"
"So, we really are calling on China to make sure that it implements its own domestic rules, laws, legislation as well as ensures the rights are protected in the international obligation it's undertaking."
Human rights group Amnesty International has just issued its annual report, "The State of the World's Human Rights." The in-depth report points out that the human rights situation in China has actually gotten worse over the past year.In just a few days, China will mark the 20-year anniversary of the June 4th massacre at Tiananmen Square. This report from Amnesty International could hardly come at a more meaningful time.
China's communist authorities claimed that last year's Olympic Games would mark a turning point for the country's human rights situation. But the group says that this simply didn't happen—in fact, quite the opposite.
Roseann Rife is deputy director of Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific regional office, based in Hong Kong.
[Roseann Rife, Amnesty Int'l Asia-Pacific]:
"Actually, in China during 2008, we saw backtrack in human rights at least in a certain number of areas, including crackdowns on human rights defenders, issues on freedom of expression and certainly censorship of the media."
On top of the violent suppression of ethnic and spiritual groups, like Tibetans and the Falun Gong adherents, human or civil rights lawyers who dare to take on clients from these groups are becoming subject to harassment, arrest and intimidation. And it's happening more and more frequently.
Amnesty International also investigated one of the most widely criticized aspects of the Chinese legal system: that torture is used to extract confessions. They say torture is common, and it fuels false convictions and harsh sentencing in the state-controlled courts.
[Roseann Rife, Amnesty Int'l Asia-Pacific]:
"Torture is still a problem within China despite the fact that it's illegal under domestic law. Laws do not definitively prohibit confessions extracted through torture from ending up in courts of law."
And so Amnesty International continues its call for China's communist authorities to stop abusing the human rights of the country's citizens.
[Roseann Rife, Amnesty Int'l Asia-Pacific]:
"So, we really are calling on China to make sure that it implements its own domestic rules, laws, legislation as well as ensures the rights are protected in the international obligation it's undertaking."
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