Freedom, Independence and Democracy for East Turkistan !

E-mail: etic@uygur.org

Human rights, terror in spotlight in China

Compiled from Times wires
© St. Petersburg Times
published August 27, 2002

BEIJING -- Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage announced Monday that the United States has added a Chinese Islamic separatist group to its list of terrorist organizations, a move sure to please the Beijing leadership.

China has sought international support for its assertion that the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, known as ETIM, is part of Osama bin Laden's global terror network. Washington had not been receptive to the claim, emphasizing instead respect for human rights and religious freedom in China's restive western region of Xinjiang, where the Muslim Uighur minority chafes under Beijing's harsh rule.

However, just two months before a scheduled summit between President Bush and China's Jiang Zemin, Washington shifted its stance on the Islamic group. Meanwhile, China announced new restrictions on the export of missile technology, a move long awaited by Washington.

"After careful study, we judged that it was a terrorist group, that it committed acts of violence against unarmed civilians without any regard for who was hurt," Armitage said.

He said adding ETIM to the State Department's list of terrorist organizations would help to dry up their funds. He said he also discussed with Chinese officials the need to "respect minority rights, particularly the Uighurs' in this case."

Armitage's statement comes only a day after China announced new regulations on exporting missile technology. China's missile exports have been a sticking point in relations, with the United States accusing Beijing of transferring sensitive technology to Pakistan, Iran and other nations.

The two announcements appear timed to remove tensions and improve relations before Jiang visits Bush at his ranch in Texas on Oct. 25.

Despite numerous points of disagreement between Washington and Beijing -- including issues of human rights, freedom of worship, Taiwan and North Korea -- Armitage was upbeat about his meetings with senior Chinese officials and downplayed differences.

He welcomed the new restrictions on missile technology exports as "a positive step." However, he said experts from the two sides would still have to meet before Washington determines whether to lift a ban on launches of U.S. commercial satellites by Chinese rockets, as Beijing wants.

Armitage's announcement on ETIM is a turnaround from Washington's position last fall. When Bush first met Jiang in Shanghai last October, he was skeptical of Beijing's efforts to link its long-running suppression of Uighur separatists with the U.S.-led war on terror. He told the Chinese leader that "the war on terrorism must never be an excuse to persecute minorities."

Human rights groups accused China of using anti-terrorism as an excuse to justify its repression of Uighur activists.

In January, China issued a long report detailing attacks committed by ETIM and blamed it for 162 killings between 1990 and 2001. It said the group receiving training and funding from bin Laden but offered no evidence.

Overseas Uighur groups campaigning against Chinese suppression of cultural and religious freedom in Xinjiang say they do not support ETIM's violent methods nor do they share its goal of an independent Islamic state.

Dilxat Raxit, a Uighur exile and spokesman for the East Turkestan Information Center, said the U.S. statement will only make life more difficult for ordinary Uighurs and Uighur advocacy groups.

"Beijing will label as terrorists anyone who opposes them," he said. "It will be hard for them to get international protection."

Dissidents reportedly subject to mental abuse

YOKOHAMA, Japan -- The world's leading psychiatric association decided Monday to look into reports that China is silencing political dissidents by confining them to mental wards, where some -- including members of the Falun Gong sect -- are drugged or undergo electric shocks.

The World Psychiatric Association voted to send a fact-finding team to China, a move that could lead to Beijing's expulsion from the professional brotherhood if it resists the investigation as it has other similar missions in the past.

The group said that among those reportedly detained in mental hospitals are nearly 500 members of Falun Gong, a spiritual sect outlawed by China in 1999 for allegedly threatening national security. Thousands of its followers have been arrested and sent to labor camps.

"We are concerned they have Falun Gong members who are not patients in their hospitals," outgoing association president Juan J. Lopez-Ibor told the World Congress of Psychiatry, gathering Monday in the Tokyo suburb of Yokohama.

"I am concerned about the abuse of psychiatry," he said.

In some cases, individuals without mental problems allegedly have been forced to take psychiatric drugs and given electroshock treatment, sometimes as punishment for their political views, the association said, citing reports from international nonprofit organizations and family members.

In one incident, Cao Maobin was held for 210 days at the Ranching No. 4 Psychiatric Hospital in eastern China after trying to form an illegal labor union, according to the New York-based China Labor Watch rights group. His wife says doctors force-fed him drugs even though he was mentally sound.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson visited China last week and said the detention of Falun Gong members in psychiatric wards was an ongoing problem. She also said that U.N. officials have had difficulty getting permission to investigate the alleged abuses.

Chinese officials vehemently deny holding political opponents in mental institutions.

But part of China's effort to crush the Falun Gong group has been a propaganda campaign that often uses gruesome photos and accounts of how alleged members went insane and hurt themselves or others.

A multimedia show in Beijing last summer included graphic pictures of a farmer in southern Hainan province, Du Zhuanli, who allegedly developed psychosis after practicing Falun Gong meditation techniques and attacked a man with a farming tool.

Similar charges of psychiatric abuse led the Soviet Union to withdraw from the World Psychiatric Association in 1983 as the other members prepared to expel them. Soviet psychiatrists were readmitted in 1989 after doctors there released hundreds of dissidents from confinement.

In its vote Monday, the association -- which represents professional groups from 105 nations -- said it wants to inspect China's hospitals by May after working out ground rules with Chinese authorities.

Lopez-Ibor said the team must have the right to inspect wherever, whoever and whenever it wants, but conceded that China has the final say.

"We don't have the possibility to visit all the hospitals one by one," he said. "We need some green light from the Chinese health authorities."

He was confident, however, that Chinese authorities would grant an open door.

"Our main intention is not to have some in the organization out," Lopez-Ibor said. "It is to finish the abuse."

-- Information from Cox News Service and the Associated Press was used in this report.

© Uygur.Org  27/08/2002 18:35  A.Karakas