Private Sector Revives Human Rights Talks With China

Almost a year after China suspended official dialogue with the U.S. on human rights, Beijing has recently revived unofficial communications through a California human rights group in a move that could influence Washington’s debate about granting normal trade ties to China.

In late March, the Chinese Justice Ministry released information on 15 political prisoners to the San Francisco-based Dui Hua Foundation. The group, whose name means “dialogue” in Chinese, is the creation of U.S. businessman and well-known activist John Kamm.

Kamm personally engages with China on two fronts. He advocates closer trade ties with Beijing, and he has journeyed there 50 times in the last decade to question officials about the fate of prisoners of conscience, most of whom the outside world has never heard of.

“Their names are not known. I feel there’s a humanitarian imperative to ask about them,” Kamm said by telephone from his home in San Francisco.

His low-profile, nonconfrontational approach has gotten results where others have been stonewalled.

“If you talk to them [Chinese officials] in the right way and in the right atmosphere, they will readily acknowledge that they have political prisoners” and will provide information on them, he said.

Since 1990, Beijing has given Kamm information on about 150 prisoners. The reports were delivered verbally at first and then, after 1994, in writing. Kamm has shared his findings with U.S. officials, human rights groups and the media. Last year, Kamm established the Dui Hua Foundation and got funding for his project from the Washington-based International Republican Institute and the Smith Richardson Foundation.

Beijing suspended official exchanges about human rights in response to NATO’s bombing May 8 of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and to Washington’s perennial, if unsuccessful, efforts to censure China’s human rights record at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

Beijing ignored Kamm as well. He then got Senate Finance Committee Democrat Max Baucus of Montana, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) to write to Beijing, urging further cooperation.

On March 16, Senate Finance Committee Chairman William V. Roth Jr. also wrote a letter, which Kamm passed on to the Chinese government. In it, Roth (R-Del.) asked about the status of Kamm’s inquiries and noted that some members of the Finance Committee wanted to “confront China in very strong terms by withholding PNTR [permanent normal trading relations] until such time as China has improved its human rights record.” The Finance Committee is due to vote on PNTR this month, ahead of other congressional committees.

Within a week, the Justice Ministry sent a letter back detailing the status of several prisoners.

Among these was Liu Baiqiang, a convicted robber who in 1989 had 17 years tacked on to his prison sentence for “counterrevolutionary incitement.” His crime? Tying anti-government messages to the legs of locusts and releasing them from his cell. According to the Justice Ministry, Liu’s sentence has since been reduced three times.

Officials also detailed the release of Bai Weiji, a former Foreign Ministry official who was sentenced in 1993 to 10 years in prison for allegedly passing classified documents to the Washington Post’s Beijing bureau chief.

“We hope that your efforts will result in a better understanding of the developing democratic legal system in China,” the letter said.

Kamm has so far received information on 66 of 100 names he submitted to Beijing in 1995. Of the 66, roughly half have had their sentences reduced or been paroled.

While it is not clear what effect his inquiries have had on prisoners, Kamm says most observers have “come to the conclusion that prisoners who are asked about, and about whom we show concern, are more likely to receive better treatment.”

In his research, Kamm scours Chinese bookstores and pores over publicly available legal statistics, newspapers and local government records. His efforts have yielded the names of more than 800 political prisoners undocumented by foreign governments or rights groups.

Many of the prisoners are ordinary Chinese who have been sentenced to long prison terms--some for life--for criticizing the government or Communist Party.

During his past jobs as an executive for a Hong Kong subsidiary of Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp. and as head of Hong Kong’s American Chamber of Commerce--and more recently as a business consultant--Kamm has often testified and lobbied on Capitol Hill in favor of granting normal trade relations to China.

He cautions against simplistic or subjective assessments of China’s human rights situation. “Frankly speaking, I don’t think we have the tools--the basic knowledge of the overall situation--to make that kind of judgment,” he said.