Confidential human rights dialogue criticised as too secretive
Updated
Australia's confidential human rights dialogue with China is being criticised for not being transparent and for lacking accountability. Australian and Chinese delegations are meeting for the latest round of talks in Canberra.
Presenter: Linda Mottram, Canberra correspondent
Speaker: Dr Simon Bradshaw, Australia Tibet Council; Dr Ann Kent, visiting fellow, Centre for International and Public Law, Australian National University
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(SOUND OF MINISTERS GREETING EACH OTHER)
MOTTRAM: Australia's foreign minister, Stephen Smith, greeting China's vice foreign minister Liu Jieyi, who's also head of delegation for Human Rights Dialogue. Also attending are several officials from Beijing, China's ambassador to Australia, and Australian foreign affairs department officials.
SMITH: As you know the human rights dialogue is very important to Australia, we regard it as a very important part of the bilateral relationship.
MOTTRAM: Mr Smith formally registering the Australian government's position on the dialogue.
The dialogue is usually held annually and began in 1997 when China sought to develop a series of such bilateral dialogues.
The talks are confidential and Australia sees it as the most effective forum it has with China on human rights issues.
Critics though take a different view and for some the thorny issue of Tibet is central.
Dr Simon Bradshaw from the Australia Tibet Council.
BRADSHAW: I think its ok as one thing to have in the toolbox. I think the problem is we've come to rely on this once as year confidential dialogue almost exclusively to address these issues.
Dr Bradshaw says a lack of accountability, a pivotal principle for elected governments in parliamentary democracies, is a problem with the dialogue.
BRADSHAW: That there are some concrete objectives in place, measurable objectives that are then reported back on in successive rounds of the dialogues, that there's some independent monitoring around this that there's a report back to parliament and that there are some objectives stated before each dialogue. Without those it really does just become an exercise, a fairly futile exercise as we've been seeing. The situation in Tibet has not improved during the course of this dialogue and certainly in the last year it's deteriorated.
MOTTRAM: And China makes it clear that though in its words it respects the principle of the universality of human rights, Tibet is a political issue and so not for outsiders' intervention.
Hence a reception for the Chinese delegation currently in Canberra will not include representatives of the Tibet lobby, though they had been included in the past. China objected this time. It was made clear that their delegation would not attend a reception if the Australia Tibet Council was present.
Dr Ann Kent is a specialist in China and international human rights at the Centre for International and Public Law at the Australian National University.
She says there's no reason for a dialogue that lacks benchmarking and transparency and says it's regrettable that this round between Australia and China is taking place as China's human rights record is being examined this week as part of the United Nations process for reviewing each member states' human rights records once every four years.
KENT: It would have been beneficial for Australia to have noted what happened in the UN forum before it met with people and it would be able to use what was said in the UN to further explore China's human rights situation.
MOTTRAM: Dr Kent says if Australia insists on having a dialogue, membership should be expanded beyond government officials and a report should be made public to ensure accountability to the Australian people. And she says Australia should suggest the dialogue will be cancelled if China doesn't agree to those terms.
Dr Kent acknowledges, as does Amnesty International for example, that China has made some human rights advances since the 1980s. But apart from issues of national minorities, China still conducts many executions, refusing to give numbers, it jails people for long periods without charge, torture and deaths in custody are well documented, and between 300-500,000 people are in 're-education through labour camps' according to Amnesty.
Dr Kent also cautions about the impact of the current economic crisis on the human rights situation.
KENT: More recently because of the economic downturn, beause of the civil unrest, there's been more of a crackdown and I think you're going to get more of a crackdown even than before because this year is a series of anniversaries.
MOTTRAM: Anniversaries such as 20 years since the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Australian and Chinese officials are expected to speak to the media in Canberra at the end of the dialogue meeting. The review of China's human rights record at the UN in Geneva meanwhile is expected to conclude midweek and observers see the outcome there as an important test of the periodic review process.
