Beijing suspends human rights talks with United States
Geneva (AsiaNews/Agencies) China wants to suspend human rights talks with the United States. The news came after Washington said yesterday that will it condemn Beijing's serious violations with a resolution at the UN Human Rights Commission currently underway in Geneva. The Chinese foreign minister called the action taken by the Americans a "serous meddling in China's internal affairs."
China's Vice Foreign Minister said the "clash intentionally provoked by the United States has now seriously damaged any basis for dialog and discussion on human rights issues between both countries. China must immediately suspend talks and discussion."
Yesterday, US State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, expressed the American government's disappointment with Beijing's inadequacies in improving human rights conditions in the country, after commitments it undertook in 2002 and 2003. Boucher also stressed Washington's concern about "backward steps" being taken by China, as reported in the American government's world human rights report released last Feb.
Last year the United States asked for a resolution, stating that Beijing had made limited, though significant progress in the sphere of human rights. The resolution has been presented each year after the brutal repression of the student protestors in Tiananmen Square in June 1989. This year various human rights organizations, like Human Rights Watch, asked that the United States back a motion to blacklist Beijing. Even American trade union representatives requested that their government condemn China for the way it trades its labor force.
Meanwhile Amnesty International has called for a moratorium on the death penalty on China, reporting that the Chinese legal system does not guarantee fair trials and often punishes innocent persons.
Yesterday the AI published a report titled "Executed according to law?" The report was released following statements made by a member of Chinese Parliament who said that every year there are at least 10,000 people sentenced to death in China 5 times more than all cases of capital punishment registered worldwide."(MR)
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