British Foreign Secretary David Miliband backed China in its skirmish with groups seeking to link the Beijing Olympics to progress on human rights, saying yesterday that "engagement, not isolation" is the correct approach.
Miliband, who is on an official visit to China, said "no opportunity has been wasted" to raise rights concerns with Chinese officials, but he mentioned no specific cases and said such discussions should not be explicitly tied to the Games.
"We believe that the Olympics are an opportunity to celebrate the progress that has been achieved in China," Miliband said after a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi (
"From our point of view, engagement, not isolation, is the right way forward," he said.
Appearing alongside Miliband, Yang sarcastically dismissed questions about links between rights issues and the Olympics, denying that a laid-off factory worker who went on trial last week on subversion charges had been arrested for protesting against the Olympic Games.
The worker, Yang Chunlin (楊春林), had sought to rally support for landless farmers by posting a letter on the Internet with the title: "We want human rights, not the Olympics."
"People in China enjoy extensive freedom of speech," Yang said. "No one will get arrested because he has said human rights were more important than the Olympic Games."
Yang said Chinese citizens were welcome to lecture police officers on the need to protect human rights.
"If they've been talking for too long and get tired, the officer will offer him a cup of tea," Yang said.
Yang also defended China's involvement on the Darfur issue, pointing to Beijing's dispatch of peacekeepers and development assistance to Sudan. But he said outsiders had limited influence with the government there.
TIANANMEN MOTHERS
Elsewhere, mothers of people killed during the Tiananmen Square Massacre have joined the list of groups using the Olympics to draw attention to their cause.
In an open letter released yesterday, the Tiananmen Mothers warned the Games would be dogged by lingering guilt and mistrust unless China confronts the truth about the crackdown.
"Is it really possible that, as the host of the 2008 Olympic Games, the government can be at ease allowing athletes from all over the world to tread on this piece of bloodstained soil and participate in the Olympics?" the letter said.
DISSIDENT DETAINED
Meanwhile, police detained an ethnic Mongolian dissident at Beijing airport as he arrived from Mongolia, a country of which he is now a citizen, the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center said.
Jiranbayariin Soyolt, originally from Inner Mongolia, was placed in handcuffs when he landed on Jan. 7 from Ulan Bator for a business trip, the center said.
His detention has only just come to light because the government had told his family not to talk to the press, the center said.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
RSS