http://www.wa****ngtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/12/AR2008031201539.html?hpid=sec-world&sub=AR
By Jill Drew
Wa****ngton Post Foreign Service
Thursday, March 13, 2008; Page A13
BEIJING, March 12 -- Human rights activists on Wednesday decried the U.S.
State Department's decision to drop China from its list of the world's
worst
human rights violators, saying that China's crackdown on dissent is
getting
worse as it prepares to host the Olympic Games in August.
"We and others have do***ented a sharp uptick in human rights violations
directly related to preparations for the Olympics," said Phelim Kine, Asia
researcher with New York-based Human Rights Watch. The decision comes at
the
worst possible time for activists seeking to pressure Beijing to relax
restrictions on free speech, release political prisoners and improve human
rights protections, Kine added.
In the past week, Chinese police clashed with monks demonstrating for
independence in Lhasa, capital of the remote mountainous region Tibet.
Human
rights activist Hu Jia, jailed after organizing a petition saying that
Chinese wanted "human rights, not the Olympics," was informed that his
trial
on charges of subverting state power could begin as early as this month. A
prominent human rights lawyer, Teng Biao, was abducted by the Beijing
Public
Security Bureau and then released two days later.
Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, while not commenting directly on the
State Department re****t, told re****ters Wednesday that foreign leaders,
including President Bush, have expressed sup****t for the Beijing Olympics
by
committing to attend the opening ceremony. He warned that activists who
wanted to tarnish China's image "will never get their way."
State Department officials in Wa****ngton on Tuesday sidestepped questions
about why China was dropped from the worst-offenders list, where it has
appeared in each of the previous two years. Jonathan Farrar, acting
assistant secretary of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor,
said
only that China's "human rights record remains poor" and that the re****t
gives a "very frank appraisal" on the status of human rights in the
country.
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