List do Ministra Spraw Zagranicznych Hiszpanii w sprawie embarga na handel bronią z ChRL
Wspólnie z innymi organizacjami działającymi na rzecz Tybetu w Europie wystosowaliśmy list do Ministra Spraw Zagranicznych Hiszpanii w związku z pojawiającymi się w mediach spekulacjami na temat możliwości zniesienia embarga na handel bronią z Chinami, nałożonego przez Europę po masakrze studentów na Tiannanmen w 1989 r.
Dear Foreign Minister,
We are deeply concerned to read that you and your government are reconsidering the EU's China arms embargo (AFP, 28 January 2010). We understand that in 2007, the EU's External Relations Commissioner, Mrs Benita Ferrero-Waldner explicitly linked the lifting of the arms embargo to the following three conditions:
* Ratify the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
* Free those jailed for involvement in Tiananmen Square
* Abolish the "re-education through labour" system of imprisonment without trial.
We wish to remind you that, not only has China not met these conditions, in the last two years there has been a profound deterioration in China's abuses of basic rights, particularly freedom of expression. Human Rights Watch described 2009 as a year of "political hardening" during which the Chinese government, "emboldened by increasingly weak international criticism of its rights record, pursued politically-motivated attacks against dissidents, human rights defenders, and civil society advocates".
March 2008 saw the outbreak of more than one hundred incidents of protest against Chinese rule, right across the Tibetan plateau. The overwhelming majority of these protests were peaceful, yet China responded with an iron fist, killing more than 100 Tibetans, detaining thousands more and imposing harsh security in the region. Just in the last few weeks, China has sentenced a number of Tibetans, including film-maker Dhondup Wangchen and singer Tashi Dhondup to prison terms, when they were simply exercising their right to free expression.
In June 2009 China responded to the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square by forcing dissidents to leave Beijing or stay in their homes, surrounding the Square with security personnel and roundly rejecting international appeals that China review the events of June 1989 as "groundless accusations".
Clearly China is demonstrating little or no commitment to meeting the conditions set out above, therefore the reasons for the EU's decision to impose the arms embargo remain entirely valid, and any discussion about lifting it is highly inappropriate. Given the seriousness of the human rights situation in China and Tibet, we urge you to desist from your efforts to get the embargo lifted and we call on you to state publicly that the embargo should remain in place.
