Examiner, 13 October 2012

As the tragic series of self-immolations continues to bring fear into the hearts and minds of Buddhists and their friends across the world, the Dalai Lama and Dr Lobsang Sangay, the Prime Minister of the Tibetan government in exile, have all along been blaming this on repressive Chinese policies for this tragic state of affairs. The U.S. Congress has now joined in blaming this horrible situation on repressive Chinese policies even as Beijing continues to insist this is not true.

On October 12, 2012 Phayul.com has reported, “Tibet self-immolations concurrent with China’s repression and failed dialogues, says US report.” The United States Congress has issued a new report which says that the increasing use of repressive measures by the Chinese government and the failure of the stalled Sino-Tibet dialogue process have been running concurrent with the demands of the increasing number of Tibetan self-immolations. This bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China in its 2012 Annual Report on developments in human rights and rule of law in China, which was released this week, said that during the reporting year, the increasing incidence of Tibetans who have resorted to self-immolation has “accelerated sharply” with the Chinese government refusing to accept its policy failure in Tibet.

The report stated, “The Party and government have not indicated any willingness to consider Tibetan grievances in a constructive manner and to hold themselves accountable for Tibetan rejection of Chinese policies, and handled the crisis as a threat to state security and social stability instead of as a policy failure.” Furthermore, the report has alleged that the status of religious freedom in Tibet has “declined steeply” this past year while the Chinese government has been initiating “unprecedented measures” to strengthen Party control. This report has recommended that the U.S. Congress and President urge China to immediately ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, strengthen the rule of law, fair labor practices, and accountability from their leaders.

However, a serious problem in dealing with such human rights issues are credible counter attacks from China that the United States is often hypocritical in dealing with such human rights issues, even within the context of what is referred to as adhering to the ‘rule of law’, in particular in dealing with issues such as police and psychiatric brutality, along with tragically unfair and life threatening job discrimination against targets of American human rights abuses. Human rights activist groups have been agreeing this is true. And so China is not likely to jump to respond to such criticisms from the United States, regardless of how valid they may in some instances be, unless the United States Congress responds more appropriately to accusations of human rights abuses from many of its own citizens and acts more aggressively to clean up its own house.

http://www.examiner.com/article/u-s-congress-blasts-china-s-repressive-policies