China: Joint Letter: EU Summit Should Make Rights A Priority
Brussels, May 22 , 2017
Re: EU China Summit
Dear President Tusk, President Juncker, and High RepresentativeMogherini,
Our organizations have documented and advocated solutions tohuman rights violations in China for decades. We write ahead of the June 2, 2017 EuropeanUnion (EU)-China Summit in Brussels to urge you to use that occasion to leadthe EU and its member states in demonstrating unified and unambiguouscommitment to promoting human rights in China. We note that the summit will be held two days before the 28thanniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. It is an important reminderof your responsibility to raise in private and public interactions EU and member states’ concerns abouthuman rights violations in China in all exchanges with your Chinesecounterparts.
Under President Xi Jinping, who will remain in power at leastuntil 2022, restrictions on human rights, including freedoms of expression, peacefulassembly, association, and religion or belief, have tightened. The government has silenced independent civilsociety voices, adopted abusive new laws, and carried out a highly politicized “anti-corruption”campaign that further undermines a judicial system already lackingindependence. Authorities particularlyin Tibetan areas and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region remain deeplyhostile to Tibetan and Uyghur communities.
The EU and its member states have raised similar concerns. For instance, in December2016, the EU noted China’s“failure to implement current legal protections and the adoption of laws andregulations which run contrary to China’s stated commitment to advance the rule of law,” “deteriorationof the situation with respect to freedom of expression and association,” andits “arrest, detention and conviction of human rights defenders, lawyers andothers exercising rights such as freedom of religion or belief.” The EU has also expressed support forindependent civil society in China, and made Item 4 statements at the UnitedNations Human Rights Council.
However, while these actions are useful, overall the EU and itsmember states have not taken China’s leadership to task for its gross and systematic violations ofhuman rights. As China is an EUStrategic Partner and its second largest trading partner, the EU and its memberstates have considerable leverage, yet it has repeatedly failed to use thatleverage to press Chinese authorities to change their policies andpractices. Even when EU leaders havespoken out, they tend to be perfunctory: in her April 2017 remarks in Beijing,for instance EU High Representative Mogherini said, “I conveyed to the StateCouncilor the European Union's concern about human rights in China.”
While EU officials are willing to engage in very public,critical battles with China over steel tariffs, solar panels, or the SouthChina Seas, most senior EU officials are not willing to engage publicly in suchdebates over China’suse of torture and arbitrary detention, even when those detained were humanrights defenders or EU citizens. Ourorganizations had hoped that the human rights-related steps in the EU’s June2016 China strategy would inform more robust diplomacy, but that has notproven to be the case.
In the face of Chinese government obstruction of the bilateralhuman rights dialogue, the EU had the opportunity to pursue other meaningfulavenues of engagement—such as a “shadow” dialogue with independent civilsociety groups. Senior EU and member state leaders should have usedhigh-profile occasions, which matter to Chinese leaders, to loudly and publiclycall for the release of baselessly imprisoned individuals like 2010 Nobel PeacePrize winner Liu Xiaobo, Uyghureconomist Ilham Tohti, and Tibetanactivist Tashi Wangchuk. Bycomparison, the European Parliament has adopted three resolutions with detailedcritiques of human rights abuses.
Over the years, our organizations have met with EU and memberstate officials, written briefing papers, and offered extensive guidance on howto more effectively engage Chinese officials to mitigate human rightsabuses. Our core premise—that improvinghuman rights in China is essential for the overall EU-China relationship—hasbeen accepted, yet few of those recommendations have been pursued in practice. Whilethe greatest obstacle remains Chinese government intransigence, more than twodecades of hesitant, formulaic EU approaches to human rights have done littleto improve the situation inside China.
If the EU truly seeks human rights improvements in China, thefollowing steps should be taken, including publicly, by you and your memberstate counterparts in advance of and at the summit:
• Identify specific human rights violations thatthe Chinese government needs to address as a strategic priority for the EU andits member states;
• Announce the EU and member states’ intention tosuspend and review the bilateral human rights dialogue, as made possible by theJune 2016 China strategy, and the intent to pursue dialogues with good-faithactors until a meaningful exchange with the Chinese government can beestablished;
• Announce the establishment of an accountabilitymechanism to ensure that human rights issues or cases are discussed in allhigh-level EU-China meetings, and the pursuit of new Foreign Affairs Councilconclusions on human rights in China;
• Explain the steps the EU and its member stateswill pursue if the Chinese government does not address the concerns raised,invoking the June 2016 China strategy, which states that the EU “will holdChina to account for its human rights record”;
• Reiterating the need to resume dialogue with theDalai Lama’s representatives and to releaseimmediately and unconditionally those detained solely for engaging in peacefulsupport for the Dalai Lama
• Given the timing of the Summit, calling for fullaccountability for the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre
Absentsuch steps, we believe that the EU and member states’ approach will do little tomitigate abuses in China, and increasingly gives those most responsible forsystematic human rights violations a free pass. If the EU is unwilling to make use of the “unprecedented level ofmaturity” in the EU-China relationship to challenge China effectively on humanrights, it undermines its own ability to promote them anywhere—harming its ownlong-term goals with China.
Sincerely,
Amnesty International
China Labour Bulletin
DEMAS
Freedom House
Human Rights in China
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Without Frontiers International
International Campaign for Tibet
International Federation for Human Rights
International Service for Human Rights (ISHR)
Initiatives for China / Citizen Power for China
Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
Society for the Threatened Peoples
Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO)
World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT)
World Uyghur Congress
