Key Human Rights Reporting Topics

Key human rights reporting topics and issues of major impact to the country that deserve attention in any serious portrait of China include:

• Ongoing crackdown in Tibet: Largely eclipsed by the catastrophic earthquake in Sichuan province, the crackdown in Tibet continues. Since protests turned violent on March 14 in Tibet, the Chinese government has closed the region to reporters and international investigators; it remains unknown how many died or have been arrested. The Chinese government has organized two orchestrated tours for journalists and one for diplomats, launched “patriotic education” campaigns for Tibetans, and held fast to plans for the Olympic Torch to pass through Lhasa. Chinese lawyers who offered to defend Tibetan protestors have been threatened by the Ministry of Justice with the revocation of their licenses if they proceed.
• Systemic political controls: China remains a one-party state that does not hold national elections. Independent political parties are outlawed, leaving the Communist Party with a monopoly on political power. The government’s extensive police and state security apparatus continues to impose multiple layers of controls on political and civil society activists. A variety of vaguely defined crimes including “inciting subversion,” “leaking state secrets,” and “disrupting social order” provide the government with wide legal remit to stifle critics.
• Prisons, the death penalty, and executions: The government does not publish figures for the death penalty, but the punishment is mandated for no fewer than 68 crimes. Though the exact number is a state secret, it is estimated that as many as 10,000 executions are carried out each year. Access to the courts and prisons is difficult to obtain.
• Controls on religious freedom: Olympic visitors and reporters will see “Olympic Chapels” and spectators can visit approved houses of worship, but be aware that only five official religions are recognized (Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Catholicism, and a version of Protestantism). Beijing does not recognize freedom of religion outside the state-controlled system. Unapproved so-called “house churches” are banned and some groups, such as the Falun Gong, are repressed and designated as “cults.”
• Repression of Uighurs: China continues to use its “war on terrorism” to justify policies to eradicate the “three evil forces”—terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism—allegedly prevalent among Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim population in China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. China has used the presence of militant Islamist groups in Xinjiang as a pretext for a broader crackdown. Freedom of expression is sharply curtailed and Uighurs who express “separatist” tendencies are routinely sentenced to quick, secret, and summary trials, sometimes accompanied by mass sentencing rallies.
• Jailing of critics and use of house arrest system: Numerous human rights defenders and government critics have been harassed, detained, and subject to house arrest. Chinese lawyers, rural petitioners, and civil society leaders who challenge the government to uphold its own human rights promises have been silenced and isolated by house arrest, and increasingly, jailed.
• Obstruction of HIV/AIDS rights advocacy: Measures to address China’s HIV/AIDS crisis are hampered as local officials and security forces continue to obstruct efforts by activists and grassroots organizations to contribute to prevention and education efforts and to organize care-giving.
• Support for abusive regimes: While China has signaled that it wants to be seen as a “responsible power” and respected international actor, it has provided a crucial financial lifeline to regimes with poor human rights records. The Chinese government has backed the Burmese junta which continues to stifle any form any dissent, provided aid that kept Sudan financially viable through oil purchases and other forms of assistance, and shipped arms to the tinderbox of Zimbabwe. These policies undermine efforts by other international actors to use financial and political pressure to improve rights in these countries.