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Nevertheless, for Chris Smith, Chairman of the US Congressional Executive-Commission on China, these are mere words. “Obama has failed miserably. He’s done nothing to advance the goals of human rights. He barely mentions it,” Smith told DW, adding that Obama acted in a similar way when he met Xi’s predecessor Hu Jintao.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
“Here’s the guy (Obama) that got the Nobel Peace Prize. He met with the man (Hu) that was holding a fellow Nobel Peace Prize-winner and there was not a mere mention of Liu Xiaobo.”<\/p>\n
Liu Xiaobo, a literary critic and co-author of the manifesto “Charta 08” which called for reform and democracy in China, has been imprisoned since December 2009. In 2010, Liu received the Nobel Peace Prize in absentia.<\/p>\n
US intelligentsia appeal for freedom<\/strong><\/p>\nEven before Xi left for the US, more than 40 US intellectuals – among them authors like Paul Auster, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Franzen and Ian McEwan – had written an open letter to the Chinese president demanding the release of Chinese writers who “are languishing in jail for the crime of expressing their opinions.”<\/p>\n
The authors highlighted four cases: that of Liu Xiaobo and his wife Liu Xia, who has been under house arrest for nearly five years, as well as that of Uighur blogger Ilham Tothi who was sentenced to life in prison one year ago. And they also criticized that jailed investigative journalist and DW correspondent Gao Yu was not being offered proper medical care.<\/p>\n
“The imprisonment of writers and journalists damages China’s image abroad and undercuts its ambitions to be a strong and respected partner on the world stage,” read the letter.<\/p>\n
The authors urged Xi to release the writers and journalists and “to take immediate steps to defend and protect the rights of all Chinese citizens to communicate and access information freely.”<\/p>\n
Muzzling criticism<\/strong><\/p>\nIssues such as the jailing of lawyers and authors, the oppression of Tibetans and Uighurs as well as attacks on churches in Eastern China offer enough reasons for the US to address growing worries about human rights with the Chinese leadership.<\/p>\n
But while the United States has expressed concerns, the White House has “failed to respond proportionately to the alarming deterioration of human rights,” Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, wrote in the magazine Foreign Policy<\/em>.<\/p>\n“It has been reluctant to visibly and consistently align itself with China’s besieged activists, with the exceptions of eventually receiving the Dalai Lama and perfunctorily congratulating imprisoned critic Liu Xiaobo on his 2010 Nobel Peace Prize win,” she added.<\/p>\n
Other governments have similarly toned down their criticism. “This has been happening for more than ten years now,” Chinese dissident Wei says. “And it’s getting worse and worse.”<\/div>\n
Protesting against Chinese will<\/strong><\/p>\nA couple of weeks ago, Chinese officials came to Washington to plan the trip. One of their demands was that the US ensure that protesters could neither be heard nor seen by President Xi. This is why Washington’s Lafayette Park is off-limits for the general public these days.<\/p>\n
However, through letters, banners and other forms of protest, civil society activists want to make sure that Xi notices the actions of those decrying the deteriorating state of human rights in China – even if he is unlikely to do so in his political discussions with the US leadership.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
China’s President Xi and his US counterpart Obama are set to discuss an array of issues, including trade, cybersecurity and South China Sea disputes during their meeting at the White House. But what about human rights?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2083,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-2084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2084"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=2084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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