2002-12-10 / Taiwan News, Staff Reporter / By Fiona Lu

A human rights report, released yesterday, indicated that Chinese authorities need to become more free and democratic if they hope to improve their global image on human rights.

Andy Chang, a professor of Chinese studies at Tamkang University in Taipei, released the "2002 Report on Human Rights Practices in Mainland China" at the Strait Exchange Foundation (SEF). Chang was commissioned to do the report by the government after President Chen Shui-bian requested that a regular, comprehensive investigation about China's human rights situation be done in Taiwan so as to provide updated information for the government or civil organizations contributing to the development of democracy in China.

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With regard to Beijing's infamous blacklists of people forbidden from entering the country, the human rights report further indicated that the authorities in Hong Kong, after the hand over to Beijing in 1997, made similar blacklists.

The government also restricts freedom of speech and is willing to use any means possible to attack dissidents.

In addition to banning foreign and privately owned media businesses, the report claims that China's government is guilty of reducing news coverage, blocking access to foreign television broadcasts, forbidding discussion on political reform in the press, arbitrarily arresting and imprisoning dissidents, and beating up or imprisoning reporters. Recently, the Beijing government has further intensified controls on information and expression of public opinion by blocking access to certain Web sites.

Concerning China's religious freedom, the paper found that between 1983 and 2001, at least 25,354 religious followers were detained by the authorities, 4,077 were arrested, 1,835 disappeared and 130 were executed.

The persecution of the Falun Gong members is the largest persecution of a spiritual organization in the world today, the report claims. Included in the judicial rights section of the report, the suppression of Falun Gong has caused 1,600 Falun Gong practitioners to have been executed since 1999. 267 members are known to have been persecuted in the first 10 months of 2002.

In the suppression of dissidents, the government also consistently resorted to article 28 of its Constitution, which states, "the state maintains public order and suppresses treasonable and other counter-revolutionary activities; it penalizes criminal activities that endanger public security and disrupt the socialist economy as well as other criminal activities; and it punishes and reforms criminals."

From December 1998 to 2001, at least 30 leaders of Chinese democracy movements have been charged and sentenced for subversion of the state. In 2000, about 1,300 people were sentenced for endangering national security, and another 600 people were imprisoned for violating China's National Security Law.

The report argued that Beijing's unscrupulous persecution of Falun Gong members and suppression of dissidents and ethnic minorities has been carried out under the pretext of maintaining national security, but is has also been abetted by the lack of an independent judiciary.

"Unless the current party and government systems are reformed, there can be no independent judiciary, and there will not be any restraint on the use of judiciary as a means to violate human rights," the paper warned.

As for the capital punishment in China, at least 4,015 people were sentenced to death in 2001 with 2,468 people actually being executed in the same year. The figures exceed the numbers of the rest of the world combined, the report said.

It further unveiled that, between April and July 2002 alone, 1,781 people have been sentenced to death in China, more than in all other countries in the world combined over the last three years. Other countries that had relatively high numbers of executions are Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

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http://www.etaiwannews.com/Taiwan/2002/12/10/1039484869.htm