This week, the EU holds the latest round of talks in its ongoing dialogue with China on the issue of human rights. One obvious topic for the agenda is the case of Ilham Tohti.<\/p>\n
Fran\u00e7ois Godement
08th December, 2014<\/p>\n
This week, the EU holds the latest round of talks in its ongoing dialogue with China on the issue of human rights. One obvious topic for the agenda is the case of Ilham Tohti. A Chinese appellate court recently confirmed the life sentence handed down last September to this mild-mannered, bespectacled and thoroughly peaceful Beijing academic who advocates for rights for Uyghurs. The Ilham Tohti case highlights a couple of worrying trends in China as well as Europe.<\/p>\n
The first is the toughening of China\u2019s repression. No other political dissident has ever received a life sentence in China. Ilham Tohti had been arrested once in 2010 and released, largely as a result of international intervention. This time, however, he was held in shackles for a month before his trial, and his immediate family had their life savings confiscated to pay an extortionate fine.<\/p>\n
The increased severity underlines the Chinese government\u2019s ability to turn prevailing circumstances to its advantage. 2014 has seen violence spiral in Xinjiang, with suicide squads wielding knives and paramilitary forces shooting protesters. Uyghur rights are equated with separatism and separatism with terrorism in what becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as Uyghurs are left with no other outlet for protest. The Chinese government knows the predominantly Han population\u2019s revulsion against violence bolsters popular support for state repression. Internationally, the deterioration of the situation in Xinjiang comes at the worst possible time. Western public opinion is transfixed by the rise of the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq and will show little sympathy for largely Muslim Uyghurs. The level of force used by China\u2019s armed police in Xinjiang this summer went largely unnoticed by governments around the world.<\/p>\n
The sentencing of Ilham Tohti also illustrates the disarray in EU member states\u2019 disparate human rights policies on China. The EU ambassador to Beijing called for Tohti\u2019s release and the EU\u2019s External Action Service condemned his sentence but the gap between EU member states is wider than ever. Germany, which is China\u2019s largest EU trading partner, actually took the strongest public stand, with Angela Merkel issuing a personal statement alongside Berlin\u2019s official declarations. Britain merely expressed its \u201cconcern\u201d, while France remained silent. The latter is particularly surprising, because Ilham Tohti had been a guest of the French Foreign Affairs Ministry in 2009 as part of its \u201cpersonalities of the future\u201d programme [1]<\/a>. A search of the ministry\u2019s website draws a blank, although the website of the French Embassy in China does carry a reference to the two European declarations on the case.<\/p>\n Compare this to what happened in June 2011 when a well-timed private letter from Prime Minister Cameron, Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy demanding the freedom of artist-activist Ai Weiwei helped get him released on the eve of a visit to Europe by then Prime Minister Wen Jiabao [2]<\/a>. <\/p>\n Back in 2010 Britain, Germany and France agreed to co-ordinate their statements on the Dalai Lama, but today pan-EU policy on Tibet\u2019s spiritual leader in exile is farcical. With the exception of Britain\u2019s David Cameron in 2012 and Austrian Chancellor Faymann in 2013, most European governments have avoided direct contact with him. Other member states face Chinese demands for apologies for holding earlier meetings, with some governments making stunning U-turns.<\/p>\n The reasons for this are China\u2019s use of its economic leverage, Europe\u2019s current crisis of confidence, and the crowding out of Chinese human rights issues by pressing geopolitical concerns closer to Europe. Nonetheless, there is a failure in Europe\u2019s human rights approach to China that is well documented in a recent study [3]<\/a> by Karin Kinzelbach. She recounts, for example, how between 1995 and 1997 the so-called \u201cAirbus countries\u201d (France, Germany, Italy and Spain) engineered the \u201cquiet diplomacy\u201d away from open condemnation at the United Nations.<\/p>\n But a darker story also emerges: Chinese cancellation of meetings at the last minute to exclude participants from Europe, the Chinese denial of \u201cblack jails\u201d while Chinese media was reporting on them publicly, and a man whose case had been raised by the EU who was executed on the morning a human rights dialogue was starting in Beijing.<\/p>\n Kinzelbach asks the difficult question \u2013 where did Europe\u2019s quiet diplomacy have an impact? Apart from the Ai Weiwei case cited above, she estimates that the decision by China to submit all death sentences to its Supreme People\u2019s Court may have been influenced in part by European lobbying. But most damningly, the dialogue itself may have been a compromise between professed European values and expediency; she quotes a European participant who explained: \u201cI am not aware that the EU has demanded results. (\u2026) It is just a venue for us to express concern. (\u2026) If public statements on the Dialogue mention results anywhere, then that\u2019s just public-relations speak.”<\/em><\/p>\n