Keep the embargo since China does not respect human rights
Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) More than 500 Chinese human rights and pro-democracy activists sent an open letter on March 23 to the European Union urging it not to lift its arms embargo on mainland China, saying that human rights abuses remain widespread.
"Sixteen years ago, the European Union set specific human rights conditions when it imposed a set of sanctions on China for its military crackdown on pro-democracy protests in June 1989," the letter said. "Doing away [with] this sanction without corresponding improvements in human rights would send the wrong signal to the Chinese people . . . especially to those of us who lost loved ones, who are persecuted, and for all Chinese who continue to struggle for the ideal that inspired the 1989 movement."
The letter, addressed to EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, was signed by a wide range of activists and dissidents, including the Tiananmen Mothers, a group of relatives of victims of the 1989 military crackdown; among the signatures are found those of some of the most important figures in China's dissidents' movement like Liu Gang, Ding Zilin, Jiang Qisheng, Tong Yi, Liu Binyan, Fang Lizhi and Su Xiaokang.
The letter lists a series of demands that China should meet before the EU ban is lifted. Beijing should reassess the 'counter-revolutionary' nature of the Tiananmen pro-democracy movement and allow public commemoration of the 1989 events, something that it still treats as punishable offence.
It calls on the government to set up an independent 'truth commission' to investigate the killings, torture and arbitrary detention surrounding the crackdown, and to release all prisoners of conscience and adopt the UN International Covenant on Civil Political Rights.
Wang Dan, a former student leader who spent six years in jail and who is now in exile, said lifting the ban is tantamount to saying that "that June 4 [the day when the crackdown took place] is over".
"The EU is only looking at China from the economic point of view. [It] should broaden [its] view to the political area and then [it] would see how ridiculous lifting the arms embargo would be," Mr Wang added.
The governments of mainland China and of many EU members have publicly stated that the embargo was no longer needed. However, there are some indications that the EU might delay lifting the ban.
.png)
15/04/2005
