DP Tool Club 15/CD_ASCQ_15_070894.iso/vrac/wtn_0594.zip/WTN-0513.NWS

Text File | 1994-06-06 | 15KB | 234 lines

------------------------   World Tibet Network News   ----------------------
   Published by:     The Canada-Tibet Committee
   Editorial Board:  Brian Given <[e-mail]>
                     Nima Dorjee <[e-mail]>
                     Conrad Richter <[e-mail]>
                     Tseten Samdup <[e-mail]>
   Submissions and subscriptions to:
                     [e-mail]
                     or fax to: [phone]  (U.K.)
   Send us your comments, announcements, news or items for discussion.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Issue ID: 94/05/13 12:30 GMT                      Compiled by Conrad Richter

Contents
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. China Rejects Amnesty International Accusations
2. Amnesty Accuses China of Widespread Torture
3. U.S. Officials Voice Optimism on China Trade
4. China Releases Dissident But Gives Police New Powers of Detention
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. China Rejects Amnesty International Accusations
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    BEIJING, May 13, Reuter -- China on Friday denied accusations by Amnesty
International that it engaged in the widespread torture of dissidents.
     "Amnesty International is deeply biased against China," a Foreign
Ministry spokesman said. "Its accusations against China are entirely
groundless."
     In Washington on Thursday, the U.S. section of the human rights group
said China used thumbscrews and electric prods on dissidents.
     Displaying what it said were instruments of torture smuggled from the
Himalayan region of Tibet, Amnesty urged the Clinton administration to "tell
the truth" in the debate over renewing Most Favoured Nation (MFN) trading
privileges for China.
     "We will not allow China, the United States or the business community to
pretend that the human rights situation in China is improving when it is not,"
William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, told a news
conference.
     The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said his country was a signatory
to conventions against torture "and undertakes the ensuing obligations in real
earnest."
     Amnesty, winner of the 1977 Nobel Peace Prize, said China had not met
President Bill Clinton's demand for "humane treatment" of prisoners. It said
China had not ended "the widespread practice of torture and cruel, inhuman and
degrading treatment of prisoners."
     In extending China's MFN trade privileges last year, Clinton tied renewal
this year to "overall significant" human rights improvements on a range of
issues, including treatment of prisoners.
     Clinton must decide by June 3 whether to renew MFN, which lets China's
exports into the United States at the lowest tariffs available. U.S.
businesses, among others, have been pressing for the extension, which is
opposed by human rights groups.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Amnesty Accuses China of Widespread Torture
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Jim Wolf
     WASHINGTON, May 12, Reuter -- The U.S. section of Amnesty International
Thursday said Chinese authorities were using thumbscrews and electric prods in
widespread torture of dissidents.
     Displaying what it said were instruments of torture smuggled from the
disputed region of Tibet, Amnesty urged the Clinton administration to "tell
the truth" in the debate over extending Most Favoured Nation trading
privileges to China.
     "We will not allow China, the United States or the business community to
pretend that the human rights situation in China is improving when it is not,"
William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA told a news
conference.
     Amnesty, winner of the 1977 Nobel Peace Prize, said China had not met
President Clinton's demand for "humane treatment" of prisoners. It said China
has not ended "the widespread practice of torture and cruel, inhuman and
degrading treatment of prisoners."
     In extending China's MFN trade privileges last year, Clinton conditioned
their renewal to "overall significant" human-rights improvements on a range of
issues, including treatment of prisoners.
     Clinton must decide by June 3 whether to renew MFN, which lets China's
exports into the United States at the lowest tariffs available. U.S.
businesses, among others, have been pressing for the extension, opposed by
human-rights groups.
     Clinton's national security adviser, Anthony Lake, said Wednesday that he
was "not pessimistic" about chances for China to earn extention of its trade
privileges. He said China had made some progress over the last few months.
     Schulz played down China's recent release of certain political prisoners
and the start of talks with the International Committee of the Red Cross on
access to detention centres.
     "These steps constitute only superficial attempts to appease the world
and divert attention from the fact that China is continuing to practice
torture remorselessly and systematically," he said.
     Schulz said China regularly practiced "torture of the cruelest sort,"
especially in Tibet. A 24-year-old Tibetan nun, Tsultrim Dolma, told the press
conference that she had been among those brutalized.
     She described being stripped and subjected to an electric prod during a
15-day torture session. Actor Richard Gere, an advocate for Tibetans, said
Tibet had been turned into a giant "concentration camp."
     "People who use these things should not be rewarded," he said, holding
electric prods. "I don't care what business says."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. U.S. Officials Voice Optimism on China Trade
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Lyndsay Griffiths
     WASHINGTON, May 12 (Reuter) - Three weeks before President Clinton issues
his long-awaited ruling on China's trade privileges, senior officials voiced
optimism Thursday that a blowup can be averted and China can keep its trade
status.
     "I believe that substantial progress...is being made. I'm very hopeful of
a positive outcome," Commerce Secretary Ron Brown told the National
Association of Manufacturers.
     Brown is the businessman's advocate in the administration and is keen to
avoid a rupture in U.S.-Sino commerce.
     Some foreign policy officials, however, are more concerned about China's
human rights record than its import plans.
     Clinton's National Security Adviser, Anthony Lake, nevertheless said he
was "not pessimistic" about China's chances for retaining its Most Favoured
Nation trade benefits, which Clinton has conditioned on human rights progress.
     State Department spokesman Mike McCurry, whose boss, Secretary of State
Warren Christopher, will make the official recommendation on MFN, said a
middle-of-the-road decision -- neither totally rejecting nor retaining MFN --
was possible.
     "...It's not a thumbs up, thumbs down decision necessarily. There are
different ways that you can analyse the (human rights) progress that's
occurred," he told reporters.
     He noted China this week issued a passport to Yu Haocheng, who will be a
visiting scholar at Columbia University. It was one of a half-dozen specific
freedom-of-emigration cases Christopher had raised personally with Chinese
officials.
     "I wouldn't want to inflate the importance of them, but there have been
some steps that you could characterise as progress," McCurry said.
     The human rights group Amnesty International said in Washington Thursday
that Chinese authorities were using thumbscrews and electric prods in
widespread torture of dissidents.
     Displaying what it said were instruments of torture smuggled from the
disputed region of Tibet, Amnesty urged the administration to "tell the truth"
in the debate over extending MFN trading privileges to China.
     The ruling has been cast as a trademark Clinton test: will the president
compromise in this key foreign policy decision and be accused of abandoning
another campaign promise or will he be applauded for his economic vision and
political bravery.
     Administration officials, who are struggling to come up with a face-
saving way out the MFN impasse, say Clinton is damned if he does renew on June
3 and damned if he doesn't.
     They are therefore mulling middle-of-the-road options, such as selective
sanctions or limited tariff increases, to try to dig their way out of the MFN
hole.
     On such plans, Lake said there are "two or three bridges that could be
crossed....We don't know yet which bridge we will walk across. When we do, it
will be (a) public walk."
     Christopher will issue his recommendation later this month but,
ultimately, the decision rests solely in Clinton's hands.
     Lake, who aplauded China for progress made thus far, said the public
wrangling in the runup to June 3 was unhelpful.
     "The way to work this through was to drain the venom out of that
rhetoric, which we have done over the last month or so, and to work it (out)
with them very hard and privately," Lake said. "We are in the process of doing
so and not pessimistic about it."
     Lake made his comments in an interview with the NBC "Today" programme.
His remarks were edited out of the broadcast, which was taped Wednesday and
aired Thursday, but NBC provided a transcript of the unedited version.
     MFN is accorded almost all U.S. trading partners, letting them sell goods
to the United States at low tariff levels.
     One year ago -- after blasting his Republican predecessor for "coddling"
China -- Clinton linked China's MFN renewal to human rights progress in seven
different areas.
     The White House believes some of those conditions, such as prison labour,
have been met but acknowledge that worries persist, especially over the
detention of dissidents.
     "They have got to do some things between now and June 3," Brown said.
That aside, Brown made his preference plain, saying: "It's clear that our
desire is to renew."
     Business leaders fear loss of MFN could unleash retaliation by Beijing
and lock them out of the booming Chinese market.
     While the current trade flow is in China's favour -- Beijing ships huge
amounts of goods here -- U.S. business is betting on massive opportunities
down the road in everything from consumer goods to infrastructure projects.
     A congressional report released Wednesday also estimated that American
consumers could lose out to the tune of more than $10 billion if MFN is
revoked and tariffs rise.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. China Releases Dissident But Gives Police New Powers of Detention
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
By KATHY WILHELM
   BEIJING, May 12, AP -- A Chinese woman jailed since 1990 on charges of
attempting to overthrow the government through religious activities has been
paroled, the official Xinhua news agency said Thursday.
   China's legislature, meanwhile, approved a measure that gives police new
justification for detaining and arresting dissidents. The law spells out 18
new grounds for detention, including forming a social organization without
government approval and "fabricating or distorting facts, spreading rumors or
otherwise disrupting public order."
   These conflicting moves -- releasing a dissident even while clamping down
on dissent -- illustrate China's ambivalent response to a U.S. threat to
sharply raise tariffs on Chinese exports if the government does not improve
its human rights record.
   President Clinton faces a June 3 deadline for deciding whether China's
treatment of dissidents, religious believers and Tibetans has improved enough
to merit renewing its most-favored-nation trade status, which entitles it to
low tariffs. Billions of dollars worth of trade is at stake.
   Chinese President Jiang Zemin, meeting Thursday with former Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger, reiterated China's rejection of the linkage between
trade and human rights. He said U.S.-China relations can flourish only if both
sides set ideology aside.
   However, the release of Zhang Ruiyu, is the latest of several small,
relatively painless moves China has taken in apparent hope of winning credit
in Washington.
   The government allowed a prominent political prisoner, Wang Juntao, to
travel to the United States for medical treatment last month. And on Wednesday,
dissident legal scholar Yu Haocheng said he was finally given permission to
travel to the United States after four years of being denied a passport.
   Zhang, 54, a teacher at a physical education academy in Fujian province,
southeast China, was one of millions of Chinese Christians who hold religious
services in private homes, shunning the government-supervised churches. Such
services are banned.
   The government has closed down hundreds of "house churches" over the past
few years and detained hundreds of Christians, international human rights
groups say.
   Zhang was arrested in August 1990 and sentenced in September 1991 to four
years imprisonment on charges of holding illegal religious meetings and
attempting to overthrow the government through them, according to Asia Watch,
a U.S. human rights group.
   However, the Xinhua News Agency said Zhang was convicted in 1990. The
conflicting accounts could not immediately be explained.
   Xinhua said a court paroled Zhang because she behaved well in jail, but it
did not say when she left prison.
   Asia Watch said police raided Zhang's home three months before her arrest
and confiscated Bibles and religious literature. It said police knocked out
some of her teeth and burned her face with electric batons.
   Zhang already had been imprisoned twice for a total of more than seven
years before her 1990 arrest, Asia Watch said. She also took part in the 1989
Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, it said.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------