Human Rights Retained In Canada's China Plan
(by Paul Knox | The Globe & Mail | December 18, 2002)
The federal government performed emergency resuscitation on human rights yesterday, promising to retain them as a key element of Canada's foreign-aid strategy for China.
A bureaucratic decision to expunge the term from a draft aid strategy will be reversed and Canada's commitment to human rights will be explicit in the final document, a spokeswoman for International Co-operation Minister Susan Whelan said. The draft blueprint, revealed in yesterday's Globe and Mail, was slammed by watchdog groups who said it would send the wrong signal to China at a time when abuses such as arbitrary detention, torture and capital punishment are increasing.
But the spokeswoman, Valerie Poulin, said the proposed "development programming framework" would have to be changed or Whelan would not sign it.
"Human rights will be explicitly incorporated as the document gets finalized," Poulin said. Asked whether that meant the words "human rights" would be restored, she replied, "Yes." The Canadian International Development Agency plans to update its eight-year-old strategy for the China aid program. China received $67.45-million in Canadian aid in 2000-01.
The proposal suggests concentrating new projects in western China in line with Chinese wishes. China has cracked down on minority-rights movements among the Muslim Uighur population there and in Tibet, and activists say extra care should be taken to ensure Canada's aid program is not complicit in abuses. On Monday, a CIDA official defended the draft but said there was a "possibility" that the term "human rights" would be restored to one of the headings in the aid strategy.
Poulin said it was more than a possibility. "The promotion of human rights is obviously a central role of Canada's foreign policy, and we're not dropping that," she said.
Canadian Alliance foreign-affairs critic Stockwell Day said the contrast in the two positions "reflects a broader state of disarray in the Liberal government at this time... When you have omissions as glaring as human rights, it's just not acceptable."
Despite Poulin's pledge, University of Ottawa law professor Errol Mendes said he has been told informally by CIDA officials that the planned third phase of a human-rights dialogue between Canadian and Chinese academics will probably not receive funding.
The project, which has received about $550,000 since 1993, has produced two books on human-rights topics. The $300,000 third stage was to provide human-rights databases to China's top law school at Beijing University so professors there could train counterparts at other schools. Chinese academics are showing unprecedented willingness to speak out on human rights and criticize the Communist Party, Prof Mendes said. "This is precisely the time to really push the envelope as much as possible." China has waged a long-running diplomatic campaign to counter criticism of its human-rights record, thwarting attempts at the United Nations Human Rights Commission to pass motions of censure. It has also sought to portray Uighur nationalists as sympathetic to global terrorism, leading the United States to ease human-rights pressure since Sept 11, 2001.
"They feel the international heat is off them," said Earl Drake, a former Canadian ambassador to China and adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University.
"...They are saying, quietly, 'We're glad the US has stopped preaching to us and they realize they have some of the same problems we have.' They like this tone better." A US official said yesterday that China has agreed to issue unconditional invitations to UN officials to investigate issues of torture, religious freedom and arbitrary detention.
Assistant secretary of state Lorne Craner told Associated Press the move indicated China was serious about improving its rights record.
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