Canadian Press: Pressure mounts for PM to push human rights

February 4, 2001 OTTAWA (CP) -- As Prime Minister Jean Chretien prepares to leave on the Team Canada trade mission to China this week, pressure is mounting to focus on promoting human rights as much as improving trade links. Some of that pressure is coming from within his own party. China's human rights record is worsening and that can't be ignored, says Liberal MP Irwin Cotler, a Montreal human rights lawyer. "Trade and human rights have to be seen as being inextricably bound up, one with the other and not being contradictory but complementary," Cotler said. "Trade can assist in opening up relations between societies . . . but if it's only trade, then we end up having trade used as a cover for repression, not as a form of constructive engagement." Cotler is one of many government and opposition MPs who have urged the prime minister to emphasize human rights. The prime minister's office has said Chretien raises such concerns whenever he meets with Chinese leaders. Cotler said he believes that, adding that Ottawa reiterated its desire to promote human rights in last week's Throne Speech. Penned by Chretien advisors, the speech delivered by Gov. Gen. Adrienne Clarkson promised increased international development aid to advance efforts to "strengthen democracy, justice and social stability worldwide." Chretien and most provincial premiers will join more than 300 business and education leaders in promoting trade links with China during a 10-day trip to Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong starting Friday. It's the second Team Canada trade mission to China and has again triggered controversy around doing business with a undemocratic, repressive regime. Cotler drew media attention late last year when he fought hard to win the release of a Chinese-Canadian professor sentenced to three years in a Chinese labour camp for practising falun gong -- a melange of Buddhism, Taoism and Chinese meditation. While Beijing's crackdown on the Falun Gong [group] -- officially outlawed in 1999 -- has recently drawn Western media attention, hundreds of Christian churches, Taoist and Buddhist temples have also been raided and shut down, said Cotler. "We're talking about a persistent repression of human rights . . . a pervasive assault on religious rights." A systematic crackdown on intellectuals and political dissidents is also on the rise as the state seems bent on trying to weed out what it perceives as threats to its security, Cotler charged. Authorities have also been harrassing and arresting Internet users and web operators who link to independent and foreign news sites, he added. The crackdown seems to stem from China's political leadership feeling increasingly under threat as globalization threatens to erode their control, Cotler commented. The British Parliament's foreign affairs committee has said Beijing -- front-runner to host the 2008 Olympic Games -- should be denied the honour because of its worsening human rights record.