Yorkshire and Humber Liberal Democrat MEP Edward McMillan-Scott has co-written a Guardian article with Chinese human rights activist Chen Guancheng arguing that just because China is becoming a superpower, it must still be challenged on its appalling human rights record:
China, the world’s rising superpower, continues to systematically engage in the political repression and torture of its citizens, with an estimated 7 to 8 million Chinese currently being held in prison or labour camps. From Cameroon to Cuba, Belarus to Bahrain, governments go on torturing and imprisoning those who dare to question their authority. For too many people around the world, the basic freedoms that are taken for granted in the west continue to be nothing but a distant dream.
So a new initiative has been launched to encourage European and US parliamentarians to highlight individual cases of human rights abuse in China and elsewhere around the world:
On Wednesday, at the European parliament, we launched a transatlantic pact between the EU and US to highlight human rights abuses around the world. The Defending Freedoms Project, in association with Amnesty International and ChinaAid, calls on members of the European parliament and US congressmen and women to adopt and advocate on behalf of prisoners of conscience from around the world. Examples include Gao Zhisheng, the prominent Chinese human rights activist who has been repeatedly imprisoned and severely tortured for the last seven years. Or Nabeel Rajab, the Bahraini pro-democracy campaigner who has been beaten, jailed and denied medical treatment. By generating attention and support to these individual cases, it is hoped that combined pressure from the US and EU will help to secure their release.
Why the joined up approach?
Together, the EU and US account for around half of global GDP and almost two-thirds of global military spending. A co-ordinated, transatlantic approach to human rights would mean the world’s rising authoritarian powers could no longer act with impunity. Much has been made of the proposed EU-US trade agreement, and how this could counter China’s growing power by allowing the EU and US to jointly set global trading rules. By using their combined economic and political clout, the EU and US could equally be promoting global standards on fundamental human rights.
You can read the whole article here.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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7 Comments
Read this with my jaw hanging open – so the EU and the US are launching a transatlantic pact , The Defending Freedoms Project, a kinda horn-tootling, bunting-waving exercise aimed at raising awareness about human rights issues, wagging a stern finger at states that torture and repress those rights (I know, gotta keep from gut-laughing at this point).
And this is all while the incoming EU-US trade pact discussions are going on under conditions of complete secrecy – a trade pact that see the effective transfer of sovreign state rights to international corporations, along with the harmonisation of financial status. Which includes the provision of health, and yep, there it is, thats why the NHS has been autopsied open and eviscerated, all in preparation for another ‘free trade’ treaty.
How about supporting human rights in the UK? Yunno, no torture, open justice, that kind of thing?
Human rights ? what are they ? From Islam’s standpoint, there is no such thing as Human rights – it is by its very nature anti- islamic. Communism,and Chinese communism in particular, with a total subservience to the state required of its citizens, is in complete denial of such human rights, and now our own Supreme Court has decided that clergy ( or Methodist ministers to be specific) are not the servants or employees of their church, but are contracted to God, thereby denying these people any employment rights. That taken to its logical extent could be seen to mean that any abusing priest could claim in self defence that their wickedness was done in God’s name, and as such is above the law .We must defend Humanity and all its aspirations for good, even with our current administration which seems not to accept the idea of anyone having any overall human right to anything.
A wonderful idea that is completely undermined by members of our own Government constantly looking for ways to get out of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Of course, as the EU struggles from within, your coalition does little to help. I was at a meeting in London recently and had a chance to talk with some high ranking EU officials. In the UK we are known for this type of behavior, that is why I joined another Party this week, not UKIP, but I intend to push for human rights wherever they are needed to be given a push. They are most certainly extreme in some of the mentioned areas.
As our own country is becoming unstable, as with that in other countries, I was in one EU very recently and I had serious thoughts as I returned to the UK, with the upsurge of UKIP.
Nick Clegg, would have had the perfect importunity to hep with some of the EU issues, but Nick you got it wrong, sadly.
There were very near riots where I was, extreme hardship, and a very unhappy population. I feel we are in this together. I liked the ideas of Winston Churchill, peace would be given a chance.
It should have opportunity.
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