Human Rights in PRC

1
Human Rights in PRC

• Progress and Monitor

2
Worst Period

• Cultural Revolution (1966 - 1976)
• political persecution and humiliation
• widespread torture
• suppression of religions
• restriction on cultural freedom
• very low living standard

3
Reform Era

• Main human rights issues
• political dissidents prisoners
• religious freedom
• cultural rights of minority nationalities
• crackdown on Falun Gong since 1999

4
Dissidents

• Four waves of suppressing political dissidents
• late 1970s democracy wall
• late 1980s Tiananmen Square
• late 1990s Democracy Party
• late 2000s Charter '08"

5
Religions

• growth of religions
• over 100 million believers
• 100,000 sites of religious activities
• official churches religious organizations
• restriction of religious activities independent
  of state

6
Tibet

• religious issues
• Dalai Lama
• religious leader or separatist leader?
• cultural heritage
• economic development
• tourism

7
Falun Gong

• Li started Falun Gong in early 1990s
• mixture of Qigong meditation, Buddhism, and Lis
  own ideas
• hierarchy throughout China
• 39 general instruction centers
• 1900 instruction stations
• 28000 practice sites

8
Falun Gong

• Practitioners besieged news agencies, publishing
  houses, and government organizations who
  criticized Falun Gong
• Practitioners besieged Zhongnanhai in 1999, one
  day after Lis visit to Beijing
• Crackdown on the cult started 3 months after
  the siege

9
International Monitor

• Bilateral (informal ad hoc)
• dialogue with U.S. and E.U.
• political economic sanctions
• Multilateral (institutional)
• United Nations Commission on Human Rights

10
Government Responses

• Insists that state sovereignty supercedes human
  rights
• Insists that the reform era has seen greatest
  improvement in human right in Chinese history
• Insists that subsistence development are the
  most fundamental human rights

11
Government White Papers

• White Papers on human rights almost every year
  since 1991 e.g.
• Progress in China's Human Rights Cause in 2003
• Fifty Years of Progress in Chinas Human Rights
• Chinas Social Security and Its Policy
• Human Rights Record of the U.S.

12
International Standards

• China acceded to UN Convention Against Torture in
  1988
• China signed the International Covenant on
  Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights in 1997
• China signed the International Covenant on Civil
  and Political Rights in 1998

13
UN Commission

• The United Nations Commission on Human Rights
• composed of 53 States (including PRC since 1982)
• meets each year in regular session in March/April
  for six weeks in Geneva
• Over 3,000 delegates from member and observer
  States and from NGOs participate

14
In USA-PRC Relations

• Pre-1989, automatic annual renewal of Most
  Favored Nation (MFN) status
• 1989, political economic sanctions
• 1994, MFN and human rights de-linked
• 1998, Permanent Normal Trade Relationship (PNTR)
• 1999, USA-PRC agreement on China's entry into the
  World Trade Organization