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U.S. to Reinforce Rights Concerns in Northwest
China
Wed December 18, 2002 05:43 AM ET
By Tamora Vidaillet
BEIJING (Reuters) - U.S. officials headed to China's
Muslim region of Xinjiang Wednesday to underscore that
Washington's listing of a regional group as a
terrorist organization is not a blank check to
suppress human rights.
Washington added the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM)
to its list of terror organizations this year, a move
rights groups feared China would use to justify a
long-running crackdown on dissent by ethnic Uighurs in
the northwestern region.
"It is our understanding that our decision on ETIM is
being presented by some Chinese officials as a license
-- that the U.S. has bought into the notion that
Uighurs are terrorists," Lorne Craner, U.S. assistant
secretary of state for democracy, human rights and
labor affairs, told Reuters late Tuesday.
"We want to dispel that notion," he said by telephone.
After two days of talks with senior Chinese officials
on human rights and democracy issues in the capital
Beijing, Craner said he would meet senior government
officials from Xinjiang and Muslim religious leaders
Wednesday and Thursday.
Uighurs campaigning abroad for a homeland in Xinjiang
called East Turkestan have welcomed Craner's decision
to visit the area but some analysts see the trip as an
exercise in damage control.
A spokesman for the Germany-based East Turkestan
Information Center said the government gathered "religious
personages" Tuesday for two weeks of political study
sessions in the central Xinjiang town of Korla.
"If the government presses a religion, it can't
develop normally and may go to extremes. It's very
dangerous," he said.
"We hope U.S. human rights officials can directly ask
'Why do you force Muslims to learn atheism, or to
study at the Communist Party's political school? Why
can't they be trained in religion in a normal way?"'
he said.
Political study sessions, however, especially in the
wake of the 16th Party Congress in November, are
common across China.
China threw its weight behind the U.S.-led war on
terror following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the
United States, but called on the rest of the world to
support its own war against Turkic-speaking, ethnic
Uighur separatists.
Beijing says ETIM was supported and directed by Osama
bin Laden, chief suspect for the September 11 attacks.
Some Western diplomats said Washington's listing of
the group was aimed at garnering support from China, a
permanent U.N. Security Council member, for future
plans in Iraq.
RAPPORTEUR INVITATIONS
In the first high level dialogue on human rights
between China and Washington since October 2001,
Craner said Beijing had decided to re-issue
invitations to U.N. special rapporteurs.
Beijing would extend "unconditional" invitations to
U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, Theo van Boven, as
well as the U.N. rapporteur on religious freedom and
U.N. arbitrary detention working group, Craner said.
"Chinese officials said the invitations would go out
immediately and that the rapporteurs could come at any
time."
Craner said China had also agreed to meet with the
leaders of the U.S. Commission of Religious Freedom,
possibly in the spring.
The resumption of the dialogue on human rights, one of
several points of friction in China-U.S. ties, is part
of increased cooperation since the September 11
attacks.
"We made clear, and they made clear, that more
cooperation on human rights is going to strengthen the
relationship with the United States," Craner said.
But in a reminder of issues dividing the two sides, a
U.S.-based rights group said Wednesday China had
detained Li Yibin, publisher of an online
pro-democracy magazine.
More than 180 dissidents wrote a letter Wednesday
calling for the release of four activists detained
last month who had asked Beijing to review its verdict
that found the 1989 student protests were a
counter-revolutionary rebellion.
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