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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

What Appallingly Bankrupt Standards

Wei Jingsheng Special To The Washington Post

Last month, the foreign ministers of the European Union adopted a resolution that will do great harm to the cause of advancing human rights in China. Based on distorted facts, this resolution shirked the European Union’s obligation to condemn abuses in China and all but gave up the pursuit of human rights, democracy and peace in the world.

The resolution’s basis for concluding that China’s human rights situation has improved was the “release of Wei Jingsheng.”

But was I released? The whole world now knows that I was forced into exile in the United States in the name of medical parole. Yet according to a public statement of the Chinese minister of justice, I am still a prisoner. That is to say that the government’s illegal sentence against me remains valid.

Activities in pursuit of human rights and democracy in China are still subject to illegal sentences. Non-government-sponsored trade union activities are still to be punished. Humanitarian work not sanctioned by the government is still banned. Even nongovernmental cultural and art activities are still considered illegal in China.

These constituted four of the major charges against me in 1995. The general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, premier and minister of justice have all told various countries in the world that all these charges against me are valid and that all these activities are still banned by the laws made by China’s single, autocratic party.

This means that the various basic human rights stipulated in the Chinese constitution are simply empty promises. Almost every day, Chinese leaders tell people both in China and other countries that these remain their basic and unshakable principles, that they have never given them up, nor do they intend to give them up in the future.

Wang Dan, Liu Nianchun, Liu Jingsheng, Hu Shigen and tens of thousands of other political prisoners who remain in Chinese jails are the best proof of Communist China’s position today.

The thousands of pro-democracy activists overseas who are not allowed to return to China are the best proof.

In China, the friends and relatives of human rights activists who are subject to secret police surveillance and persecution every day are the best proof.

Even journalists from Western countries are subject to surveillance, interference and even expulsion if they say things that the Chinese Communist Party does not want to hear. The Times of London’s former Beijing correspondent, Jonathan Mirsky, as well as a German correspondent and a former French diplomat in Beijing all were expelled from China.

Der Spiegel’s Beijing correspondent, Jurgen Kremb, and the BBC’s Beijing reporter, James Miles, were monitored, followed, interfered with and illegally detained and beaten while working in Beijing. Many Western correspondents whom I do not know have had similar experiences in China.

Of course, the small group of correspondents who only “reprint” the Communist Party’s propaganda materials are spared such treatment.

Do these facts constitute the “improvement in human rights conditions” that foreign ministers from the 15 Western countries talked about? If so, what exactly constitutes “human rights conditions” for Western politicians?

The Chinese Communist Party has often defended its record by saying Western values are not suited to people in the East. It does not often say these things now.

I recently thought that there had been some progress in how Communist China defines human rights. The opposite seems to be true. The Chinese government’s human rights concept has not moved toward the universal standard of human rights. On the contrary, the human rights values of Western politicians actually have moved closer to those of Communist China.

The resolution of the European Union’s foreign ministers has sent the Chinese government and people a message: that the Communist human rights standard is entirely acceptable and that China’s atrocities against human rights no longer need to be condemned, according to the standard of European politicians.

I wonder when these politicians will tell their own people in Europe that they might need to consider accepting the Communist human rights standard in their own countries.

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