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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (18372)	12/2/2003 11:23:30 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793681

China's Secrecy Syndrome . . . By Robert L. Bernstein Washington Post Tuesday, December 2, 2003; Page A27 John Burns, the New York Times correspondent who has covered conflicts all over the world for the past two decades, believes that in Iraq, the press was intimidated into silence by Saddam Hussein. "Editors of great newspapers, and small newspapers, and editors of great television networks should exact from their correspondents the obligation of telling the truth about these places," he has written. My experience as co-chair of the organization known as Human Rights in China has taught me that the international press in Beijing also has been "managed." Tyrants throughout history have understood that information is power, and denying information to its own people or disseminating propaganda to the rest of the world have been China's trademarks for years. But with the Olympics coming in 2008 and given China's appetite for being a player on the world stage, this is the moment for the free press to take a giant step forward. In the face of global engagement, including the World Trade Organization and the World Health Organization, and with the advent of new technology, the Chinese government will find it harder to intimidate the press and control the free flow of information. It has become almost a cliche to talk about the fact that China is changing rapidly, and therefore doesn't require the kind of pressure that was needed with the Soviet Union. But to the thousands who are locked up in prisons and in mental institutions for their beliefs, that is cold comfort. The press has underreported a number of serious issues. I have heard from many China hands that you have to be careful in Beijing or the government will close you down. I think that undoubtedly remains true. But I also believe that with the way their government handled the SARS scare and continues in many places to conceal the worsening HIV epidemic, Chinese citizens are beginning to understand that censorship is a real danger. In response to citizen outrage over recent health crises, Beijing has been forced to react more openly. China, the last big totalitarian government, is brutalizing its own people. It limits and distorts information, keeping them ignorant on many critical subjects, and gives harsh prison terms to those who publish information the government would rather have suppressed. Liu Qing, president of Human Rights in China, is in exile in New York. He receives news out of China, in particular about individual cases of those in trouble, and is in charge of the editorial content of news and information reaching into China over the Internet. Liu himself has served 12 years in prison. Xu Wenli has been out of prison since Dec. 23, 2002. He served 16 years, four of them in solitary confinement, for writing down his thoughts on the need for a more open China. News of these types of convictions and harsh sentences reach Human Rights in China every week. The press and the public need to be reminded that there are many others still in prison for the peaceful expression of their views. Human Rights in China has provided information on well over 2,000 cases -- people currently imprisoned for their ideas or beliefs. And here's a subject that the press simply has not covered, despite reliable information that is available: Outside every major Chinese city is a virtual "slave" camp. About 2 million to 3 million Chinese citizens live in some 800 of these so-called custody and repatriation camps. Can you imagine a story like this going unreported if such a camp existed outside a major Western city? People are put there for not having proper residence permits, and they are worked hard from early morning until nighttime. I have taken Human Rights in China's report on these camps to top editors of numerous publications with no results. Many reporters say they can't do the story because they can't get into the camps. But now is the time to insist on access. Another outrage: According to China expert Andrew Nathan, Luo Gan, now a member of the nine-person Politburo Standing Committee, which is the supreme ruling body in China, is in charge of security affairs. Under Luo, there has been a chilling increase in the number of executions and killings by police. They have been instructed that "political dissidents of all stripes should be 'totally eliminated.' " He has called for vigilance against various "political enemies, including dissidents at home and abroad, critics of Beijing's bid to host the 2008 Olympics, overseas supporters of Chinese worker demonstrations, officially unauthorized religious groups, and critics of the government's position on the 1989 Tiananmen incident." With China in the WTO and wanting to look good for the Olympics, it is time for news organizations to push the envelope. The Chinese government is active in guaranteeing that Human Rights in China is denied observer status at the United Nations. The Chinese government has also seen to it that the organization is denied a chance to participate officially in this month's World Summit on the Information Society to be held in Geneva. The Chinese government has that kind of power in the United Nations. But it must not be allowed to cow the free press of the world into not covering stories that need to be covered. The writer is founding chairman of Human Rights Watch and former chairman of Random House. These are excerpts from a speech to be delivered today in Washington at an event of the World Press Freedom Committee. washingtonpost.com