Activists urge renewed U.S. rights pressure on China

By Paul Eckert, Asia Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Washington’s need for help on global
security concerns is tempering its criticism of China over
human rights and enabling Beijing to strengthen a crackdown on
dissent, activists said on Friday.

They said it was no coincidence that China’s clampdown on
activists and lawyers came at a time when the United States
needs Chinese support at the United Nations to curtail the
nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran.

“The reason why Hu Jintao can strengthen the suppression is
because the U.S.-led international community has let up on its
pressure on the Chinese government,” said Wei Jingsheng, a
dissident who was exiled from China in 1997 after spending most
of the previous two decades as a political prisoner.

Hu, China’s president and Communist Party chief, was meting
out tougher treatment of civic activists than a decade ago when
Wei was in and out of jail, Wei told reporters.

In recent weeks, China has clamped down on a growing web of
lawyers and activists seeking to expand freedoms through
litigation and Internet-driven campaigns.

Blind activist Chen Guangcheng was jailed for over four
years on Thursday. Last week, Beijing police detained outspoken
human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who has defended the banned
Falun Gong spiritual group.

The United States criticized China over the cases and has
demanded the release of those and other activists.

Human rights lawyer Morton Sklar, who is pursuing lawsuits
against officials behind China’s deadly six-year crackdown on
Falun Gong, said the need to court veto-wielding Security
Council member China was staying the U.S. hand.

“The United States is dependent on their support to get
some things through the Security Council,” said Sklar, head of
the World Organization for Human Rights USA.

“As a result, the United States has become less and less
able — less and less willing — to exert itself forcefully
against the government of China as far as human rights abuses
are concerned,” he told reporters in Washington.

A U.S. State Department official said Washington had
suspended a formal human rights dialogue with China because it
failed to produce concrete results, but that other rights
diplomacy methods were being “pushed hard.”

“I don’t think we’ve pulled our punches at all in raising
human rights with China. We’ve been going at them quite hard,”
said the official.

China joined Russia and Western powers on the Security
Council in censuring North Korea over ballistic missile tests
last month and in setting a deadline of August 31 for Iran to
stop nuclear enrichment work. But it remains unclear if China
would support sanctions against those countries.