President Obama most likely would be in prison’: China rights record slammed in US ahead of Xi Jinping’s state visit
PUBLISHED : Saturday, 19 September, 2015, 9:07am
UPDATED : Tuesday, 22 September, 2015, 1:01pm
Agence France-Presse in Washington
US activists and lawmakers slammed China’s recent rights record on Friday as controversy mounts ahead of a visit to Washington by President Xi Jinping.
One US lawmaker declared that if Xi’s host Barack Obama had been Chinese, he would have been imprisoned rather than elected president, as US-based Chinese campaigners gave evidence to Congress.
Tibetan, Chinese, Uighur and American activists rally outside the White House in Washington on Wednesday. The group is calling on US President Barack Obama to publicly call on Xi Jinping to halt the crackdown on Tibetans and Uighurs, and civil society in China. Photo: Reuters
“If President Obama had lived his life not in the United States but in China, as a Christian, a community organiser, a civil rights lawyer, a constitutional law professor, he would not be enjoying a grand fete with Xi Jinping,” said Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas.
“President Obama most likely would be in prison or much, much worse.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart have met on friendly terms before, such as during their meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, in September 2013, but ties have been strained recently by cyber-hacking claims and other issues.Photo: Xinhua
The Congressional-Executive Committee on China, which produces an annual report on human rights in the United States’ great power rival, met on Friday in a bid to set the tone before the landmark visit.
The panel invited several US-based dissidents, journalists and rights activists to bear witness to what they said was a systematic abuse of civic and human rights under China’s one party state.
“Since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, at least 2,000 human rights defenders have been detained or sentenced,” said Teng Biao, a Harvard Law School fellow and co-founder of the Open Constitution Initiative.
Xiao Qiang, founder and editor of the China Digital Times, said: “The Chinese people want and deserve more access to information on the Internet, greater freedom to express their views.
Chinese popular human rights activist Chen Guangcheng enraged authorities by exposing forced abortions and sterilizations under China\’s one-child-only policy. He escaped from house arrest in April 2012 and fled to the US embassy days ahead of a visit by Hillary Clinton. Photo: AFP
“I urge president Obama to engage president Xi on Internet freedom, press freedom and freedom of expression,” he said, calling on Obama to publicly say future political and economic relations will “be dependent on the Chinese government demonstrating improvement in upholding human rights.”
And activist Yang Jianli, president of Citizen Power for China, declared that for America to support the Chinese government would be” morally corrupt and strategically stupid.”
President Xi Jinping, outfitted with the new military uniform, is pictured visiting troops stationed on the China-Mongolia border during a trip to Inner Mongolia last year. Photo: Xinhua
“China’s totalitarian regime has hijacked 1.3 billion people, imposing a political system on them by force and coercion, running the country like a slave-owner,” he declared.
The United States, while maintaining close economic ties with China, is a frequent critic of its rights record.
Preparations for next week’s visit have been extensive, but that did not stop the State Department this month from demanding Beijing release a dozen activists who were arrested shortly before they were due to meet the US envoy for religious freedom, David Saperstein.