German-Chinese Human Rights Dialogue in Berlin (December 4)

Given the escalating human rights violations in China, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) suggests that the Human Rights Dialogue with the People's Republic should be suspended. "In the relations to China, the question of human rights should be of more importance. It should no longer only be addressed merely in infrequent dialogue-meetings that the governments of both countries don’t even take seriously," said Ulrich Delius, the STP’s China-expert, in Göttingen on Tuesday. "While police forces beat up democracy supporters in Hong Kong, the comfortable dialogue-meeting in Berlin will surely have no consequences at all. What’s the point of holding a monologue for a deaf-mute counterpart that is not even interested in improving the human rights situation?"

The 12th German-Chinese Human Rights Dialogue will take place in Berlin on December 4. The dialogue-conference was established in 1999 as an attempt to outsource problematic human rights issues from the debates with the Chancellor and the Foreign Minister. "However, human rights issues should be neglected – they must become a key topic! It is not only the Chinese human rights activists who are dependent on legal certainty and on the observance of Chinese laws to get along in the People's Republic – German companies are too!"

For months, the German government had tried to schedule the dialogue-meeting which will now take place on Thursday. "Obviously, China is not interest in an exchange of views," said Delius. "But the fact that the meeting will now take place is not to be seen as a success. A successful dialogue must always be result-oriented. The Human Rights Dialogue has failed: the results are so poor that it seems pointless to continue and thus keep up the false impression that the Chinese authorities are willing to respect human rights."

Since President Xi Jinping took power in 2013, the human rights situation in China has deteriorated dramatically. The authorities are relying on more and more acts of repression – similar to the communist regime of Mao Zedong, who established a reign of terror. Human rights activist are detained, journalist and dissident are forced to publicly "confess" in proceedings distributed by the state media – a violation of the Chinese Criminal Procedure Law. Uyghur detainees are sentenced in public show trials with thousands of spectators. Further, anxious officials commit suicide for fear of being removed in defamation campaigns, while party-internal opponents are silenced with anti-corruption campaigns.

Ulrich Delius, head of STP's Asia department, is available for further questions: +49 551 49906 27 or asien@gfbv.de.

Header Photo: Protest at the german-chinese intergovernmental consultations in Octobre 2014 in Berlin. © Michaela Böttcher