Montag
03-11-2008, 05:17 PM
US drops China from list of top human rights abusers
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hpID9Dgsq3k9j7zbQMh3GHMyZTjQ
excerpt:
WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States dropped China from its list of the world's worst human rights violators, but added Syria, Uzbekistan and Sudan to its top 10 offenders in an annual report released Tuesday.
Despite removing Beijing from its top blacklist, the State Department's 2007 Human Rights Report said China, which has raised hopes internationally that it would improve human rights by hosting the 2008 Olympics, still had a poor record overall.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the report was aimed at highlighting the struggle for human rights around the world.
"In the long run, we are confident that citizens who sacrifice for their dignity and their rights will prevail, just as the Havels and the Mandelas did before them," Rice told reporters.
"Change may, indeed, change will take time, but change will come."
But human rights groups criticized the move, with Reporters Without Borders saying it was "a bad decision at a bad time" amid global moves to pressure Beijing into improving its record ahead of the August Olympics.
China had been fingered as one of the worst violators in the Department's 2006 and 2005 reports.
This year China was classified among authoritarian countries that are undergoing economic reform and rapid social change, but which "have not undertaken democratic political reform," the report said.
The State Department said in the report that "countries in which power was concentrated in the hands of unaccountable rulers remained the world's most systematic human rights violators."
It listed 10 in that category: North Korea, Myanmar, Iran, Syria, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Eritrea and Sudan.
A State Department spokesman though, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters "there is no statutory significance to this list," meaning it does not legally affect the status of relations with Washington.
But the report stressed that China's "overall human rights record remained poor" in 2007, citing tightened controls on religious freedom against Buddhists in Tibet and in Muslims in northwestern Xinjiang.
"The government also continued to monitor, harass, detain, arrest, and imprison activists, writers, journalists, and defense lawyers and their families, many of whom were seeking to exercise their rights under the law."
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hpID9Dgsq3k9j7zbQMh3GHMyZTjQ
excerpt:
WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States dropped China from its list of the world's worst human rights violators, but added Syria, Uzbekistan and Sudan to its top 10 offenders in an annual report released Tuesday.
Despite removing Beijing from its top blacklist, the State Department's 2007 Human Rights Report said China, which has raised hopes internationally that it would improve human rights by hosting the 2008 Olympics, still had a poor record overall.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the report was aimed at highlighting the struggle for human rights around the world.
"In the long run, we are confident that citizens who sacrifice for their dignity and their rights will prevail, just as the Havels and the Mandelas did before them," Rice told reporters.
"Change may, indeed, change will take time, but change will come."
But human rights groups criticized the move, with Reporters Without Borders saying it was "a bad decision at a bad time" amid global moves to pressure Beijing into improving its record ahead of the August Olympics.
China had been fingered as one of the worst violators in the Department's 2006 and 2005 reports.
This year China was classified among authoritarian countries that are undergoing economic reform and rapid social change, but which "have not undertaken democratic political reform," the report said.
The State Department said in the report that "countries in which power was concentrated in the hands of unaccountable rulers remained the world's most systematic human rights violators."
It listed 10 in that category: North Korea, Myanmar, Iran, Syria, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Eritrea and Sudan.
A State Department spokesman though, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters "there is no statutory significance to this list," meaning it does not legally affect the status of relations with Washington.
But the report stressed that China's "overall human rights record remained poor" in 2007, citing tightened controls on religious freedom against Buddhists in Tibet and in Muslims in northwestern Xinjiang.
"The government also continued to monitor, harass, detain, arrest, and imprison activists, writers, journalists, and defense lawyers and their families, many of whom were seeking to exercise their rights under the law."