China Attacks Human Rights Report
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Pro-Beijing media launched a scathing attack Friday on a report alleging human rights violations ahead of Hong Kong's weekend election, and a Chinese official lashed out at the "wicked" watchdog group that prepared it.
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The move is likely to inflame Chinaâs critics, who have called for a boycott of the 2008 games to protest human rights abuses.
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Human rights defenders face arrest and torture in China, and the European Union should raise the issue at a summit with Beijing's leaders this week, Amnesty International said in a new report Monday.
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At a time when China's government has granted the foreign media greater freedom, it is tightening controls on Chinese who write about politically sensitive or embarrassing topics, human rights activists and journalists say.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel on  Tuesday pressed China to improve human rights and take on  greater international responsibilities as its global influence  grows.
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BEIJING -- China's human rights record has deteriorated in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics, with thousands of people being executed after unfair trials, Amnesty International said yesterday.
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A State Department report that said Russia's human rights record has deteriorated in the past year was criticized by the government as aimed at furthering American political interests
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VATICAN CITY  - The Vatican denounced the reported arrests of several Catholic faithful in China last month, calling such actions "a grave violation of freedom of religion."
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China is shirking its pledge to improve human rights for the Olympic Games and world pressure is needed to force Beijing to comply, Human Rights Watch said Thursday.
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China and France underline the importance of Sino-European Union human rights dialogue in their joint press communique issued here Sunday.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday pressed China to improve human rights and take on greater international responsibilities as its global influence grows.
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(InfoWorld) - U.S. Congressman Chris Smith said that top American technology companies are failing to prevent censorship and other human rights abuses in China, writing Saturday in a letter to The Wall Street Journal. "There is enormous profit potential, but entering the Chinese market means challenging a repressive regime on basic human rights tenets. Sadly, some of America's largest tech firms are currently failing this new test of corporate responsibility," wrote Smith, a Republican from New Jersey and a member of the Foreign Services Committee. Smith said that representatives from Yahoo, Google, Cisco Systems, and Microsoft appeared at an April, 2006 Congressional hearing he convened and "they all acknowledged that their companies have enabled dictatorships to censor democracy and human rights promotion on the Internet." He also said that "Yahoo and Cisco have evenÂ helped the Chinese government incarcerate Internet usersÂ for pro-democracy activity." Court documents and evidence from human rights groups have shown that Yahoo's Hong Kong subsidiary, Yahoo Holdings (Hong Kong), cooperated with Chinese police in cases against journalist Shi Tao and political activist Li Zhi, and that material provided by the company may have led to their conviction. Shi was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment, Li to eight years. In January, Smith re-introduced "The Global Online Freedom Bill of 2007," would give individuals like Shi and Li the right to seek redress in U.S. courts, if they believe their freedom of expression was compromised by a U.S. company. Internet companies would be required to inform the Office of Global Internet Freedom -- to be created if the bill is signed into law -- of keywords and search parameters they are filtering. They must also notify the Office of any restrictions on Internet information access with which they must comply in order to do business in a foreign country. Companies can be fined up to $2 million for violation of these principles, with individuals liable for up to $100,000. The bill provides for $50 million to establish the Office of Global Internet Freedom. The bill cited nine countries, including China, Iran, and North Korea, for blocking, restricting, and monitoring the Internet and its citizens' use of it, according to a January 8 statement from Smith's office. Later in January, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, and Vodafone Group agreed to develop aÂ code of conductÂ with a coalition of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to promote freedom of expression and privacy rights. The parties involved said that they would develop a framework that would hold signatories accountable for their actions in the areas of freedom of expression and privacy rights. Eighteen NGOs are participating in the guidelines' development, including: Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School; Business for Social Responsibility; Electronic Frontier Foundation; Human Rights Watch; and Reporters Without Borders. One observer felt the tech firms were now between a rock and a hard place. "Technology companies now have the unenviable position of moving into the media realm, which is tightly controlled in China," said Danny Levinson, publisher of BDL Media's ChinaCSR.com and the China CSR monthly magazine. "When dealing with corporate social responsibility in China, foreign technology companies are easier targets than firms in other sectors because they are much more high profile than, say, the mining companies providing poor labor oversight and textile companies polluting the environment," Levinson said.
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Amnesty International said in a report released Tuesday that the relentless pursuit of security by the world&#039;s powerful nations had undermined human rights, draining energy and attention from crises afflicting the poor and underprivileged.
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The case, along with the detention of a Chinese researcher for The New York Times, has prompted international concern about ChinaÂs crackdown on press freedom.
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The report by the Human Rights Watch paints a distorted picture of the situation in Hong Kong, said a spokesman of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government Thursday.
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Chinese premier Wen Jiabao's grand tour of Europe this week is underscoring how the opportunities presented by the "super-market" that is China's billion people may be trumping the continent's long-standing concerns about human rights.
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China, rocked by a brick kiln child slavery scandal, plans to set up a national panel to stop human trafficking, aimed at protecting women and children from forced labor and prostitution, state media reported on Tuesday.