China's Good Graces

"I'm the daughter of a Chinese political prisoner. I wish to use my family's experience to draw this council's attention to the situation of human rights in China."
"He [Dr. Wang Bingzhang] was tried, falsely convicted, and sentenced to life in prison. It's now been 12 years, and my father is still behind bars, in solitary confinement."
Ti-Anna Wang, Canadian citizen

Ti-Anna Wang is the daughter of Chinese political prisoner Wang Bingzhang. She has launched a campaign for her father's release at www.wangbingzhang.org

"He is the father of the overseas China democracy movement. He is, in a sense, the poster child for the China democracy movement."
Liberal Member of Parliament of Canada, Irwin Cotler, human rights advocate

"My father is serving a life sentence for pro-democracy activism. He'd see little optimism in China's admission to the UNHRC", Ms. Wang stated back in December. But that did not stop China from taking its seat on the honourable commission. In fact, China was joined by other countries whose human rights record can be described as less than respecting of human rights.

On November 12, 2013 the United Nations General Assembly elected fourteen countries to positions on the UN's Human Rights Council, their appointment to be served for a period of three years from January 1, 2014. Those fourteen included Algeria, China, Cuba, France, Maldives, Mexico, Morocco, Namibia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Vietnam, Russia, and the United Kingdom.

The election took place by secret ballot at the New York location of the United Nations headquarters.
None of these nations known as human-rights abusers was expected, needless to say, to conform to the values of human rights personally; their position with the council is to bring attention to UN member-nations whose human rights records are deplorable, themselves excluded for obvious reasons. Very few member nations are called on the carpet and sanctioned, with the exception of Israel.

But this past week it was China's turn when the UNHRC in Geneva, holding hearings about human rights abuses in China was treated to a series of petitioners and human rights campaigners testifying with relation to human rights abuses that take place there. Ti-Anna Wang was one of them, approaching the commission to state her plea for the release of her father, a democracy leader who was sentenced to life imprisonment in China and who has been confined in solitary imprisonment for fully half her lifetime.

She is a Montreal-born McGill University graduate and has tirelessly worked to raise public awareness of China's human rights records, and most specifically as it pertains to her father, Dr. Wang Bingzhang whose punishment for attempting to foster democracy in China not from within, but from outside the communist nation, was a life sentence imposed upon him in 2002.

Ms. Wang explained to the commission that her father had been abducted while he was travelling in Vietnam. And from Vietnam he was taken to China to face a pre-determined sentence fitting a pre-determined crime against China. Ms. Wang, 24, began her address to the council by expressing "sincere gratitude" to the government of China for having recently transferred her father to another prison. Through that transfer his prison treatment and conditions had much improved.

The Chinese delegate to the council did his best to interrupt her statement, objecting to her presence, concerned that she was permitted to address a specific case like her father's, asserting she should be allowed only to speak generally about human rights. His position had the support of representatives of Cuba, Pakistan, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia.

The United States and Britain defended Ms. Wang's speaking right. And they had the support of France, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Canada's representative, Ms. Wang later explained, happened to be absent from the chamber when the incident occurred, and did not enter the discussion. Which is a glaring oversight and a pity.

The council chair in his wisdom ruled that Ms. Wang should continue speaking, and this is precisely what she did. It is now to be hoped that her father will not experience another transfer -- back to the prison where his treatment was so dreadfully deleterious to his health and well-being.

PHOTO: Human Rights Council in session in Geneva. UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferré