Human Rights, Torture, and China

[WhiskeyGirl]

What happened to human rights?  Why doesn't the Obama administration want to share our human rights values with others?

China says Obama should not meet the Dalai Lama

"We firmly oppose the Dalai's engagement in separatist activities in any country under whatever capacity and under whatever name," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said when asked to comment on a possible meeting.

"We have made representations to the United States urging the U.S. to honor its commitments and not allow the Dalai to engage in separ atist activities in the United States," she told a regular news conference.

...the Obama administration delighted China when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said during her trip to Beijing that the United States would not let its human rights concerns interfere with cooperation with Biejing.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jVQeTXvmkhs0LAChIrZHeQyhQXzAD97O2A2G0

Where can I look up those commitments?  Are they public documents?  FOI only?

Is the Obama administration anti-American?

[oldiebutgoodie]

What happened to human rights?  Why doesn't the Obama administration want to share our human rights values with others?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama came under strong criticism from Republicans on Wednesday for leaving the door open to the prosecution of former Bush officials who authorized severe interrogations by the CIA. Obama's decision to release classified memos last Thursday that detailed aggressive techniques used on terrorism suspects, including waterboarding, sleep deprivation and forced nudity, has triggered a political firestorm in Washington.

[oldiebutgoodie]

WASHINGTON (AP) — A closely watched visit is set to take place in October, when a frail, 74-year-old Buddhist monk seeks an audience with President Barack Obama.

[...]

Activists would seize on a White House visit for the Nobel Peace laureate as a powerful message to Tibetans and others struggling for human rights around the world.

[...]

The Dalai Lama's supporters expect Obama will continue the long-standing U.S. presidential tradition of meeting with the monk.

[...]

Dennis Wilder, who served as President George W. Bush's senior Asia adviser, said some of Obama's economic advisers, eager to get more Chinese cooperation on the financial meltdown, might be tempted to "lower the profile" of a Dalai Lama meeting.

Both Bush's father and President Bill Clinton met unofficially with the Dalai Lama, each "dropping in" as the monk visited with a senior adviser.

The second President Bush met with the Dalai Lama in the private residences of the White House, avoiding the more public Oval Office. But he broke with tradition when, in an elaborate public ceremony, he presented the Dalai Lama with the U.S. Congress' highest civilian honor in 2007, calling the monk a "universal symbol of peace and tolerance."

China was outraged and said the United States had "gravely undermined" relations.

[...]

As October approaches, U.S. officials will take a close look at the state of relations with China. Based on those ties, the administration will then decide whether Obama can risk continuing the tradition of meeting with the Dalai Lama and, if so, what sort of meeting to grant the monk.

China will oppose any contact between Obama and the Dalai Lama. But Douglas Paal, a former senior Asia adviser for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, said, "How badly they react to a meeting depends on what the overall state relations are in."

MORE...

[Edward]

Torture and Ill-Treatment of Prisoners
Torture of detainees is endemic in Chinese detention centers and prisons. Although China became party to the UN Convention Against Torture in 1988, the government has not taken effective measures to diminish the risk of prisoners being tortured or ill-treated. Despite strong evidence of torture in several cases of death in custody, state prosecutors have refused to release autopsy results to families or to initiate investigations. In many detention centers, beatings, inadequate food and poor hygiene appear to be a routine part of the process of eliciting confessions and compliance from detainees. Such treatment is applied to ordinary prisoners as well as political detainees.

According to prisoner reports, methods commonly used by guards include: beatings using electric batons; rubber truncheons on hands and feet; long periods in handcuffs and/or leg irons, often tightened so as to cause pain; restriction of food to starvation levels; and long periods in solitary confinement. Furthermore, corrupt authorities at detention centers, prisons and labor camps have extorted large sums of money from families of detainees for the state's provision of "daily supplies" and "medical expenses."

Despite continuing efforts by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, the International Committee of the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations, PRC officials have not agreed to allow open and unannounced visits to prisoners. PRC authorities acknowledge that there are some 1.2 million prisoners and detainees in China.





Abduction and Trafficking of Women: Trafficking and sale of women as brides or into prostitution is a serious problem in certain parts of China, and Chinese women have been sold into brothels in Southeast Asia. The PRC government has enacted various laws to combat the sale of women, but the statistics released by the government do not reliably indicate the scale of the problem. PRC officials stated that there were 15,000 cases of kidnapping and trafficking in women and children in 1993. Yet according to one estimate, 10,000 women were abducted and sold in 1992 in Sichuan Province alone.

Until recently, the authorities have not prosecuted men who purchase women as wives; thus, the trade has continued unabated. Official action to rescue victims of trafficking is generally initiated only if a complaint is made by the woman or her family. Local officials often turn a blind eye, even formally registering marriages into which the woman has been sold.


http://www.christusrex.org/www1/sdc/hr_facts.html#Torture

[Edward]

CHONGQING, China — Zhang Shiqiang, known as the Nine-Fingered Devil, first tasted justice at 13. His father caught him stealing and cut off one of Zhang's fingers.
Twenty-five years later, in 2004, Zhang met retribution once more, after his conviction for double murder and rape. He was one of the first people put to death in China's new fleet of mobile execution chambers.

The country that executed more than four times as many convicts as the rest of the world combined last year is slowly phasing out public executions by firing squad in favor of lethal injections. Unlike the United States and Singapore, the only two other countries where death is administered by injection, China metes out capital punishment from specially equipped "death vans" that shuttle from town to town.

Makers of the death vans say the vehicles and injections are a civilized alternative to the firing squad, ending the life of the condemned more quickly, clinically and safely. The switch from gunshots to injections is a sign that China "promotes human rights now," says Kang Zhongwen, who designed the Jinguan Automobile death van in which "Devil" Zhang took his final ride.

State secret

For years, foreign human rights groups have accused China of arbitrary executions and cruelty in its use of capital punishment. The exact number of convicts put to death is a state secret. Amnesty International estimates there were at least 1,770 executions in China in 2005 — vs. 60 in the United States, but the group says on its website that the toll could be as high as 8,000 prisoners.

The "majority are still by gunshot," says Liu Renwen, death penalty researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a think tank in Beijing. "But the use of injections has grown in recent years, and may have reached 40%."

China's critics contend that the transition from firing squads to injections in death vans facilitates an illegal trade in prisoners' organs.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-06-14-death-van_x.htm

The fact is..
 ANY injection could ruin any Organ of the body..
So they take the Organ without injection and the inmate eventually dies.
Is that Human Rights Abuse ?

[Edward]

This is an old subject for me and I could post a lot of photos and articles..
But I wont..