European Parliament Resolution Shows Concern for Beijing’s Human Rights Infringements

The Epoch Times newspaper reports that on December 13th, 2007, the full session of the European Parliament unanimously adopted a resolution in the Europe China Summit meeting held on the November 28th and the Europe-China Human Rights Dialogue held on October 14th. The resolution has received support from all parties of the European Parliament.

The European Parliament has reiterated the respect for the universal basic norms of morality and the protection of human dignity as declared in Chapters I and II of the Olympic Charter and held that the Beijing Olympic Games should create an opportunity of letting the world focus on China’s human rights situation and human rights should be given more attention during the preparation of the Beijing Olympic Games.

In view of the existence in China of continuous persecution, including torture, large-scale forced enslavement (labour re-education) and the systematic suppression of freedom of religion, speech and press and so on. The European Parliament has been gravely concerned over recent increasing political persecution related to the Olympic Games, including persecution of human rights advocators, reporters, lawyers, petitioners and various religious believers and, in particular, Falun Gong practitioners. The European Parliament appeals to the Chinese government for immediate release of these people, stopping the infringement upon the human rights of these people, stopping the on-going destruction of large amounts of houses without any compensation only for Olympic facilities, suspending capital punishment during the Olympic Games and recalling the ban on the forty two categories of people attending the Olympic Game.

The European Parliament requests that the International Olympic Committee should openly issue its assessments on the commitment made by China in July 2001 before it obtained the right of holding the Olympic Games and emphasises the Parliament’s responsibility for the assessments.

In respect of the freedom of press, the resolution calls on China to take concrete steps to respect the rights of both Chinese and foreign reporters, urges the authority of the Chinese Communist Party to stop immediately the blocking especially with the assistance of many companies of other countries of tens of thousands of overseas news and information web stations and appeals for the release of all the reporters, web users and web dissidents who have been arrested just because they have exercised their rights to information.

In addition to the above in the resolution, the European Parliament has emphasised the issues of trade and Tibet and expressed its persistence in the European Union’s embargo on weapons to China until China improves remarkably on its human rights.