The US House Speaker says human rights concerns were adequately stressed during China visit, rejecting criticism that she did not play tough on the issue during her week-long trip that ended on Sunday
By Phurbu Thinley
Dharamsala, June 3: US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a tough critic of Beijing’s human rights record, has urged the Chinese government to release 10 “prisoners of conscience,” AFP reported her office as saying on Tuesday.
During a visit to China last week, Pelosi asked Chinese President Hu Jintao to release individuals detained or imprisoned in China, among them dissidents, pro-democracy activists, journalists and pro-Tibetan advocates.
The demand was made in a letter dated May 27 and was delivered to Hu when the two met in Beijing the trip.
In her letter, among others, Pelosi pressed for the release of Tibetan lama Bangri Chogtrul Rinpoche, who founded a children’s school in the Tibetan capital Lhasa, and Ronggyal Adrag, who was detained in 2007 after shouting slogans calling for the return to Tibet of spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.
The speaker’s list also included leading Chinese dissident Hu Jia, who was first detained in December 2007 and Liu Xiabo, a prominent human rights activist who was detained and transported to an undisclosed location in December 2008. Liu was one of the original signers of Charter 8, which calls for democratic reform in China and has been signed by more than 300 Chinese people.
Pelosi also urged China to free prominent human rights lawyer and rights advocate Gao Zhisheng, who was taken by state security personnel on January 19 and has not been heard from since. Once a prominent lawyer and communist party member, Gao has been an outspoken defender of people seeking redress from the government including coal miners, underground Christians and the banned Falungong spiritual movement.
“It is my understanding that these individuals are prisoners of conscience and they are detained or imprisoned for exercising rights that are guaranteed to them under Chinese law or under international human rights conventions that have been signed or ratified by the Chinese government,” she reportedly wrote to Hu in the letter.
The request in the letter came ahead of the 20th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests which ended in a brutal and bloody crackdown by the Chinese army.
At a press conference on China on Tuesday, Pelosi rejected criticism that she had not pressed China on human rights during her weeklong trip that ended on Sunday.
“As you probably know, 18 years ago, I unfurled a banner in Tiananmen Square in memory of those who were so brave and courageous. That’s what I could do then as a Member of Congress representing my own views and those of my constituents. Now, as Speaker of the House, I could sit across from the President of China and express to him the concern in Congress in bipartisan basis of the concern for human rights in China and Tibet.”
“We had an agenda that focused on climate change but any agenda that we have with the government of China would also include human rights,” she told reporters.
“As you would expect, the issue of human rights was an important part of our discussion with the President, the Premier, and the Chairmen of the National People’s Congress — the issue of human rights in China and Tibet,” she said.
“What was interesting to me I would say, the most, would be the reception that we received from the Chinese government. One year ago, you remember that I was the most hated person in China for my comments when I visited His Holiness the Dali Lama in India. I said at that time and I say it today, unless we talk about human rights and Tibet we abdicate all authority to talk about human rights any place in the world.“
“Still, they sent a delegation to us to invite us to China to discuss these issues and we discussed, as we said, any conversation with members of Congress will include a discussion of human rights.”
“We delivered a letter to the Chinese government … for the release of prisoners of conscience in accordance with the principles of the Chinese Constitution,” Pelosi said Tuesday.
“There is no partisan disagreement on human rights. And in each one of the meetings when the Speaker brought the issue of human rights up, I was very quick in saying that Republicans in Congress agree on the issue of human rights, particularly in terms of Tibet and in terms of freedom of religious expression, which is guaranteed under the Chinese Constitution, but it is not enforced,” Congressman James Sensenbrenner, a Republican of Wisconsin, told reporters at Tuesday’s press conference.
Sensenbrenner also joined Pelosi in the 10-member congressional delegation that visited Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile in northern India, in March last year amidst growing anti-China unrest in Tibet.
