China 'failed human rights vow'
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Amnesty International says China has failed to meet its promise to improve human rights ahead of the 2008 Olympics.
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HONGTONG, China  - China has promised a sweeping crackdown on a slave labor scandal in a poor part of the country where poverty and unbridled growth have made work abuses commonplace.
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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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The spying conviction against a prominent Hong Kong journalist has brought criticism against China from human rights and media advocacy groups.
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Europe's top human rights body said that Russia still failed to meet its standards and rejected a demand by Moscow to stop checking on Russian compliance of the 46-nation organization's code of ethics.
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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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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.
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WASHINGTON -- Fledgling US-backed democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq are failing to protect human rights, despite huge flows of American aid to improve conditions after the ousters of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, the State Department said yesterday,
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China's ruling Communist Party has offered leniency if corrupt officials confess, state media said on Friday of a problem that has fuelled mounting public discontent.
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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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The international rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) Monday called on the European Union to resist China&#39;s call to end the EU embargo on arms sales to China.
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China has appealed to the United States not to send the "wrong signal" after Washington said a handful of detained Uighurs being held at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay would not be returned to China.
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U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the United Nations was failing to live up to its responsibility to protect human rights in Darfur, as it has often failed in the past.
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The Chinese government is neglecting and actively undermining the Tibetan language as part of continuing efforts to dilute the region's unique culture, a human rights group said on Thursday.
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China, a frequent target of overseas human rights organisations, has promised to improve the treatment of its prisoners, especially those on death row, state press reported Monday.
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With the death of Zhao Ziyang on Monday, China has lost one of the few senior political voices who tried to stop the Tiananmen Square massacre as well as its most famous political prisoner.
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Chinese officials are flouting a pledge made to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which helped to secure the 2008 games for Beijing, by harassing and abusing journalists, Human Rights Watch said Friday.