{"id":3789,"date":"2017-06-22T02:44:05","date_gmt":"2017-06-22T02:44:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iuhrdf.org\/en\/2017\/06\/22\/eu-suspend-china-human-rights-dialogue\/"},"modified":"2017-06-22T02:44:05","modified_gmt":"2017-06-22T02:44:05","slug":"eu-suspend-china-human-rights-dialogue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/eu-suspend-china-human-rights-dialogue\/","title":{"rendered":"EU: Suspend China Human Rights Dialogue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Human Rights In China<\/a><\/p>\n

Ten NGOs: AI, IFC, ICT, ISHR, HRIC, HRW, FIDH, UHRP, WUC, UNPO<\/span><\/span><\/h4>\n

The European Union should cancel its upcoming human rights dialogue with China and suspend the exchange until the meetings can bring genuine human rights improvements, ten human rights organizations said today. The next EU-China human rights dialogue is scheduled for June 22-23, 2017, in Brussels. The organizations include Amnesty International, Initiatives for China, the International Campaign for Tibet, the International Service for Human Rights, Human Rights in China, Human Rights Watch, the International Federation for Human Rights, the Uyghur Human Rights Project, the World Uyghur Congress, and the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization.<\/p>\n

The EU and its member states have committed to throw the EU\u2019s \u201cfull weight behind advocates of liberty, democracy and human rights throughout the world,\u201d and the groups have long urged that the EU demonstrate a unified, unambiguous position on human rights in China as the situation there has deteriorated.<\/p>\n

Yet, at a summit in Brussels on June 1-2, the EU Council and Commission presidents in public did not forcefully condemn China\u2019s deteriorating human rights situation, nor call for the release of political prisoners, including EU citizens. The EU also did not mark the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4. And the EU and its member states on June 15 did not deliver a statement under agenda item 4 in the United Nations Human Rights Council \u2013 a first for the EU, whose statements over a decade at the council have generally sent a message of solidarity to activists and of warning to Beijing by denouncing the Chinese government\u2019s crackdown on critical voices and persistent violations of basic freedoms.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn three occasions over three weeks the EU demonstrated no intention, compassion, or strategic vision to stem the tide of human rights abuses in China,\u201d said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. \u201cThe EU should not further harm its credibility, but rather redirect its efforts toward bringing meaningful change to China.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the closing EU-China Summit press conference on June 2, EU President Donald Tusk announced the next round of the EU-China human rights dialogue. That dialogue, which will be held on short notice and at a lower governmental level on China\u2019s side, has been marred almost since its inception with a lack of clearly articulated benchmarks for progress, vulnerability to Chinese pressure, and exclusion of independent Chinese voices. As a result, the dialogue has steadily deteriorated into an exercise whose purpose is largely to secure another round of the dialogue, not to make meaningful change in China. Over the past decade, our organizations have made extensive recommendations as to how the dialogue could be improved \u2013 few of those recommendations have been accepted.<\/p>\n

The EU\u2019s June 2016 China strategy gives the EU the opportunity to suspend and review any of its dozens of bilateral dialogues with China, including the human rights dialogue. The EU should suspend the dialogue rather than proceed with a meaningless low-level exercise, the organizations said. It should establish clear benchmarks for human rights progress in China, including the release of individuals detained, imprisoned, or forcibly disappeared for the peaceful exercise of their basic rights, including criticism of the Chinese government. The EU should publish these benchmarks to advance public scrutiny and accountability of the EU\u2019s China policy, and to ensure that the Chinese public is informed about the EU benchmarks. These benchmarks should be integrated into all EU and EU member states\u2019 high-level meetings with China.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe EU\u2019s failure to speak out on Beijing\u2019s rights violations is a body blow to independent activists across China and a betrayal of the EU\u2019s proclaimed human rights commitments,\u201d said Iverna McGowan, head of European Institutions Office at Amnesty International. \u201cInstead of a forum for promoting rights, the EU-China human rights dialogue has become a cheap alibi for EU leaders to avoid thorny rights issues in other high level discussions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Human Rights In China Ten NGOs: AI, IFC, ICT, ISHR, HRIC, HRW, FIDH, UHRP, WUC, UNPO The European Union should cancel its upcoming human rights dialogue with China and suspend…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3788,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-3789","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\/3789","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=3789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3789"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=3789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}