[Graham]

Originally Posted by danielf

Oddly enough, that is what the stance that many people in Asia take when it comes to human rights. Let's focus on developing the country first.

Whilst I agree that the free market will eventually cause the regime there to fall...

Human rights are a luxury that will come with the other luxuries wealth brings.

... would that it were so simple!

We have the wealth, so do the Americans, but the human rights are most certainly not a "luxury" that we can take for granted.
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Originally Posted by Ramrod

We know it's irony graham.......but you are rather taking things to extremes there.....

Am I?

Did you ever hear of Chairman Mao's "Hundred Flowers" campaign?

Not long after the "Cultural Revolution" he invited all the intellectuals, teachers and those who had protested against the revolution to put forward their ideas for how things could be better.

Many did.

They were then rounded up and sent to "re-education" camps or simply shot.

Still sure I'm taking things too far?
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Originally Posted by Chris W

I don't see a problem with coming down hard on criminals, and from what i have seen, the western media exagerates the mal treatment of people as well as the chinese media covers it up...

In China a "criminal" is anyone who the state doesn't like, be it Tibetan Monks who protest against the illegal occupation of their country and then get beaten up and jailed or practitioners of Falun Gong who are tortured and forced to denounced it as "an evil cult".

Violence is integral to China's campaign against Falun Gong and, as one government official commented, "practitioners who are not beaten generally do not abandon the group." The Washington Post and Amnesty International noted that in 2001 the central Chinese leadership--for the first time in its effort to purge China of Falun Gong--officially sanctioned the systematic use of violence against the group's practitioners. The Washington Post further reported that, according to government sources and Falun Gong practitioners, Chinese officials employ a variety of violent practices, such as beating detainees and shocking them with electric truncheons. Officials also torture detainees with "unbearable physical pressure." For instance, detainees are forced to squat on the floor for days at a time. In addition, Amnesty International has documented the use of electric shock batons to beat practitioners, and a device called the "Di Lao," in which a victim's wrists and feet are "shackled and linked together with crossed steel chains making it nearly impossible to walk or sit down."

Now I don't know where you get the idea of this being "exaggeration", because this is *officially sanctioned* government policy!

As to basic concepts of fair trials and justice, not to mention the presumption of innocence? Forget them. The Chinese leaders certainly do!