Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-01-17-Speech-4-164"
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"en.20080117.19.4-164"2
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"Madam President, the problem of human rights in China keeps coming up in these urgent debates, always with good reason. China’s economic growth and increased international standing have still not resulted in any real difference in the approach to civil liberties, abuse of power by the authorities, room for opposition and independence of the judiciary.
Harsh penalties are still being imposed, including frequent use of the death penalty. China is not the only country that sentences people to death and executes them, but it is the champion in this. The only progress that we have seen is that more care is now taken to be certain of the perpetrator’s guilt before the death penalty is carried out, so fewer people are being put to death who later turn out to be innocent.
Meanwhile, the international focus on the three great dramas in China has to a large extent disappeared. The bloodbath in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the persecution of the supporters of the Falun Gong movement and the changing of the composition of the populations of Tibet and East Turkestan are being given less and less attention.
All the attention is now going to economic growth, export opportunities to China, opportunities for cheap imports from China, the growing role of China in Africa and the coming Olympic Games in China. Under these circumstances the pressure to improve the human rights situation in China is dwindling. The Olympic Games have become an argument for pulling down residential areas and driving the residents away. Chinese ambassadors say that their national honour is violated when this is criticised from abroad.
The coming Olympic Games could have been an occasion for improvement. As things look at the moment, they will be good for tourism and good for the completion of major public works, but not good for improving human rights. In the Netherlands, meanwhile, a debate has started about the possibility of boycotting these Olympic Games.
A resolution about a single arrested human rights activist, Hu Jia, is necessary but it is not enough. The most important factor in the relations between Europe and China should not be economic self-interest but our concern about human rights in China."@en1
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