The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 7 of 17)

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If one were to read this litany of America's supposed human rights abuses without knowing its author, one could fairly speculate that the mostly fictional trashing came from either Al Jazeera (mouthpiece of al-Qaeda) or Congressional Democrats.

p>No doubt, Dems would condemn my analogy as "attacking their patriotism," but the content and tone of China's rant bears more than a passing resemblance to DNC talking points. br> -- GnuCarSmell br> Jacksonville, Texas /p>

State-supported joke or drug-induced fantasy?

What matters is that China sits as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council and assumes its presidency on April 1 for the month of April.

And what should also matter is how human-rights watchdog Amnesty International characterized China in AI's most recent report: "Each year thousands of Chinese citizens are put to death under a legal system plagued with corruption and secrecy. While the rest of the world moves toward abolition, Chinese authorities only continue to expand the application of the death penalty. According to reports, an average of 15,000 people per year were executed, judicially or extrajudicially, by the government between 1997 and 2001."

AI also reported in late February that after 16 years of imprisonment for "counter-revolutionary sabotage and incitement," during which he was tortured, beaten and held at length in solitary confinement, Yu Dongyue was freed, though mentally impaired from his treatment. His crime? In 1989, he threw paint at the Tiananmen Square portrait of Mao Zedong.

Too, AI reports that Chinese can be sentenced to death for publishing information on the Internet that the government considers a state secret. AI said Feb. 1, "Scores of people have been imprisoned in China for using the Internet and, of those arrested, some have died as a result of torture by the police. Those detained to date range from political activists and writers to Falun Gong practitioners and members of other religious groups banned by the authorities."

p>Human rights? Do the Chinese even know how to say it in any of their languages, or write it in with any character in those languages? br> -- C. Kenna Amos Jr.

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