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Private Sector Revives Human Rights Talks
With China
By ANTHONY KUHN, Special to The
Times
BEIJING--Almost
a year after China suspended official dialogue with the U.S. on human
rights, Beijing has recently revived unofficial communications through a
California human rights group in a move that could influence Washington's
debate about granting normal trade ties to China.
In late March, the Chinese Justice
Ministry released information on 15 political prisoners to the San
Francisco-based Dui Hua Foundation. The group, whose name means "dialogue"
in Chinese, is the creation of U.S. businessman and well-known activist
John Kamm. Kamm personally engages with
China on two fronts. He advocates closer trade ties with Beijing, and he
has journeyed there 50 times in the last decade to question officials
about the fate of prisoners of conscience, most of whom the outside world
has never heard of. "Their names are not
known. I feel there's a humanitarian imperative to ask about them," Kamm
said by telephone from his home in San Francisco.
His low-profile, nonconfrontational
approach has gotten results where others have been stonewalled.
"If you talk to them [Chinese officials]
in the right way and in the right atmosphere, they will readily
acknowledge that they have political prisoners" and will provide
information on them, he said. Since
1990, Beijing has given Kamm information on about 150 prisoners. The
reports were delivered verbally at first and then, after 1994, in writing.
Kamm has shared his findings with U.S. officials, human rights groups and
the media. Last year, Kamm established the Dui Hua Foundation and got
funding for his project from the Washington-based International Republican
Institute and the Smith Richardson Foundation.
Beijing suspended official exchanges
about human rights in response to NATO's bombing May 8 of the Chinese
Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and to Washington's perennial, if
unsuccessful, efforts to censure China's human rights record at the U.N.
Human Rights Commission in Geneva.
Beijing ignored Kamm as well. He then
got Senate Finance Committee Democrat Max Baucus of Montana, Senate
Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and Senate Judiciary Committee
Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) to write to Beijing, urging further
cooperation. On March 16, Senate Finance
Committee Chairman William V. Roth Jr. also wrote a letter, which Kamm
passed on to the Chinese government. In it, Roth (R-Del.) asked about the
status of Kamm's inquiries and noted that some members of the Finance
Committee wanted to "confront China in very strong terms by withholding
PNTR [permanent normal trading relations] until such time as China has
improved its human rights record." The Finance Committee is due to vote on
PNTR this month, ahead of other congressional committees.
Within a week, the Justice Ministry sent
a letter back detailing the status of several prisoners.
Among these was Liu Baiqiang, a
convicted robber who in 1989 had 17 years tacked on to his prison sentence
for "counterrevolutionary incitement." His crime? Tying anti-government
messages to the legs of locusts and releasing them from his cell.
According to the Justice Ministry, Liu's sentence has since been reduced
three times. Officials also detailed the
release of Bai Weiji, a former Foreign Ministry official who was sentenced
in 1993 to 10 years in prison for allegedly passing classified documents
to the Washington Post's Beijing bureau chief.
"We hope that your efforts will result
in a better understanding of the developing democratic legal system in
China," the letter said. Kamm has so far
received information on 66 of 100 names he submitted to Beijing in 1995.
Of the 66, roughly half have had their sentences reduced or been paroled.
While it is not clear what effect his
inquiries have had on prisoners, Kamm says most observers have "come to
the conclusion that prisoners who are asked about, and about whom we show
concern, are more likely to receive better treatment."
In his research, Kamm scours Chinese
bookstores and pores over publicly available legal statistics, newspapers
and local government records. His efforts have yielded the names of more
than 800 political prisoners undocumented by foreign governments or rights
groups. Many of the prisoners are
ordinary Chinese who have been sentenced to long prison terms--some for
life--for criticizing the government or Communist Party.
During his past jobs as an executive for
a Hong Kong subsidiary of Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp. and
as head of Hong Kong's American Chamber of Commerce--and more recently as
a business consultant--Kamm has often testified and lobbied on Capitol
Hill in favor of granting normal trade relations to China.
He cautions against simplistic or
subjective assessments of China's human rights situation. "Frankly
speaking, I don't think we have the tools--the basic knowledge of the
overall situation--to make that kind of judgment," he said.
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