COPENHAGEN – Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Tuesday he would raise a series of human rights issues in his talks with Chinese leaders during a visit to the Asian nation later this month. “Human rights issues will naturally be a theme I will bring up during my talks with Chinese leaders. We have always done so in our political talks with the Chinese leadership,” Rasmussen told reporters.
Human rights “are part of the ‘critical dialogue’ that all European Union countries have with China,” he added. Rasmussen, who is to visit Beijing February 23-28, said he had received a letter from the Danish branch of Amnesty International urging him to express “concrete criticism” of China’s human rights record during his visit.
In the letter, Amnesty highlighted the problem of child executions, a practice that has continued despite a Chinese law adopted in 1997 banning capital punishment on people under the age of 18.
Rasmussen recalled that he had raised the issue of human rights and the situation in Tibet during a visit by his Chinese counterpart to Copenhagen in 2002, when Denmark hosted a EU-China summit. In June 2003, amid angry protests from Beijing, Rasmussen met with Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who was visiting Denmark on an invitation from the Danish humanitarian organisation Tibet Charity.
The visit was the sixth by the Dalai Lama to the Scandinavian country, but it was the first time he had been received at the top political level. The head of the Danish branch of Amnesty, Lars Normann Joergensen, told AFP it was “not enough for the Danish prime minister to express general criticism of China, as he has done in the past.” “He has to bring up specific, concrete matters with his Chinese hosts, such as the execution of children and the growing problem of Chinese people being arrested for their opinion or because they surf the Internet in search of international information,” he said.
