Open Letter to the
Secretary-General of United Nations
His Excellency Ban
Ki-moon
The United Nations
1 United Nations
Plaza
New York, New York
10017-3515
CC: Member States
of the UN Security Council, Member States of the UN Human Rights
Council, and European Parliament
June 4, 2011
Dear Mr.
Secretary-General:
Twenty-two years
ago today, Chinese Communist dictators, responding to student-led
pro-democracy protests, called out tens of thousands of troops to
“crush a counter-revolutionary riot." In a spasm of unimaginable
violence, heavily armed soldiers and tanks attacked peaceful
protesters. They shot at unarmed Chinese in and near Tiananmen
Square, resulting in the death and maiming of thousands of their own
citizens.
Young men and
women vanished beneath tank tracks or lost their limbs. Others
perished in a hail of gunfire from soldiers using assault rifles.
Mothers lost their only sons and daughters. Children were orphaned,
left to forever miss their parent’s love and warm embrace. Families
were shattered. This was the single most tragic day in the history
of modern China.
The criminals who
authorized this evil bloodletting and the henchmen who committed it
on their behalf – these killers were left unpunished. And some still
occupy positions of power inside China’s present day government
where they continue to abuse Chinese citizens.
In 1998, the
regime engaged in mass arrests and imprisonment of democracy
activists attempting to form their own political parties. In 1999,
it began a campaign of harassment, imprisonment and torture of tens
of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners, many of whom died from
this brutality. In
2008, the regime persecuted the signers of Charter 08 led by Liu
Xiaobo to call for a constitutional reform. After anonymous calls by
Chinese people for a Jasmine Revolution in February, more arrests,
detentions and disappearances of dissidents and human rights
defenders followed.
And it is not only
political activists who face constant harassment and detention. The
Chinese government has heaped additional pain and insult on the
parents of children who died in the 2008 earthquake by arresting
them for peacefully petitioning their government for the truth about
their children’s death. The same has happened to
parents of children who died from drinking tainted milk. For
decades, the Chinese government has been implementing its cruel
policies of forced abortions, large-scale illegal evictions, and
land grabbing and acquisition without just compensation.
Today, all of China’s citizens are in danger of being labeled
as “a national threat”, simply for asking their own government for
accountability.
We draw your
attention to the empty chair at the peace prize ceremony this past
December in Oslo for a June 4th protests leader, Liu Xiaobo, who is
still jailed in the Chinese prison, and for his entire extended
family, including his wife, being held hostage now by the Chinese
regime, to alert you to an ever worsening human right situation in
China.
This situation has
a clear starting point – June 4th, 1989 – and all subsequent gross
human rights violations are a continuation of the Tiananmen Square
Massacre. Over the past 22 years, the Chinese regime has ruthlessly
suppressed any individual, or ethnic, religious or civic group that
stands up to defend their own rights. Every corner of
China—from Lhasa to Urumqi to Beijing—is experiencing systematic
human rights violations.
We can tell you
that not a single day has gone by within the past 22 years without
the Chinese Communist regime “cracking down” on peaceful activists
and citizens defending their rights. These crackdowns serve to
prove that the Chinese regime feels itself to be above international
human rights norms and the expressed laws made by the regime itself
in its own constitution.
The regime’s
willingness to abrogate both domestic and international rules is a
threat to people well beyond China’s borders.
Just recently, Colonel Muammar
Gaddafi justified his slaughtering of Libyan citizens by citing the
Tiananmen Square Massacre in China. Gaddafi could only dare to make
this type of disgraceful justification for murder because the
international community had failed then, and fails now, to punish
China’s Communist dictators’ past and current criminal behavior.
With respect to
Libya, we wholeheartedly applaud United Nations’ Security Council
Resolution Number 1970 and Resolution Number 1973 adopted this year.
Yet we also believe the UN should be doing far more to address the
protection of China’s civilian population from continuing violations
of Chinese citizens’ human rights.
We believe that
the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the
International Covenants on Human Rights and other relevant
international human rights instruments require you, the
Secretary-General, to uphold the values of the UN, even at the risk
of challenging Member States.
We strongly urge
you to bring to the attention of the UN Security Council the past
and current atrocities committed by China’s Communist dictators,
which have imposed a serious and growing threat to international
peace and security. It is imperative that the Security Council
openly and publicly address China’s inhumane treatment of its own
people by passing a resolution requiring that all Member States:
demand an immediate end to the gross and
systematic violation of human rights in China;
take necessary measures to prevent the entry
into or transit through their territories of individuals who are
responsible for the Tiananmen Square Massacre, or for other gross
and systematic violations of human rights in China;
freeze all funds, other financial assets and
economic resources which are on their territories, which are owned
or controlled, directly or indirectly, by the individuals
responsible for the Tiananmen Square Massacre or for other gross and
systematic violations of human rights in China;
refer the Tiananmen Square Massacre, and the
recent crimes against the Chinese citizens, to the Prosecutor of the
International Criminal Court; the Council shall provide information
regarding these crimes against humanity to the Prosecutor to
initiate investigations proprio motu.
Should China use
its UN prerogatives to prevent the UN Security Council from adopting
a well-defined resolution, we strongly urge UN Members to call an
emergency special session of the General Assembly to adopt a
resolution (including the above-mentioned provisions) to hold China
accountable for its gross human rights violations and for its
failure to abide by its international treaty obligations.
Additionally, the
General Assembly resolution must call on the Chinese government to
fully respect its human rights obligations and allow credible and
independent investigations of all allegations of human rights
violations, including the Tiananmen Square Massacre. It must also
request the Secretary-General to submit an interim report assessing
the situation of China’s human rights abuses to the Human Rights
Council at its next session and to encourage the UN Human Rights
Council to establish a special monitoring and reporting mechanism on
China’s inhumane treatment of its people.
Failure to act now
against the Chinese regime will not only encourage that dictatorship
to continue its crimes against the Chinese people, but also bolster
the remaining handful of dictators in the world who shield
themselves behind the “Chinese model” to justify continual
repression and slaughter of their own people. Inaction on the regime
only makes a laughingstock out of the UN human rights proclamations,
and presents a dire threat to international peace and security.
Yours sincerely,
Signed by
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