Canadian Foreign Minister Answers Reporter's Question Regarding the Chinese Party's Blocking Information About the Spread of SARS

On April 13, 2003, in Vancouver Westin Hotel, Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham received leaders of local communities and held a round table meeting to discuss Canada's foreign policy. After the meeting, a reporter from a Chinese media asked about the Canadian government's opinion on China's blocking information about the spread of SARS. Bill Graham answered the question directly.

A reporter from a local Chinese media pointed out, "Over the past four months, the Chinese government blocked information from the media and deceived the international community regarding the spread of SARS. This is similar to the tactics that the Chinese government has been using to cover up its severe human rights violations, such as the tricks it has used over the past four years to hide its brutal persecution of Falun Gong. Mr. Minister, I would like to ask you what have we learned from these things? How would it affect Canada's foreign policy towards China?"

Mr. Graham said, "Well, I think it's a very good point, and certainly I would be happy to raise that with my... I haven't yet met the new foreign minister but I look forward to an opportunity to do that. And previously with Mr. Tang, I raised the issue of Falun Gong. We constantly raised the issue of human rights in China. I think the SARS issue illustrates, hopefully in a way that we can positively say to the Chinese government, 'Look! This illustrates what happens if you ignore something, if you pretend it isn't there.' The benefits of a democratic society are, well the problem is that it's often messy and complicated, but the benefit is, there's open transparency. People can understand what the problems are. This has been the case of AIDS. We've always said that if the governments wouldn't recognise AIDS, then our government can't help deal with it. So I'm hopeful that we can use this with our Chinese colleagues to say, 'Look! Let's be more open together, let the world community help you with your problems because in the long run your problem will become our problem, and we need to solve them together.'"

Chinese version available at http://www.yuanming.net/articles/200304/19375.html