Human Rights Watch 2002: Chapter on China

Extract From: Human Rights Watch World Report 2002
Chapter on China

January 16

The Chinese leadership's preoccupation with stability in the face of continued economic and social upheaval fuelled an increase in human rights violations. China's increasingly prominent international profile symbolized in 2001 by its entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO,) and by Beijing's successful bid to host the 2008 Olympics was accompanied by tightened controls on fundamental freedoms. The leadership turned to trusted tools, limiting free expression by arresting academics, closing newspapers and magazines, strictly controlling Internet content, and utilizing a refurbished Strike Hard campaign to circumvent legal safeguards for criminal suspects and alleged separatists, terrorists, and so-called religious extremists. In its campaign to eradicate Falungong, Chinese officials imprisoned thousands of practitioners and used torture and psychological pressure to force recantations. Legal experts continued the work of professionalizing the legal system but authorities in too many cases invoked "rule of law" to justify repressive politics. After the September 11 attacks in the United States, Chinese officials used concern with global terrorism as justification for crackdowns in Tibet and Xinjiang.

HUMAN RIGHTS DEVELOPMENTS

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That same month, the State Council announced revised "Regulations on Printing," which included a sweeping provision forbidding publication of reactionary, erotic, or superstitious materials or "any other" material forbidden by the state. In early November 2000, courts sentenced ten people to prison terms ranging from five years to life for illegally printing and selling books about such topics as the Chinese intelligence community and the film community. In September, tens of thousands of Falun Gong publications were among some 500,000 documents confiscated in Anhui province.

The foreign press was also muzzled. In early March, after Time ran a story on Falun Gong, Beijing banned future newsstand sales of the magazine. In June, five security officers beat an Agence France Presse reporter after he photographed a protestor outside a "Three Tenors" concert held to support Beijing's Olympic bid. In July, government officials in Beijing prohibited the U.S. CBS television network from transmitting video footage for a story about Falun Gong. Chinese authorities banned the October 29 issue of Newsweek when it ran a cover story on corruption.

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China continued to crack down on groups it labelled cults and on independent religious organizations. Falun Gong continued to experience the harshest repression, with thousands of practitioners assigned to "re-education through labour" camps and more than 350 imprisoned many for nothing more than printing leaflets or recruiting followers for protests. On June 11, the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate issued a new interpretation of cult provisions in the Criminal Law to make it easier to punish practitioners on a wide variety of charges.

DEFENDING HUMAN RIGHTS

No independent watchdog organizations were permitted in China; in Hong Kong there was a vibrant NGO community functioning without any apparent government interference.

THE ROLE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY

Canada, European Union, and Japan

During trade meetings in China in February, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien raised human rights concerns in Tibet and the crackdown on Falun Gong, and the two countries held a human rights dialogue in July.

Source: http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2002/1/17/17859.html