WASHINGTON—On his visit to Washington, China’s top leader Hu Jintao has been met everywhere he goes by grieving protesters speaking on behalf of the millions of Chinese people living without basic human rights under Chinese Communist Party rule.
They will be outside the White House when he has a state dinner on Wednesday, they are at the Chinese embassy, and outside the Department of State. Some will follow Hu to Chicago when he goes to meet with business leaders there on Thursday. Hu, and his entourage, will be doing their best to avoid seeing any of it, but they will hear about it.
Suppose your country is among the top 12 worst human rights violators in the world, and your leadership claims, as Hu did over the weekend in his remarks to the media, that strong economic growth proves that China’s brand of socialism is working.
When Chinese people’s homes are destroyed by the government without compensation, when police trample on citizens’ rights and brand entire groups heretical, and assault freedom of belief, such as in the case of Falun Gong, and when the government gets away with all of this within its own borders—a leader’s trip overseas is the best opportunity for protesters to be heard.
Story continues after slide show
[etssp 203]
A group of 39 Tibetan organizations, 17 Taiwan rights groups, 300 Chinese democracy advocates, two hundred Uyghurs, hundreds from the Falun Gong spiritual practice, 12 NGOs including Amnesty International, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and 32 members of Congress issued a letter to call on the U.S. government to get tough about human rights in China.
The largest event unites many of these voices. Reporters Without Borders organized a rally, scheduled for Jan. 19 at Lafayette Square Park, directly north of the White House.
In spite of drizzling rain and ice on the afternoon of Jan. 18 and in spite of the fact that Hu was not scheduled to arrive at Andrews Air Force Base until that night, a vocal group of Tibetans and a contingent of young people wearing matching blue vests from the China Democracy Party, protested outside the White House.
Both groups want the Chinese Communist Party to collapse, because they do not believe in the Party’s ability to reform itself. “Hu Jintao Is a Liar!” and “CCP is a Dead Party,” shouted about 150 Tibetans in unison.
Tenzin Dorjee, Executive Director of Students for a Free Tibet, said that Hu Jintao, who was party chief of Tibet from 1988-1992, carried out “arguably the most systematic, large-scale and sustained destruction of culture, religion and language.”
Next: The destruction of the Tibetan Buddhist temple
Both Tibet and the Taiwan democracy movement are among the most visible victims of Chinese authoritarian state repression.
The Uyghur ethnic group, from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, caught world attention after the July 5, 2009 Urumqi clash between the locals and the newly arrived Han Chinese. During the riots, Uyghurs claim that the Chinese military turned a blind eye to “Chinese mobsters” who they say killed over 1,000 of their people.
Erping Zhang, a spokesperson for the Falun Dafa spiritual movement, persecuted in China since 1999, referred to a letter signed by 61 members of Congress in 2009 that urged the President to “speak very clearly and specifically” in support of Falun Gong practitioners in China, a group numbering in the million who are currently deprived of the freedom to practice their set of gentle exercises and meditation, and to follow their belief in truthfulness, compassion and forbearance.
Falun Gong practitioners are the largest group of prisoners of conscience in the world, numbering in the hundreds of thousands at any given time, according to a 2009 study published by the group Chinese Human Rights Defenders. According to the Falun Dafa Information Center, a Falun Gong practitioner dies from abuse in police custody every three days.
On the China democracy front, a rather shy man, Chairman of the China Democracy Party, Liu Dongxing, said through a translator that his group wanted to “urge Hu to give up single party politics in China and try to incorporate other values and work for the whole country’s future, rather than the party’s prospects.”
Dongxing said when you are young it is easy to absorb new values. “Especially after they have spent a number of years here, they feel that [democracy] is what they want.”
The U.S. government’s attention to human rights in China was catalyzed in 1989 by the regime’s violent crackdown on the Tiananmen democracy movement. At that time lawmakers went to the Chinese embassy in shock and to protest, and they rallied to make thousands of visas available for victims to emigrate to the U.S.
A thriving movement of intellectuals and dissidents from a wide range of targeted groups, including democracy movements, have been calling on the U.S. government for help for years.
Dorjee said it is very important for the U.S. administration to raise all the different causes and issues for which China is responsible.
A veteran of protests involving China’s rights violations, Dorgee said this time Hu’s visit “is historic” in that so many groups are coming together, “more than before.”
