Rights Abuses in China Worsen, State Dept. Reports

Political and religious persecution in China is getting steadily worse despite progress toward a market-based economy, the State Department reported Monday, dimming hopes that economic engagement would lead to improved human rights.

“The [Chinese] government’s poor human rights record worsened, and it continued to commit numerous serious abuses,” the department said in its annual report on human rights conditions in 195 countries and territories. The report, compiled by U.S. embassies around the world, covers conditions and events during 2000.

In a related development, the Bush administration announced that it will sponsor a resolution critical of China when the United Nations Commission on Human Rights meets later this year in Geneva.

Although the United States has been a sponsor of similar resolutions in the past, the U.N. commission has never voted to condemn China. Some human rights groups accused the Clinton administration of endorsing the measure but then failing to give it enough support.

Michael E. Parmly, acting chief of the State Department’s human rights section, said the Bush administration will fight to get the resolution approved this time.

In a written preface to the department’s 25th annual human rights report, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said there were “many improvements” last year. He cited the consolidation of democracy in Nigeria and Ghana, the election of an opposition party president in Mexico and the defeat of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic.

“At the same time, the continued deterioration of conditions in China and Cuba and the abusive policies pursued by the regimes in Iraq and Sudan and a number of other countries offer proof that the battle to promote universal human rights is far from finished,” Powell wrote.

The report, intended as a guide for U.S. policymakers, covers conditions involving democracy, religious freedom, workers’ rights, other basic freedoms and women and children.

This year’s report is unusually stinging in its treatment of Israel’s conduct in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. It repeatedly accuses Israeli security forces of using “excessive force” against Palestinians.

“Israel’s overall human rights record in the occupied territories was poor,” the report says. “Although the situation improved slightly during the first nine months of the year, it worsened in several areas late in the year, mainly due to the sustained violence that began in September.

“The government generally respects the human rights of its citizens; however, its record worsened late in the year regarding its treatment of non-Jewish citizens,” the report continues.

The report also says the Palestinian Authority has been responsible for widespread rights violations.

Most of the work on the report was done before President Clinton left the White House last month. Nevertheless, the analysis of conditions in China seems to demolish one of Clinton’s cherished ideas. In 1994, the Clinton administration ended efforts to make U.S. trade relations with China dependent on human rights improvements. At the time, U.S. officials predicted that improved trade relations would lead to greater prosperity in China. Economic gains, in turn, were supposed to lead to greater political freedom.

It didn’t work out that way.

“The government intensified crackdowns on religion and in Tibet, intensified its harsh treatment of political dissent, and suppressed any person or group perceived to threaten the government,” the department says of China.

“By year’s end, thousands of unregistered religious institutions had been either closed or destroyed, hundreds of Falun Gong leaders had been imprisoned, and thousands of Falun Gong practitioners remained in detention or were sentenced to reeducation-through-labor camps or incarcerated in mental institutions,” the report says.

The report is sharply critical of the actions of Russian military forces in Chechnya, including “extrajudicial killings, torture and rape.”

The report says Indonesia’s security forces “were responsible for numerous instances of indiscriminate shootings of civilians, torture, beatings, and other abuses in Aceh, Irian Jaya and elsewhere.” It does not cover the current ethnic violence in the Indonesian part of Borneo.

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* PERENNIAL ISSUE

China trade is back on the congressional agenda. C1