Beijing, March 18 – Human Rights groups Friday accused China of using political prisoners as pawns, and warned that the release of Uighur dissident Rebiya Kadeer should not be seen as an improvement in the situation for human rights in the country.
“We are extremely concerned that the release of Rebiya Kadeer will be cited as evidence of improvements in human rights as the European Union (EU) debates lifting its arms embargo on China,” Amnesty International deputy director for Asia Catherine Baber said.
“Rebiya Kadeer’s release does not alter the laws and practices regularly used by the Chinese authorities to detain and imprison individuals who peacefully exercise their rights to freedom of expression, association and other fundamental rights.”
Amnesty noted that Kadeer should never have been jailed in the first place and accused China of playing “hostage politics.”
Kadeer, 58, was freed Thursday as China’s Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing pressed EU leaders in Brussels to remove an arms ban that has been in place since Beijing’s bloody crushing of democracy campaigners in 1989.
The EU has called for evidence of improvements in China’s human rights record before it lifts the ban.
Her freedom also coincided with the US deciding not to introduce a resolution critical of China at this year’s United Nations human rights commission meeting, citing Kadeer’s release as one sign of “progress” by Beijing.
“We are happy to see Rebiya freed, but China shouldn’t get any political credit for letting her go when they kept her behind bars for so many years,” Brad Adams, Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said.
“letting her go now is yet another instance of China’s revolving door policy of releasing a few prominent prisoners before international events to head off criticism.”
Last year, to stave off a resolution at the human rights commission, China released a Tibetan nun a year before her 17-year sentence was due to end.
The White House denied its move signaled a softening of its stance, but Adams said the decision not to lodge a protest at the UN was “a failure of the entire international community.”
“To suggest, as the US did, that China has progressed in its respect for human rights so much that it deserves to escape even a discussion at the Commission on Human Rights is inexplicable and unfortunate,” Adams said.
Kadeer, a leading member of China’s Uighur ethnic group in the largely Muslim western autonomous region of Xinjiang, was arrested in August 1999 while on her way to meet with a US congressional staff delegation.
She was charged with “providing secret information to foreigners” and jailed for eight years after a secret trial.
Her release on medical parole comes just ahead of a weekend visit to Beijing by US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.
“Basically what they appeared most concerned with was getting her out before the visit of Condoleeza Rice,” John Kamm, head of right group Duihua Foundation who helped secure the release, told AFP.
