"Do not bow to the Chinese pressure, Angela Merkel!”

The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) appealed on Thursday to Angela Merkel to give a clear rejection to the attempts of the Chinese President Hu Jintao to remove the EU arms embargo. "The credibility of Angela Merkel is at stake”, said the GfbV Asia expert Ulrich Delius. For the CDU chairperson had in a debate in the German Parliament on 14th April 2005 criticised severely the attempts of the Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder to force the lifting of the embargo against majority opposition in the EU. Angela Merkel will be welcoming the Chinese State President during his state visit to Germany on Friday morning at the Hotel Adlon in Berlin.

The negative approach of the CDU towards an ending of the embargo was confirmed by the foreign affairs spokesman of the Party, Armin Laschet (Chairman of the Federal Special Committee for International Cooperation and Human Rights) and Elmar Brok (Chairman of the Federal Special Committee for European Affairs) in a joint communiqué on 21st March 2005. The message of the CDU experts at the time was that in the light of the human rights violations a lifting of the embargo would be a wrong political signal. An ending of the sanctions would also be in terms of political security extremely unwise and would further encumber political relation with the USA.

"Since the criticism of leading CDU politicians towards Schröder’s attitude to the embargo the human rights situation in the People’s Republic has neither improved nor has there been any relaxation in matters of political security in the Far East”, said Delius. On the contrary, relations between the People’s Republic and Taiwan have continued to deteriorate. In the USA also politicians have become more concerned about the upgrading of Chinese armaments and growing military cooperation between China and Russia.

The embargo was imposed in 1989 following the massacre of students by Chinese soldiers on the Square of Heavenly Peace in Peking.