Expert excluded from EU-China human rights forum
AP, 8 September 2011
BEIJING (AP) — The European Union says it deeply regrets China’s exclusion of a human rights expert from a forum held in Beijing this week.
The EU office in Beijing said in a statement Thursday that it communicated its disappointment to the Chinese side, but it did not name the individual involved.
New York-based Human Rights in China said one of its experts who had been invited to represent the International Federation of Human Rights had been refused a visa to attend at the last minute.
It said it was told the Chinese Foreign Ministry regarded HRIC as an “anti-China” group whose participation in the seminar was “totally unacceptable.”
China has sought to deflect criticisms of its human rights record by holding such closed-door forums.