Senator Schacht: First of all, the delegation has already expressed its disappointment that we were not able to visit Tibet, that we were not able to get access to jails that we had requested or to see particular individual political prisoners. We made similar requests last year and they were denied. This time we were able to visit a laojiao re-
We were education labour facility outside Shanghai. originally going to visit one outside Urumqi but due to delays in airplane schedules in the far west of China due to snow storms, that fell through climatic difficulties and no other reason, but we were able to see one in Shanghai.
The range of all the other appointments that we basically sought at an official level were met. The Chinese showed this time a greater flexibility at short notice in adjusting and meeting our requests, even if there were times when it was inconvenient to them and their officials, I think they did make genuine efforts to meet those requests for discussions.
As last time, we had our Chinese escorts and in particular in Xinjiang Province we had a team of minders to ensure that everything went in accordance to their plans, but despite the presence of minders, we were able to in that province to receive a lot of informal information that was quite useful to the delegation. My impression, compared with last year, was that certainly things are less tense in China, amongst officials and informally people were more willing to discuss openly without showing they were worried about what they may say. Certainly I detected more people willing to accept that human rights is an international issue and the Chinese form, though...is purely domestic issues. They may say that to start off with and once it was said we then got onto the discussion about human rights in China and Australia and also in the world and they more and more were accepting that these are in the international
area.
One thing we noticed that since our visit last year they've made their own efforts to produce documents dealing with human rights and just three samples would be given, which are freely available not only in China but also in the West: 'Human rights in China', 'Criminal reform in China', 'Tibet, its ownership and human rights situation'. Obviously there are many things in these documents that we would disagree with and don't deal with issues as we would like to, but this is the first time the Chinese Government and authorities have attempted to prepare material in response to criticism from the west, about how human rights are being handled. But I think that is a very good beginning because it means you then have a position to say, well there is a dialogue because you yourself are discussing human rights and, as we pointed out to them in their own document, in the last page of 'Human Rights in China', they
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.