HomePage Expressing the sense of the Senate regarding the human rights situation in the People's Republic of China. (Introduced in the Senate)
SRES 27 IS
Mr. WELLSTONE submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations
Whereas the annual meeting of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland, provides a forum for discussing human rights and expressing international support for improved human rights performance;
Whereas, according to the United States Department of State and international human rights organizations, the Government of the People's Republic of China continues to commit widespread and well-documented human rights abuses, in violation of internationally accepted norms, stemming from the authorities' intolerance of dissent, fear of unrest, and the absence or inadequacy of laws protecting basic freedoms;
Whereas China is bound by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and recently signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but has yet to take the necessary steps to make the covenant legally binding;
Whereas the administration decided not to sponsor a resolution criticizing China at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in 1998 in consideration of Chinese commitments to sign the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and based on a belief that progress on human rights in China could be achieved through other means;
Whereas the Chinese authorities have recently escalated efforts to extinguish expressions of protest or criticism, and detained scores of citizens associated with attempts to organize a legal democratic opposition, as well as religious leaders, writers, and others who petitioned the authorities to release those arbitrarily arrested; and
Whereas these recent crackdowns underscore that the Chinese Government has not retreated from its longstanding pattern of human rights abuses, despite expectations from two summit meetings between President Clinton and President Jiang, in which assurances of improvements in China's human rights record were made: Now, therefore, be it