Carter Urges China to Free Dissidents : Human rights: In a speech to students, the former President encourages better ties with the U.S.

Former President Jimmy Carter, in a college campus speech Sunday, defended American concern for human rights and called on China to release its political prisoners.

Speaking to students and faculty at the Beijing Foreign Affairs College, which trains future Chinese diplomats and Foreign Ministry employees, Carter recalled how he and senior Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping had reached agreement to establish diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1979.

Carter also noted that since June, 1989, when the Chinese army crushed student-led demonstrations for democracy in Beijing, “high-level visits between our two countries have almost ceased.”

“In order to restore the good relations forged by Chairman Deng Xiaoping and me and maintained until June, 1989, my hope is that the Chinese government will decide to grant amnesty to all nonviolent dissidents,” Carter said.

He specifically named five prisoners. One of them is Wei Jingsheng, China’s most famous political prisoner, who was arrested in 1979 for his role in an earlier democracy movement. The others are journalist Wang Juntao and social scientist Chen Ziming, both recently sentenced to 13 years for their roles in the 1989 protests; Han Dongfang, a railway worker who led an unofficial labor union during the 1989 protests, and Lobsang Tenzin, a Tibetan student accused of killing a police officer during anti-Chinese rioting in Lhasa in 1988.

Carter also urged that an amnesty include imprisoned Buddhists in Tibet and “Christians who were not involved in violent or subversive activities but just exercising their rights as worshipers.”

China has consistently rejected foreign criticism of political repression and religious persecution as interference in its internal affairs. But Carter argued that the world is entering an era “characterized by the interdependence of separate countries.”

“Our nations must expect our policies to be scrutinized and analyzed by others,” he said. “The exercise of these basic principles of inquiry involving such principles as freedom of expression and freedom of religion do not comprise ‘interference in the internal affairs’ of another country.”

Carter acknowledged that the United States has its own problems.

“We have unmet human rights needs in the United States, particularly involving homelessness, unemployment and lack of adequate health care,” he said. “I am equally concerned about these human rights violations in my country.”

Carter said he believes that “ideas cannot long be suppressed” and that any government “must respond to the aspirations of its people, particularly its youth.”

“I am discussing these same issues, in almost the same language, with Chinese government leaders during my visit here in Beijing,” he added. Carter met Communist Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin, Premier Li Peng and Foreign Minister Qian Qichen.

The audience of about 300 people, primarily undergraduates, listened in slightly tense, attentive silence and applauded enthusiastically at the end of the 25-minute speech, which was translated into Chinese paragraph by paragraph.

Afterward, when a reporter asked students for their reactions, they responded either with praise or nervous silence.

“Very good. I liked it,” one young woman said.

“He’s a Mr. Good Man, I think,” said another woman student.

But other students, aware that they might be overheard, declined any comment.

Carter came here primarily to dedicate an artificial limb factory financed with help from his Global 2000 Development Foundation and to meet with Chinese leaders. In his speech, he said that he also had requested meetings with imprisoned dissidents or their families. These requests were refused, he said.