Clinton condemns China on rights

 10 May 2011 Last updated at 14:09 ET Hillary Clinton: "We had candid discussions on some of our most persistent challenges"

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has criticised China's crackdown on dissent as "a fool's errand", saying Beijing is trying to halt history.

In an interview with The Atlantic, Mrs Clinton also called the nation's human rights record "deplorable".

She defended US dealings with Beijing, saying: "We live in the real world."

The BBC's Kim Ghattas in Washington says Mrs Clinton seemed to suggest the Chinese system itself would collapse and that democracy was inevitable.

The article quotes Mrs Clinton as saying last month that China's leaders were "worried" that the wave of pro-democracy protests overtaking the Middle East would spread east to China.

"They're trying to stop history, which is a fool's errand," she said. "They cannot do it, but they're going to hold it off as long as possible."

China-US talks

Since February, China has detained hundreds of pro-democracy activists, lawyers and writers and has clamped down on news media reporting on the Middle East protests.

Mrs Clinton's remarks were published as US and Chinese officials held high-level strategic and economic talks in Washington.

At the opening of the meetings on Monday, Mrs Clinton said in a speech that the US remained concerned about the human rights situation in China.

"We know over the long arch of history that societies that work toward respecting human rights are going to be more prosperous, stable, and successful," she told Chinese officials.

"That has certainly been proven time and time again, but most particularly in the last months."

Criticism of China's human rights record had been muted at the beginning of the Obama administration but has become increasingly more vocal, our correspondent says.

However, Mrs Clinton said later that the US and China were achieving much greater understanding through regular talks between top officials.

"I do think we are reaching a much better understanding and I think that's one of the principal purposes of the dialogues," she said following the third Strategic and Economic Dialogue between the two countries.

Class-Action Lawsuit Says Utah Immigration Law Violates Civil Rights

The law, signed by Gov. Gary R. Herbert in March, was an effort by legislators to crack down on illegal immigration while avoiding the costly legal challenges and polarizing political furor that followed a stricter law enacted last year in Arizona.

But the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Immigration Law Center, based in Los Angeles, brought the class-action lawsuit claiming that the Utah statute violates federal civil rights and immigration law in “myriad ways,” mainly by interfering with immigration enforcement that is generally reserved for federal authorities. The groups are asking a federal judge to suspend the law before it goes into effect on May 10.

The Utah legal fight is one of many battles across the country, as several of states consider immigration crackdown bills late in the legislative season, and Latino and immigrant groups mobilize to try to stop a repeat of the Arizona law, known as S.B. 1070.

A tough immigration bill in Florida was changing by the hour in the State Senate over the past two days, as business and Latino leaders argued against it and lawmakers weighed its possible impact on the state’s tourism and agriculture.

A bill similar to Arizona’s is moving forward in Alabama. Georgia passed a tough enforcement bill last month that is awaiting the signature of Gov. Nathan Deal.

The legislature in Utah, looking for a political formula that would satisfy immigration hardliners without antagonizing the state’s growing population of Latino workers, passed three bills in March, including one that created a guest-worker program providing legal work permits to illegal immigrants living in the state. A third bill set up a partnership with the state of Nuevo León in northern Mexico to bring in temporary farm workers under an existing federal program.

The lawsuit challenged only Utah’s enforcement bill. “Federal immigration law leaves no room for this kind of intrusive state legislation,” said Linton Joaquin, general counsel of the National Immigration Law Center.

Utah’s attorney general, Mark Shurtleff, said he would vigorously defend the law. He said he had closely studied the Arizona law as well as a ruling by a federal judge that suspended central provisions of it. Mr. Shurtleff said Utah’s law was written to avoid racial profiling and to codify police practices that were already routine.

Last week, Mr. Shurtleff met with Justice Department officials in Washington to try to persuade them not to bring a lawsuit against the state. Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has criticized the Obama administration for failing to sue Utah, as it did Arizona.

As Florida lawmakers debated, Latino and African-American civil rights leaders warned on Tuesday that they would consider a boycott or other measures against the state if a harsh immigration law passed.

“Make no mistake about that: it will bring a loss of revenues, and it will do nothing to solve the immigration problem,” said Janet Murguía, president of the National Council of La Raza. She estimated that a boycott led by the groups in Arizona cost that state $490 million in lost tourism and convention business.

States have wrestled with the issue given the unlikely prospects for an overhaul of immigration laws to move forward in a divided Congress. But President Obama, in a meeting late Tuesday with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said he remained committed to trying to pass some form of immigration legislation this year, perhaps a bill limited to giving legal status to illegal immigrant students. The meeting was the president’s third in as many weeks to try to revive some form of immigration legislation.

“The president is just absolutely dedicated to the proposition that some legislation has to move,” said Representative Charlie Gonzalez, Democrat of Texas and chairman of the Hispanic caucus.

In the meantime, Mr. Gonzalez said, the Hispanic lawmakers pressed Mr. Obama to set guidelines so that young students with no criminal records who are picked up by immigration agents would not be deported.

 

EU Wins Special Rights at U.N.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to give the European Union special rights to speak on behalf of the 27-member bloc at the world body, ending a dispute with other regional groups.

It culminated a long and difficult campaign by the EU to upgrade its status at the U.N. following the December 2009 entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, which was aimed at ensuring the bloc has a more influential say in world affairs.

The vote Tuesday was 180-0 with two abstentions, Syria and Zimbabwe.

The General Assembly rebuffed the EU's initial attempt to enhance its profile, voting last September to put off consideration of a similar resolution.

At that time, Caribbean, African and other nations expressed concern that the EU could wind up with more clout in the General Assembly than their regional groups.

The resolution adopted Tuesday states that the General Assembly may adopt similar arrangements for other regional organizations with observer status in the world body.

It notes that the Lisbon treaty changed the EU's external representation from a rotating presidency to a new post of full-time president, currently held by Belgium's Herman Van Rompuy, and a new foreign policy chief, currently Britain's Catherine Ashton.

Addressing the General Assembly after the vote, Ashton said the resolution will enable EU representatives to promote the bloc's positions with a "clearer voice."

"I believe in the collaboration between the European Union and the United Nations," she said, "and I have made it part of my remit to ensure that the European Union works as closely as possible with the United Nations as we seek to rise to the challenges that we face across the world."

The EU has observer status at the General Assembly and the resolution stipulates its representatives won't have voting rights and can't put forward candidates for U.N. posts.

But the resolution will put the EU higher up on the General Assembly speakers' lists at the annual meeting of world leaders in September and at other high-level meetings. It will also allow the EU to circulate its comments to member states, to present proposals and amendments agreed by EU nations, and to raise points of order and exercise the right to reply.

 

U.S. Envoy Sees ‘Backsliding’ Of Human Rights in China

BEIJING — The chief United States representative to human rights discussions with China offered a cheerless portrait of those talks after their conclusion on Thursday, saying the United States was worried by “a serious backsliding” of freedoms in China and at loggerheads with Beijing officials over many aspects of the issue.

“Our disagreements are profound,” the envoy, Assistant Secretary of State Michael H. Posner, said at a news conference at the United States Embassy here in Beijing, even as he expressed optimism that China’s rights situation would improve over time.

In the two days of talks this week, however, Mr. Posner indicated that Chinese officials offered few if any concrete responses to American queries about the conditions of the human rights and legal activists who have been seized or imprisoned by Chinese authorities. And he said that the talks, while “respectful in tone,” were colored with new seriousness on both sides by the perception that disagreements between the nations had widened.

“I don’t think anybody stood up and said, ‘Oh yeah, things have gotten worse,’ except me,” he said. But, he added, “there’s no question that the atmosphere is different, because the facts are different.”

Since the imprisoned dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last October, Chinese authorities have detained, imprisoned or harassed hundreds of critics, lawyers, bloggers, writers and other gadflies deemed a threat to the state’s security. The pace of detentions and harassment accelerated markedly this spring after pro-democracy uprisings in the Middle East prompted an anonymous online campaign for a “jasmine revolution” in China.

In the discussions, Mr. Posner said, American officials raised special concerns about a growing crackdown on lawyers who defend human rights advocates and dissidents. They included Teng Biao, a lawyer and professor who has not been heard from since he vanished in February; Chen Guangcheng, a blind self-taught lawyer and civil rights activist who has been under house arrest since September; and Gao Zhisheng, an internationally recognized rights lawyer who vanished last April shortly after having been freed from a previous confinement.

The officials also asked the Chinese for information on Ai Weiwei, the artist and social critic who has not been seen since he was seized this month, and Liu Xiaobo’s wife, Liu Xia, an artist and poet who has been held incommunicado in the couple’s apartment since her husband was named a Nobel laureate. And they asked about Xue Feng, an American geologist sentenced to eight years in prison last July on charges of stealing state secrets after he bought a database on China’s oil industry.

Mr. Posner did not detail the Chinese response to each case, but his description of the government’s answer to queries about Mr. Ai appeared to be the norm. “On that case,” he said, “we certainly did not get an answer that satisfies. There was no sense, no sense of comfort from the response or the language.”

The annual human rights dialogue, a staple of the diplomatic relationship, has long been irritating to the Chinese. This year’s meeting, held shortly after the State Department issued its annual evaluation of human rights in China and other nations, was preceded by broadsides in the Chinese news media recounting flaws in the United States’ human rights record. At the Foreign Ministry’s briefing on Thursday, a spokesman, Hong Lei, accused Washington of using human rights “as a pretext for meddling in China’s internal affairs.”

Mr. Posner rejected that on Thursday, and he said that while the United States’ record was imperfect, the government allowed critics of all stripes to attack its flaws and crusade for change without fear of retaliation. “Those people are not at risk,” he said. “We allow these things, and frankly, they make us stronger.”

 

2 Russians Guilty of Killing Rights Lawyer and Journalist

 

MOSCOW — A young Russian nationalist and his common-law wife were convicted Thursday in the particularly brazen murders of a prominent human rights lawyer and a journalist two years ago, as the jury sided with prosecutors who argued that the ideologically driven defendants considered their victims enemies of Russia.

The slain lawyer, Stanislav Markelov, 34, had worked to jail violent nationalists and had once pursued a murder case against the man convicted of both fatal shootings, which were carried out at close range in broad daylight on a busy Moscow street near the Kremlin. The journalist, Anastasia Baburova, 25, was a freelancer who happened to be interviewing Mr. Markelov. Both had connections to the loose network of Russian groups opposed to the nationalist and neo-fascist groups that have proliferated here since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Members of the country’s beleaguered human rights community immediately praised the verdict as a rare victory for justice in a country where high-profile murders are rarely solved.

“Our long experience allows us to distinguish between cases fabricated by the secret services and law enforcement agencies and cases that these services and structures investigate conscientiously,” Oleg P. Orlov, the head of the rights group Memorial said in a statement. “Today we can confirm that the real killers and not someone arbitrarily accused were seated on the defendants’ bench.”

The nationalist, Nikita Tikhonov, 30, was found guilty of the fatal shootings, while his common-law wife, Yevgenia Khasis, 26, served as lookout. Both had denied any guilt, and both slashed their wrists this week in what appeared to be an attempt to delay the verdict.

Sentencing is expected next month, but their lawyers vowed to appeal.

Mr. Markelov’s death added to a growing toll from the community of rights activists here. He had worked closely with Anna Politkovskaya, the investigative journalist who was gunned down in October 2006, and also with Natalya Estemirova, the rights worker who was kidnapped and murdered in July 2009.

There have been no convictions in those killings.

Ms. Baburova worked at the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, where Ms. Politkovskaya had also worked.

Other journalists from the paper have also met violent ends.

Vladimir Zherebenkov, a lawyer who represented Ms. Baburova’s parents, said they were “deeply satisfied.”

“They now know that the perpetrators of this crime will definitely be punished,” Mr. Zherebenkov said.

 

Nigerian Human Rights Group: At Least 500 Killed in Post-Election Violence

。 Scott Stearns | Dakar ?April 24, 2011

A soldier searches a car in Kaduna, Nigeria, April 21, 2011

A Nigerian human rights group announced Sunday that at least 500 people were killed in violence that followed last week's election of President Goodluck Jonathan. Relief officials say more than 65,000 people have been displaced.

The Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria says most of the deaths occurred in northern states where Muslim supporters of defeated presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari attacked churches, homes and police stations, sparking reprisal attacks by Christians.

Nigerian authorities are refusing to release details of the violence, fearing that it could lead to more rioting ahead of gubernatorial elections this week.

Nigeria's Emergency Management Agency says Kano, Kaduna, Bauchi, Adamawa, Niger and Katsina states were the hardest hit.? Director General Mohammed Sani Sidi says his agency is helping more than 21,000 displaced civilians in Kano and nearly 10,000 displaced civilians in Zaria as well as people at more than 100 camps for displaced civilians in Kaduna.

"The intervention is continuing.? We are not going to stop until we get this relief material across to all the victims that have been affected.? We are doing everything possible in collaboration with the Nigerian army who have been very, very active and supportive in providing us with security cover," he said.

Sidi says the distribution of relief supplies has been slowed by the difficulty of finding drivers who are willing to enter areas where there has been violence.

In addition to displaced civilians in the north, Sidi says there are people who are originally from the north and are now living in the south who have taken refugee with security forces following the violence. "Most especially in Anambra and Imo, we have people from northern origin who, out of panic, on their own have decided to move to either military barracks or police barracks for safety for fear of reprisal attacks.? Those people also we have been able to reach out to them and provide some kind of relief material to them," he said.

With more than 65,000 civilians displaced nationwide, Sidi says the only real answer is finishing this series of elections with peaceful state-wide voting to restore order. "What we are trying to achieve is to make sure that peace is maintained and restored in all these places so that people can go back to their various houses and the continue with their normal lives," he said.

Twenty-six of Nigeria's 36 states are scheduled to hold state-wide elections on Tuesday.? Voting in Kaduna and Bauchi has been delayed until Thursday.? Electoral commission chief Attahiru Jega says he hopes that will allow for the "further cooling of tempers and for the security situation in those states to continue to improve."

 

Religious Rights Groups: China 'House Churches' Face Increasing Persecution

 William Ide ?April 24, 2011

Chinese youths detained by police officers from an area where members of a unregistered church planned to hold Easter service are led into a police station in Beijing Sunday, April 24, 2011.

Religious rights groups in the United States say the decision by Chinese authorities on Sunday to detain nearly 40 members of an unapproved evangelical Christian church as they tried to hold Easter service highlights the struggle for freedom of religion in China. ?

Although China's constitution allows for freedom of religion in state sanctioned churches, religious rights advocates say government persecution of so-called "underground" or "house" churches, like Sunday's crackdown on the Shouwang Church in Beijing, is increasing.

Mark Shan is a spokesman for ChinaAid, a rights group that tracks cases of religious persecution in China. "In the past five years, every year, the degree of persecution increased, from the perspective of how many church's were persecuted, how many Christians were arrested, sentenced, abused or tortured.? So it's a national phenomenon; it's a common phenomenon.? Every year is like this," he said.

Members of the Shouwang Church say more than 500 members of the congregation were also put under house arrest.? It's unclear, however, whether any of those detained or under house arrest will face formal charges.

Mark Shan says the crackdown is not limited to Beijing.? "From Henan, Shandong province this month, even Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, the crackdown has never stopped and it is more serious than last year," he said.

According to official Chinese government statistics, about 15 million Protestants and five million Catholics worship at registered churches.? Experts say an estimated 50 million others are believed to pray at so-called "underground" or "house" churches like Shouwang, which refuse to submit to government regulation.

Joseph Kung of the Cardinal Kung Foundation, a group that monitors the treatment of Roman Catholics in China, says that although the Chinese economy is booming, such advances have done little to slow the persecution of Catholics in the country. "There are people still in jail, and priests still in jail.? Bishops are still in jail, we do not know where they are.? We don't even know whether they are still alive," he said.

Kung, a relative of the late Cardinal Ignatius Kung Pin-Mei, was referring to Bishop Sue Zhiming and Bishop Shi Enxiang -- two Catholic underground church leaders who disappeared more than 10 years ago.

Kung says members of the underground Catholics constantly struggle to worship discretely in homes across China or in fields to avoid being discovered by authorities. "The police still find them out and once they find them out, without any notice they will just simply barge in and take the priests away, take the parishioners away and sometimes take the sacraments away and so forth.? So there really is no freedom for the underground Catholic church in China," he said.

Sunday's crackdown on the Shouwang Church follows a string of detentions of dissidents, activists and human rights lawyers.? Authorities in China have been particularly vigilant in recent weeks, following anonymous calls on the Internet for so-called "Jasmine" protests each Sunday.

Joseph Kung says the online calls might have made authorities nervous. "And also I believe that they want to show their independence.? But I really can't second guess the mind of the communists.? They could do anything they want," he said.

ChinaAid's Mark Shan agrees that the online protest calls might be having an affect.? But mostly, he says, Chinese authorities are concerned about the growing influence of house churches.

Last October, the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, invited more than 200 Chinese house church leaders to attend a meeting in Cape Town, South Africa.

"So from that time, the Chinese government also many scholars, even Christians ourselves, were surprised to see.? Wow!? The house church is really something; it is really large scale because you can see the whole country, they can choose 200 delegates to represent the whole house church.? So that was something that caused the Chinese government to really panic," said Shan.

In December, Shan says, Chinese authorities launched a crackdown called "Operation Deterrence" against house churches.? He says that although the Beijing government eased up in February, when calls for the Jasmine protests grew, it now is intensifying the campaign.

 

Ethiopia Declines to Respond to US Rights Charges

Peter Heinlein | Addis Ababa ?April 24, 2011

Ethiopian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Hailemariam Desalegn, right (file photo)

Ethiopia has ended its practice of formally responding to the annual U.S. human rights report, as it has done the past two years. A statement said the government views the Congressionally-mandated report with contempt, and has no plans to answer the charges.

The most recent State Department report paints a troubling picture of human rights conditions in Ethiopia.

It depicts a state with a widespread system of paid informants reporting on people’s activities, where criminal courts are subject to significant political intervention and influence, and where non-governmental organizations say hundreds of political prisoners are being held. ?
The 56-page report documents restrictions on academic and press freedoms, including intimidation and detention of journalists, jamming foreign broadcasts, blocking internet websites, and prohibiting political activity on college campuses. ?

It also implicitly questions the existence of a multi-party democracy, noting that the ruling party and its affiliates won almost every one of 3.4 million local council seats in 2008 elections and all but two seats in parliament in 2010.

The report quotes what it calls multiple credible sources saying party membership is an important factor in obtaining university admissions, employment opportunities, food aid and other benefits controlled by the government.

Additionally, it notes that a new law regulating non-governmental organizations has sidelined two prominent domestic human rights defender groups, including the only one doing actual investigations and reporting on alleged abuses.

Ethiopia’s reaction to the report, which covered abuses reported in 2010, was furious. A foreign ministry statement charged that 80% of the material was a rehash of groundless and unverifiable allegations from dubious sources contained in previous reports. It said the rest was mostly a few new lies, added to the old ones, and questioned whether the U.S. government’s motive was simply to tarnish Ethiopia’s image.

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Hailemariam Dessalegn dismissed the document as a meaningless “cut and paste” exercise.

"We said this is a methodology failure. So if the United States is worried about the human rights challenge, then it should be critically evaluated. So if it is ‘cut and paste,’ then it doesn’t give any meaning to anyone. So we said, if it continues like this, it has nothing to do with changing and improving the human rights situation in Ethiopia."

In response to the two previous State Department reports, in 2008 and 2009, Ethiopia published a rebuttal challenging the accuracy of the charges. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi called the pamphlets a sign Ethiopia takes the U.S. criticisms seriously, unlike reports from groups such as Human Rights Watch, which the government categorically dismisses.

But Foreign Minister Hailemariam says the latest U.S. report does not merit a response, and would be treated with what was called "the contempt it deserves."

"The last two years we have engaged ourselves with the authorities of the United States and discussed several meetings on the human rights situation in Ethiopia. We thought we had convinced each other on many of the issues…? If this is not considered at all, then there is no need to accept this report as something that can help us.? So that’s why we dismissed the report totally because it is based on unfounded allegations which are baseless."

Hailemariam made clear, however, that the report would not affect what he called the "cordial relationship" between Addis Ababa and Washington. He said, "we dismiss the report, we have not dismissed the United States."

Ethiopia remains an important U.S. partner in the volatile Horn of Africa region. The United States is Ethiopia’s largest bilateral aid donor, with assistance totaling roughly $1 billion a year.

[All VOA blogs...]

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Watch Rebecca Ward's report on the BP?Gulf oil spill - one year later.

 

Tension Precedes U.S.-China Meeting on Human Rights

According to a statement issued by the State Department, the two sides are to meet Wednesday and Thursday in Beijing for what has become a regular springtime meeting on human rights.

But the statement was highly unusual for several reasons, not least because Washington made the announcement for a meeting to be held in Beijing — which runs counter to diplomatic protocol — and because it was made just days before the event.

Indeed, the Chinese government confirmed the meeting late Friday only after repeated calls to the Foreign Ministry. A day earlier, a ministry spokesman said details still had to be “discussed and arranged.”

“Objectively speaking, the announcement is being made at the last minute,” said Joshua Rosenzweig of the Dui Hua Foundation, a rights group in Hong Kong. “It’s also interesting that the U.S. is making it unilaterally and that they’re using this language.”

The American announcement bluntly says that the talks will focus on “the recent negative trend of forced disappearances, extralegal detentions and arrests and convictions” — highly unusual in such a statement and most likely reflecting Washington’s growing frustration with the human rights situation in China.

China is in the midst of a crackdown on dissent in which dozens of lawyers and activists have been rounded up. Some have been detained for brief questioning; others have disappeared for months without a trace.

The most prominent is Ai Weiwei, an artist and critic detained this month when trying to board a flight to Hong Kong. The immediate catalyst for the crackdown seems to have been a call by dissidents for Chinese to emulate the “jasmine” revolutions of North Africa. Even though few people heeded the calls to protest, the government has reacted strongly.

Western human rights analysts say the clampdown shows the limits of government-to-government human rights dialogue. Besides the United States, other countries and the European Union have similar sessions, which usually take place in private once a year. Typically, Western countries bring up problems or lists of detained dissidents, and China responds by saying that it is a country ruled by laws, and that those people violated the law.

“Having the meeting now that so many human rights activists are missing puts the spotlight on the fact that these kinds of meetings are toothless,” said Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong. “It’s a talk shop more than anything else.”