*EPF512 04/23/2004
Text: Hopes of Tiananmen Square Still Not Realized in China, Craner Says
(Notes China's rights record still poor 15 years after crackdown) (4040)

Although cooperation between the United States and China has been improving steadily in areas of regional or global concern such as security on the Korean peninsula or fighting terrorism, the two countries continue to have strong differences on matters of individual freedom and human rights, Assistant Secretary of State Lorne W. Craner said in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee April 22.

Noting that June 4 will be the 15th anniversary of the Chinese government's crackdown on protestors at Beijing's Tiananmen Square, Craner -- who heads the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor -- expressed regret at the slow progress China has made since that time toward becoming a free and open society.

"China's human rights record remains poor," he said. "In the 15 years since 1989, the Chinese economy has continued to expand and constraints on things like where one can live and what one can do for a living have been relaxed. But the freedoms and rights that the Tiananmen protestors asked for have still not been realized."

China made incremental progress on human rights in 2002, Craner told the committee, but lost ground in 2003. "The Chinese government's mistreatment of its citizens is manifest," he said, offering a long list of specific individual cases and matters of dispute. In response, he added, the U.S. government has "repeatedly -- and at the highest levels -- expressed strong concern, publicly and privately, over the detention of persons for the peaceful expression of their faith or political views and over restrictions on religious freedom, and we will continue to do so."

Of particular concern, Craner said, was China's failure to follow through on commitments made during the December 2002 Human Rights Dialogue to work with U.N. Special Rapporteurs on Torture and Religious Intolerance, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

It was this backsliding that led the U.S. government to support a resolution criticizing China's human rights practices at the 60th Session of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in Geneva earlier this month, according to Craner. The resolution was blocked when China successfully sponsored a "no-action" motion.

"But our work in Geneva was not in vain," he emphasized, pointing out that a U.N. special rapporteur will visit China in June and the European Union will factor progress on human rights into its decision on whether to lift its arms embargo against China.

"We have an obligation to speak out against the lack of freedom and protection of human rights in China because we see the people of China doing this for themselves on a weekly basis," Craner said, citing "meaningful and accelerating" reforms of electoral, legal, and legislative processes now under way in China encouraged by U.S. government programs.

"[C]ivil society is growing in China," Craner said. "And the United States is supporting its expansion." But the State Department official cautioned that optimism must be tempered with realism.

"We cannot sit back and assume that China is on an unwavering path toward democracy," he concluded. "If anything, the Chinese government has given no indication that it might consider seriously the prospect of following the path of South Korea, the Philippines, or Taiwan in pursuing gradual reform toward full freedom of speech and association, religious freedom, judicial independence, and free and fair elections."

Following is the text of Craner's remarks, as prepared for delivery:

(begin text)

Prospects for Human Rights and Democracy in China

Testimony of
Lorne W. Craner
Assistant Secretary of State for
Democracy, Human Rights and Labor

Senate Foreign Relations Committee
April 22, 2004
[Washington, D.C.]

I want to thank you, Senator Brownback, and the other Members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for holding this important hearing. This is an excellent time to take a look at our complex relationship with the People's Republic of China and I am pleased to be here today to answer your questions about human rights conditions and the prospects for democracy in China. I am also glad to have this opportunity to share with you the Administration's assessment of these important issues and to tell you what we have been doing to confront the Chinese government when it violates human rights in China and, as Vice President Cheney said last week, to support the aspirations of all Chinese people for freedom and democracy.

As the Committee took note when it convened this hearing, U.S.-China cooperation has improved steadily since the first months after President Bush came to office and we confronted each other over the mid-air collision of Chinese and American planes near Hainan Island. After September 11, the Chinese Government became an ally in the Global War on Terror. It has been a key partner in discussions about North Korea. But even as we find common ground with China on these important issues of national security, we remain firm that there are areas on where our views differ, such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, proliferation, and my area of responsibility: freedom and human rights. We have not compromised when confronting China on and pursuing resolution of these issues. As recently as last week, Vice President Cheney stood firm in talking to China about these areas of disagreement and reminded his counterparts in Beijing that "it would be a mistake for us to underestimate the extent of the differences" between us.

June 4 -- less than two months from now -- is the 15th anniversary of the crackdown at Tiananmen Square. This will be a somber anniversary. It will be somber not just because of the hundreds, if not thousands, of lives lost in Beijing on the evening of June 3 and morning of June 4. The June 4th anniversary is a somber one because there will be no public mourning in China of the lives lost there 15 years ago. The family members of the students and citizens who died in and around Tiananmen Square will not be able to gather there together to grieve their loss. There will be no candles lit, no memorial wreathes laid, no touching eulogies spoken. These mourners will receive no condolences from their government. The Chinese nation will not be able to come together in any public way to commemorate the lives that were lost on June 4. Even to discuss such a thing, as we have seen recently in the last few weeks, is to risk detention and imprisonment.

Fifteen years ago, Americans and others around the world watched in collective horror as the People's Liberation Army fired on the peaceful students and workers who had captured the world's attention for six weeks. Certainly, everyone who watched those events unfold hoped that 15 years hence China would be a different place. We hoped that China, 15 years after Tiananmen, might be a country that was free and open, a country where human rights are respected, a country where different points of view could be shared without any fear of reprisal, and a country where religious adherents of all faiths could pray openly in whatever temple, church or mosque they chose. Of course, China today is not such a country.

China's human rights record remains poor. In the 15 years since 1989, the Chinese economy has continued to expand and constraints on things like where one can live and what one can do for a living have been relaxed. But the freedoms and rights that the Tiananmen protestors asked for have still not been realized.

In fact, in my tenure as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, my office has documented some progress in 2002, but backsliding on human rights in 2003. The Chinese Government's mistreatment of its citizens is manifest. Most recently, we have noted increased surveillance of the Internet and detention of those who express opinions about democracy. Democracy activists and some spiritual or religious adherents, including Tibetan Buddhists, Uighur Muslims, Falun Gong practitioners, underground Protestants and Catholics loyal to the Vatican, continue to suffer harsh treatment. We have received reports of religious adherents being mistreated or beaten in prison. We have regularly raised the need for prison reform, the right of children to receive religious training, and our extreme disappointment over egregious abuses against religious groups. Mr. Chairman, this Administration has repeatedly - and at the highest levels - expressed strong concern, publicly and privately, over the detention of persons for the peaceful expression of their faith or political views and over restrictions on religious freedom, and we will continue to do so. We also continue to raise individual cases of concern such as Uighur businesswoman Rebiya Kadeer, labor activists Yao Fuxin and Xiao Yunliang and Tibetan monk Jigme Gyatso.

These concerns were deepened by the Chinese Government's failure to carry out commitments made to U.S. officials during the December 2002 Human Rights Dialogue to work with the UN Special Rapporteurs on Torture and Religious Intolerance, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

This backsliding prompted President Bush to authorize the State Department to pursue a resolution criticizing China's human rights practices at the meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva this month. Our resolution was carefully considered. While acknowledging steps that China has taken that might result in improved respect for the rights of its people, we urged members of the Commission to join us in expressing "concern about continuing reports of severe restrictions on freedom of assembly, association, expression, conscience and religion, legal processes that continue to fall short of international norms of due process and transparency, and arrests and other severe sentences for those seeking to exercise their fundamental rights."

As the Committee is aware, the Chinese Government was successful in getting a sufficient number of members to vote in favor of a "no-action" motion, preventing the Commission from engaging in a healthy debate about the human rights situation in China. But our work in Geneva was not in vain. The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture will indeed visit China at the end of June. And now the European Union is factoring China's human rights situation more prominently in its calculus of whether to lift its arms embargo against China. In pursuing a resolution at the Commission, we made a strong statement about our unwavering concern over the human rights situation in China. Other countries and the Chinese government itself have been compelled to take notice of our concern. And those who fight courageously every day to have their voices heard know that the United States has not forsaken and will not forsake them.

We have an obligation to speak out against the lack of freedom and protection of human rights in China because we see the people of China doing this for themselves on a weekly basis. We see newspaper editors trying to push the boundaries for freedom of the press. We see democracy activists speaking out for constitutional protections and elections. We see lawyers who are fighting to make the legal system live up to its own laws. We see workers trying to come together to demand fair compensation. We see rural dwellers writing letters and gathering at government offices to demand that corrupt local officials step down. We see religious adherents risk their freedom to gather to pray in house churches. We see Tibetans who maintain their allegiance to the Dalai Lama and Catholics who maintain their allegiance to the Pope.

In other words, we see individual, ordinary Chinese doing the extraordinary week after week, month after month. And I believe that we have the responsibility to support these extraordinary efforts and try to expand the political and legal space so that individual Chinese can keep pushing the boundaries.

The State Department and, in particular, my bureau is currently administering $27.5 million to support democracy, human rights and the rule of law in China. At the end of the Clinton Administration, the State Department began to discuss the possibility of cooperating on legal reform projects in China. When President Bush came to office, the State Department and my Bureau decided to rethink that program and we crafted a new approach to supporting freedom in China. Legal reform, while important, was too narrow a focus for a comprehensive China program. A U.S. program on China had to support liberty as well as law.

Six years ago in 1998, when I was president of the International Republican Institute, I testified before the Asia and Pacific Subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee on the value of promoting democracy and the rule of law in China. At that time, the Congress was just considering democracy promotion as one policy option to address human rights concerns in China. In that testimony, I described to the Committee the work that IRI had been doing since 1993 to promote electoral, legislative and legal reform in China. In five years of programming in China, IRI had seen rapid expansion of village elections in China and a strong commitment to developing sound, democratic procedures that allowed for open candidate selection and secret ballot voting. On the legal side, IRI had assisted the National People's Congress in developing more sophisticated legislative drafting capabilities and had worked with China's first legal aid service providers. I concluded:

"I hope I have shown that electoral, legislative and legal reforms under way in China are meaningful and are accelerating, and organizations such as IRI can help catalyze them. Yet in the same period these reforms have taken place, so too have the Tiananmen massacre and the continued imprisonment of thousands of dissidents. The NPC may be changing in an encouraging direction, but it has not reversed the Tiananmen verdict, and all the legal reforms to date haven't gotten those dissidents out of jail.

I therefore come before you as an advocate, but not a zealot. I am an advocate of broader American efforts to catalyze Chinese reforms that are congruent with American values and interests. At the same time, only a zealot would claim to know how China will change. Democratic development in China may come through the kind of incremental reforms I have described today. It may also come more suddenly. Of one thing we can be certain: Given the stakes involved, we would be wise to encourage every possible source of change for China, including the potential for change from within China."

Six years later, I am proud to say that we are now encouraging "every possible source for change in China" through the State Department's China Democracy Program.

The reforms that were under way in 1998 have definitely accelerated and expanded. In 1998, American NGOs were addressing a fairly narrow range of issues related to democracy and legal reform in China. Elections at the village level were developing and taking root in a meaningful way. Training on legislative drafting showed promise as a means of strengthening China's legislature so that it could serve as a modest, but still effective check on central government power. Legal aid was just beginning in China. Today, these reforms have significantly expanded and the State Department is supporting the organizations that continue to work on these issues. But we also support new organizations that are working to promote women's rights, labor rights, media reform and host of other issues that show how the channels for promoting reform in China have grown exponentially over the last few years.

In the area of direct elections, for example, we are now no longer working to promote elections just at the village level. Since 1998, the pressure to expand elections to higher levels of government has increased significantly. In September 2003, a local official in Sichuan Province received international attention when he tried to organize a direct election for township magistrate despite a 2001 central government ban on such activities. Though his efforts were derailed, we believe that there are many other local officials who are willing to keep pushing the envelope to expand direct elections in China, and we are able to support research and training that keep that mission alive.

Like elections, legal reform in China is another area where we see meaningful change taking place. American NGOs and universities continue to play an important role in catalyzing all kinds of legal developments in China. The United States is supporting a wide array of efforts in this area, including programs that focus on the drafting of key pieces of legislation, such as new administrative litigation laws that enable Chinese to sue the government, a program to strengthen the use of evidence and witness testimony in trials, a program that works on helping villagers to challenge election fraud and abuse in the courts, and programs that hone the advocacy skills of criminal defense lawyers and that help them think about ways to protect themselves from becoming targets of the government if they handle sensitive, politically-charged criminal cases.

As the legal system has developed, the Chinese people are becoming increasingly aware of their rights under the law and the United States is supporting projects that increase this awareness. American NGOs are working with Chinese partners to strengthen women's rights in China, environmental rights and workers rights. Americans and Chinese are working together to provide better legal services to abused women and workers who are injured on the job. They are working together to think about how to enforce China's environmental protection laws in some of the nation's and the world's most polluted cities.

Americans and Chinese are conducting awareness and public education campaigns so that average Chinese citizens know whom to call when they need legal assistance. They are strategizing about how to use litigation and test cases to challenge the Chinese legal system to protect the rights that are on the books. And Americans and Chinese are determining and monitoring compliance with international labor standards, through such U.S.-sponsored activities as the Partnership to Eliminate Sweatshops Program, designed specifically to address unacceptable working conditions in manufacturing facilities that produce for the U.S. market. For example, one project in China is aimed at developing and testing an innovative model for worker-manager relations through which up to 3,000 workers will be trained in three to five factories in the toy and apparel industry; another focuses on working to promote labor rights awareness in the Chinese business community and Chinese business schools. I can't announce to you today a final decision to deny or accept the AFL-CIO's section 301 petition alleging that China's systemic failure to protect workers' human rights constitutes an "unreasonable" trade practice. But I can assure you that for our part, we are committed to continuing programs that actively support ongoing reform in China's labor relations system, improve labor conditions and protect worker rights, and strengthen the capacity of the Chinese Government to develop laws and regulations to implement internationally-recognized workers' rights and to promote greater awareness of labor law among Chinese workers and employers.

As these rights awareness programs indicate, civil society is growing in China. And the United States is supporting its expansion and encouraging new ways of thinking about the role of the media as a provider of information and a watchdog. Media reform was something that no one contemplated when I spoke before the Congress in 1998 about democratic reform in the China. Market competition is pushing the news media to hone their investigative skills and report on stories about which the public wants to read. The Nanfang media group, which is based in media-savvy Guangzhou and publishes Southern Metropolis Daily and Southern Weekend (China's most popular news weekly), has developed a reputation as China's most progressive media group for its reporting on corruption, HIV/AIDS and, most recently, SARS. Two editors of the paper were recently tried on embezzlement charges. Many believe that these cases are the result of the paper's aggressive reporting on sensitive topics, and in an unprecedented move, a group of reporters and legal scholars have filed an online petition asking the Government for a retrial.

This petition is one of several similar open documents that we have seen in recent months written by Chinese asking the Government to reconsider its policy on a particular issue. Last spring, three young Beijing law professors wrote a letter to the government asking it to reconsider the use of "custody and repatriation" centers to hold people without residency permits, vagrants and others. Their petition followed the death of a young college graduate, Sun Zhigang, who was beaten by the police while being held in such a center. His death was widely reported by the media. The Government executed a staff member of the state facility and sentenced 17 others to long prison terms. At the same time, the Government also agreed to disband these centers, marking an important step for systemic reform of rights of the accused. Incidentally, one of the drafters of this letter, Xu Zhiyong, campaigned as an independent candidate for local People's Congress in Beijing's Haidian district. He won election in December.

Other petitions have also circulated recently. This winter, Chinese scholars and activists circulated an online petition to seek the release of democracy activists who posted their thoughts on the Internet. Also this past winter, another group of well-known scholars wrote a letter to the Government asking it to clarify standards of freedom of expression and what constitutes subversion under Chinese law. The Government frequently uses subversion accusations to silence democracy and human rights activists. Finally, this March, Dr. Jiang Yanyong, whose name became public last spring when he contacted Western news media to report that Beijing authorities were covering up the SARS epidemic in China's capital, wrote a letter to the legislature asking members to consider a review of the Tiananmen verdict.

These kinds of activities are taking place with increasingly regular frequency in China. Elections with independent candidates, activists who are challenging the government to protect people's rights, reporters who are courageously reporting the truth, even at the risk of losing their job or going to prison - every day we are seeing these steps being taken in China.

These steps give us reason to be optimistic at the prospect for democracy in the China. But the events that I described in the first half of my testimony also remind us to be realistic. We cannot sit back and assume that China is on an unwavering path toward democracy. If anything, the Chinese leadership has given no indication that it might consider seriously the prospect of following the path of South Korea, the Philippines or Taiwan in pursuing gradual reform toward full freedom of speech and association, religious freedom, judicial independence and free and fair elections. With that in mind, we continue to watch the situation Hong Kong. We consistently urge Chinese and Hong Kong leaders to listen to the Hong Kong people and respond to their expressed aspirations for electoral reform and universal suffrage. After all, as the Vice President pointed out in his remarks in China last week, China's actions in Hong Kong do not affect only Hong Kong. Many nations, the U.S. among them, have a significant investment of people and resources in Hong Kong. The region's continued stability and prosperity is predicted on its continued rule of law and high degree of autonomy.

In sum, I am optimistically realistic or realistically optimistic about the prospects for freedom in China. I agree strongly with the President, the Vice President, and Secretary Powell who have spoken often about the importance of individual freedom and respect for human rights for a strong polity and society. With regard to China, I believe our best policy is to speak out against human rights abuses, as we did this month in Geneva, and to encourage the reforms that are making such significant inroads there, as we are doing annually through the State Department's Democracy, Human Rights and Rule of Law Program.

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, I'm pleased to take your questions now.

(end text)

(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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