Tibet Society has called on the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security, Catherine Ashton, to raise Tibet and human rights concerns during her upcoming trip to China (29 April-1 May 2010), and to boycott the Tibet Pavilion whilst visiting the Shanghai Expo.
[Latest news: 30 April] On the eve of the opening of the Shanghai Expo authorities in Shanghai have denied Expo media accreditation to Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily and raided the home of Feng Zhenghu, a well-known government critic. I Read press release by Human Rights Watch I
[28 April] In a letter to Catherine Ashton, the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security, Tibet Society has urged her to decline any invitation to visit the "Heavenly Tibet" Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo, during her three-day trip to China (29 April - 1 May). The pavilion is a cynical propaganda exercise on the part of the Chinese government to legitimise its occupation of Tibet by presenting a false picture of the Tibetan region as a place of harmony and prosperity. Tibet Society has also asked the High Representative to use the opportunity to call on China to enter into substantive negotiations with the Dalai Lama on the issue of Tibet's future. | Tibet Society's letter to Baroness Ashton |
Tibet Society also strongly supports the call by Human Rights Watch for the EU High Representative to raise human rights concerns, and particularly Tibet related issues, during her upcoming visit to China. | Human Rights Watch's press release |
Tibet Society encourages High Representative Ashton to continue to build on the strong support that the EU has given Tibet recently, such as the EU's condemnation in October 2009 of the execution and death sentences handed to Tibetans over the alleged participation in the Lhasa riots of March 2008, and the EU's consistent call for substantive and constructive dialogue between the Chinese government and representatives of the Dalal Lama. Tibet Society also urges High Repressentative Ashton to raise ethnic minority issues, including Tibetan issues, with the Chinese leadership as she has done in her previous role as EU Trade Commissioner.
Letter from Tibet Society to EU High Representative Catherine Ashton, 28 April 2010:
Dear Baroness Ashton,
I am writing to you on the eve of your trip to China, to urge you not to visit the "Heavenly Tibet" Pavilion during your excursion to the Shanghai Expo. This pavilion is a cynical propaganda exercise on the part of the Chinese government, designed to legitimise its continued occupation of Tibet and mask its ongoing military clampdown in the region. As such, it is a masquerade and an appalling misrepresentation of the reality of the current situation in Tibet.
As I am sure you are aware, China has now occupied Tibet for 60 years. Throughout this time the Chinese authorities have maintained a repressive regime which routinely abuses the human rights of the Tibetan people. In 2008, thousands of Tibetans openly rejected China's rule and called for an end to the occupation through widespread peaceful protests that spread across the Tibetan plateau. Two years on, protests continue to be reported on a regular basis despite the overwhelming military presence. Instead of taking steps to meaningfully resolve the issue, China’s leaders are using the "Heavenly Tibet" Pavilion as a political tool in order to whitewash their human rights abuses by painting a false picture of Tibet as a place of harmony and prosperity.
The reality is that Tibet is anything but "heavenly". There is no freedom of expression, religious activities are curtailed and foreign journalists are still banned from entering the country except on closely controlled “official excursions”. More than 700 Tibetans detained in the aftermath of the 2008 protests remain officially unaccounted for by the Chinese authorities. Chinese courts in Tibet are meting out increasingly harsh sentences for those who try to communicate the dire situation inside Tibet to the outside world to harsh sentences; a recent example is the term of life imprisonment on espionage charges after one Tibetan man (Wangdu) sent an email to an overseas contact.
Recent reports describe an overt military presence on the streets of Lhasa and other Tibetan towns, enforcing strict restrictions on the movements of Tibetans between and within towns. These measures, together with the spate of disproportionate sentences, have instilled a climate of deep fear among Tibetans and prompted the Dalai Lama to observe that Tibetans are in a “living hell” inside Tibet.
The Tibet Pavilion also features the Gormo-Lhasa (also called Qinghai-Tibet) railway, which is a further source of resentment for Tibetans in Tibet. The railway has accelerated the influx of Chinese settlers into Tibet and facilitated the extraction of Tibet's natural resources.
Furthermore, the Chinese government plans to re-settle all Tibetan nomads taking them away from their traditional land within the next five years. This spells a death sentence for their culture and livelihood; the very culture that China’s claims to be showcasing in the Pavilion.
I call on you and everyone attending the Shanghai Expo to boycott the Tibet Pavilion, which is yet another insult to and abuse of the Tibetan people with its blatant misrepresentation of the real situation on the ground inside Tibet. Any photograph of you or other visiting dignitaries in or outside the Tibet Pavilion will be used by China's leaders as a propaganda victory and an inferred endorsement both of their policies in Tibet and the occupation itself.
I therefore respectfully ask you to decline any invitation to visit the Tibet Pavilion. Instead, I ask that you use the occasion to express to your Chinese hosts your strong support for a direct meeting between His Holiness the Dalai Lama and China's President Hu Jintao to help bring about a peaceful solution to the issue of China’s occupation of Tibet.
I also ask you take this opportunity to show the Chinese government that the EU puts universal human rights at the centre of its policies and does not condone propaganda that falsely presents the lives of ethnic minorities living under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party. I hope that you will continue to raise the issues of marginalisation, exclusion and discrimination of China’s ethnic minorities, including Tibetans, as you have done in your previous role as EU Trade Commissioner.
Yours sincerely
Philippa Carrick, Chief Executive Officer
Press release from Human Rights Watch, 27 April 2010:
EU/China: Ashton Should Raise Human Rights In China
Shrinking Space for Civil Society, Peaceful Critics Merits EU Concern
[New York, April 27, 2010] The European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security, Catherine Ashton, should publicly raise key human rights concerns on her first official visit to China, Human Rights Watch said today. Ashton will visit China from April 29 to May 1, 2010.
The EU and Ashton have recently expressed such concerns. Two days after a February 2010 Beijing High Court decision to uphold an 11-year prison term for writer and dissident Liu Xiaobo on spurious charges of “inciting subversion of state power,” Ashton’s office expressed the EU’s “deep regrets” about that decision and called for Liu Xiaobo’s unconditional release. On January 12, 2010, the European Parliament expressed regret at the Chinese government’s December 29, 2009 execution of UK citizen Akhmal Shaikh on drug trafficking charges despite convincing evidence that Shaikh was legally eligible for clemency on mental competency grounds. On July 15, 2009, Ashton, in her former role as EU trade commissioner, expressed concern about “marginalization, discrimination and the exclusion” of ethnic minorities in China, including Tibetans and Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang.
“High Representative Ashton has spoken out forcefully on human rights issues from Brussels; now the test is whether she will do so in Beijing,” said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “A failure to do so will also send Beijing a message: that Europe is not serious about the human rights deterioration in China.”
Human Rights Watch urges Ashton to raise four key issues, including:
• Freedom of expression, including internet censorship and the imprisonment and/or persecution of peaceful government critics including Liu Xiaobo, human rights activist Hu Jia, and activist lawyer Gao Zhisheng. The Chinese government devotes massive financial and human resources to tightly monitor and control media and internet content and expression. In recent years the Chinese government has targeted human rights defenders such as Gao Zhisheng and activists such as Hu Jia with an array of administrative and legal sanctions, including prosecution on spurious “subversion” and “state secrets” charges as a means to stifle dissent. Ashton should call for Liu Xiaobo’s immediate and unconditional release, the immediate release on medical parole of Hu Jia, who suffers from liver cirrhosis, and an end to the ongoing tight surveillance and periodic arbitrary detention of Gao Zhisheng.
• Rule of law, particularly the disbarment of China’s fledgling “rights protection” lawyers and obstacles to the operations of China’s civil society organizations. More than 20 of China’s leading human rights lawyers were effectively disbarred in May 2008 after Beijing judicial authorities pressured their firms not to renew their annual licenses to practice law. In July 2009, Beijing municipal authorities closed down the offices of the pioneering legal assistance nongovernmental organization, Open Constitution Initiative, on allegations of tax irregularities and detained the group’s founder, Xu Zhiyong, and its financial manager, Zhuang Lu, for several weeks before releasing them. In early April 2010, the Chinese government tightened foreign-exchange rules for domestic NGOs in an apparent bid to obstruct foreign funding for such groups.
• Tibet and Xinjiang, particularly the executions of Tibetans alleged to have been involved in the March 2008 protests there, and of Uighurs for involvement in the July 2009 ethnic violence in that region. In the aftermath of protests and rioting in Lhasa and other cities in Tibetan regions in March 2008, thousands of Tibetans had been subject to arbitrary arrest and more than 100 trials have pushed through the judicial system. Little reliable information has emerged since that time to indicate releases, acquittals, or even the whereabouts of those detained. In the aftermath of ethnic violence in the city of Urumqi in Xinjiang province on July 5, 2009, Human Rights Watch has documented that the trials of 21 suspects alleged to have engaged in that violence failed to meet minimum international standards of due process and fair trials.
• Arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances, particularly those that have occurred in Xinjiang in the aftermath of the July 2009 ethnic violence in Urumqi and those related to “black jails,” a system of secret, unlawful detention centers that illegally imprisons thousands of Chinese citizens annually.
Human Rights Watch said that Ashton’s candor is urgently needed to invigorate European human rights diplomacy with the Chinese government. That diplomacy has been weakened by a lack of more visible, consistent action on human rights, coupled with toothless bilateral human rights dialogues and periodic suggestions by various EU member states for a lifting of the EU arms embargo on China. The EU arms embargo was imposed after the Chinese army killed untold numbers of unarmed civilians in Beijing and other cities on and around June 3 and 4, 1989 – what the world knows as the Tiananmen Massacre.
The Chinese government has consistently refused to provide a list of those killed, “disappeared,” or imprisoned in June 1989; failed to publish verifiable casualty figures; quashed all public discussion of June 1989; and continues to victimize survivors, victims’ families, and others who challenge the official version of events – all steps that could lead to a discussion on lifting the embargo.
“Ashton has an opportunity to articulate these kinds of benchmarks to the Chinese government, and to make clear that universal human rights remain at the center of EU engagement,” Richardson said. “A forceful and consistent position can and should be the mark of EU leadership on human rights in China.”
For more information from Human Rights Watch on the EU-China relationship and human rights:
HRW press release, May 2009: EU: China Summit Needs Rights Focus
HRW news report, April 2009: Human Rights Watch Evidence Submitted for Consideration in the Inquiry into ‘The European Union and China’
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