Human Rights Review Critical Of China State Department Says Public Dissent Silenced

The State Department denounced China Thursday for stamping out all public dissent against the ruling Communists, even as China announced that U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright would visit Beijing next month.

“All public dissent against the party and government was effectively silenced by intimidation, exile, the imposition of prison terms, administrative detention, or house arrest,” the State Department said in its annual review of human rights worldwide. “No dissidents were known to be active at year’s end.”

The Chinese government, which had been advised of the report, responded by announcing Albright’s visit as a further step toward improving ties that have warmed in recent months. Spokesman Shen Guofang said the government placed “great importance” on Albright’s visit, a major topic of which will be arranging a summit between President Clinton and his Chinese counterpart, Jiang Zemin.

China’s continuing harsh human rights policies prompted questions about the viability of the Clinton administration attempt at reform by “constructive engagement” rather than trade sanctions - and why Washington has taken the opposite approach to Cuba.

“Never has the human rights situation in China improved by the isolation of China. Quite the contrary,” John Shattuck, assistant secretary of state for human rights, told reporters. China headed his list of 14 countries of maximum human rights concern, followed by Burma, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Indonesia, Rwanda, Burundi, Iran, Iraq, Albania, Cuba, Belarus and Algeria.

Shattuck justified U.S. efforts to isolate Cuba, Libya and Iran with the standard answer. “Every country is different in this world … and the decisions about how to best advance the interests that we have, a paramount one of which is human rights, depends very much on the circumstances in each country,” he said. Engagement “is sometimes a very appropriate instrument” but “it is sometimes necessary to signal that without progress in certain areas the relationship will not fully flower.”

The annual review also assailed Croatia, a close U.S. ally in the Balkans, for a “poor” human rights record, particularly its refusal to readmit ethnic Serbs who fled Krajina upon its recapture by Croatia in 1995. It charged Zagreb with infringing on press freedom, restraining or shutting down newspapers and radio stations, and using “manipulation of laws, intimidation, harassment, control of the media and economic pressure to control the political process.”

The report stirred controversy in Germany, the closest U.S. ally on continental Europe, because it detailed efforts by the German state and political parties to suppress the U.S.-origin Church of Scientology. German political parties have banned Scientologists from membership and organized boycotts of films and artistic presentations by adherents of the church, while the state of Bavaria now screens applicants for civil service jobs to exclude Scientologists.

Bright spots in the past year, according to Shattuck, were Serbia, Russia, Haiti, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Ghana, Liberia, Mali, Sierra Leone, Romania and South Africa. In most of these countries, the advances came in the form of free elections or a peaceful transfer of power. But many of the examples were mixed cases.