By Sarah McGregor
Trade should take a backseat to rule of law, say NGOs
Bloc MP Roger Clavet knows from personal experience how forcefully the Chinese government reins in journalists reporting on its domestic affairs.
Before running successfully for a federal seat this June, Mr. Clavet wrote French-language copy for the Chinese state-owned and controlled media organization Xinhua, from 1997-1999. He first applied for the job in the early ’90s on the recommendation of a former Laval University journalism professor. Four years later, his CV got a response from a Beijing based broadcast company, widely known as Radio Chine Internationale, and he beat out another Quebec journalist for the job.
Mr. Clavet has also worked as a reporter for Radio-Canada and a parliamentary writer for the Ottawa newspaper Le Droit.
When he returns to China this week traveling with Prime Minister Paul Martin, Mr. Clavet quips he’ll finally have leverage as an MP to press the state officials on media control, and other rights-based issues. “They know that I’m elected, so they will have to listen to me more,” he says, half-jokingly.
Earlier this month, the PM was unable to convince the Chinese embassy in Ottawa to reinstate the visas of two Chinese television correspondents who had planned to travel with a flock of reporters covering the leader’s visit. As part of a five-nation Asian tour that began last
week, the PM will visit Beijing and Hong Kong, Jan. 20-23. The New Tang Dynasty journalists say the government in Beijing is shutting them out because of the TV network’s sometimes critical reporting of Chinese affairs. Amnesty International reports in that country political activists and Internet users are routinely arrested for exercising “their right to freedom of expression and association.”
This is just one of a multitude of human rights issues the Canadian public has been asking the PM to put at the top of the agenda, eclipsing even trade talks.
And it is receiving broad all-party support. Members of Parliament, including Mr. Clavet, set aside other political differences at a multi-party press conference last week, to demand Mr. Martin use friendly relations with China to raise human rights and Tibetan autonomy. Tibet has been calling for independence since the Chinese occupation of 1951.
The PM is scheduled to meet Premier Wen Jiabao, President Hu Jintao and the Chairman of the National People’s Congress, Wu Bangguo. Mr. Clavet says he will meet with counterparts in China, but it’s the job of the prime minister to stress human rights with officials at the highest level.
Remarkably, the Canada-Tibet Committee reports that 159 MPs a slim majority have signed a letter writing campaign that asks Mr. Martin to do exactly that. Thirty-eight Liberal MPs are among the signatories. In December, a Senate and a Commons committee each passed separate resolutions encouraging the prime minister to ask China to enter meaningful negotiations with the religious Tibetan leader in exile, the Dalai Lama. “Fifty years of misunderstanding necessitates an honest broker,” explains Tenzin Dargyal, president of the Canada Tibet Committee.
At last week’s press conference Mr. Clavet read a statement from NDP MP Alexa McDonough in support of Canada taking on this role. Even more unusual, Conservative MP Scott Reid, referring to NDP MP Ed Broadbent as a “colleague,” read a similar message on his behalf. Their parties’ views traditionally span either side of the political spectrum. “It’s non-partisan and I think for human rights that is the best approach… the only approach,” says Mr. Clavet, of the cooperation among parties.
Later that morning, Amnesty International and other NGOs held another press conference to encourage the PM to take a firm stand with China on respect for basic freedoms.
Alex Neve, Secretary General of Amnesty, says Canada must review and reevaluate its strategy of directly linking a more open economy with improvements to human rights. As China has become deeply entrenched with global trade in the past decade, the country has done nothing to improve human rights abuses and respect for the rule of law, he says.
“We can’t let human rights be at the whim of market forces” says Mr. Neve.
The PM promised in a speech before the Canada-China Business Council last month to engage the Chinese government on human rights issues as part of regular trade talks.
As a matter of policy, Foreign Affairs says Canada routinely pushes China for the better protection and promotion of human rights at a series of high level meetings. Senior bureaucrats from within FAC also address the topic most recently Deputy Minister Peter Harder did so during a June meeting in Beijing. Canada registers concerns with annual public statements at the UN Annual General Assembly and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, says Rodney Moore, a FAC spokesperson.
However, Mr. Moore stresses the government has, since 1997, chosen backroom diplomatic engagement rather than make public statements.
In 1997, then Foreign Affairs Minister “Lloyd Axworthy… set (in place a) dialogue process so that we would be speaking confidentially and not in public when we raised our concerns about human rights questions in China with the authorities there,” says Mr. Moore. “It was considered to be more productive as an approach… Not in headlines, but raise our concerns in conversation speaking confidentially.”
He says the PM will be pursuing this approach this week. “The prime minister will certainly be intervening on human rights with meetings of Chinese leaders. He will raise them,” says Mr. Moore.
Mr. Clavet points out personal relationships between two leaders may become a key element. He says never underestimate what is known as guanxi: “It translates roughly to ‘give me something and I’ll give you something for life.’ It’s a trust compact between friends, where honesty can show its face,” says Mr. Clavet.
