Burmese Association made a report on “Burma after the media exposure.”

In his speech, Mr. Wu introduced China’s social vicissitude over the past 90 years, the background of the economic revolution, the totalitarian control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on China and the persecution in China of Falun Gong and other groups with different beliefs. Mr. Wu called for the audiences in the conference to continue to work hard to change the human rights situation in China. At the end of his speech he said, “If the international society cannot stop the CCP brutal persecution of groups with different political and religious beliefs and stop their crime of harvesting and selling of Falun Gong practitioners’ organs before the start of the Beijing Olympics, then the Olympics happening in Beijing will be a shameful mark in the history of the Olympic games and will also become a shameful mark in the history of mankind.”

Mr. Brian Palmers introduced his investigations he had completed with his students on the situation of people who bravely spoke for human rights. The president of the Burmese Association, Ms. Strandas, talked about the situation of the Burmese people under the control of the totalitarian regime of the Burmese junta.

Participants of the conference applauded all the speakers enthusiastically and there was particularly a lot of response regarding human rights issues in China. During question time, one lady said that we should be against the Olympics happening in Beijing, whilst another middle aged gentleman was of the opinion that the solution to changing China’s human rights for the better is to end the CCP regime.