Wednesday, May 24, 2006

(Clearwisdom.net)

The European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, will introduce a program next week aimed at encouraging democracy in countries including China through cooperation with local groups, European Parliament Vice President Edward McMillan-Scott said Wednesday.

Calling China's one-party leadership a "brutal, arbitrary and paranoid system," McMillan-Scott told a press conference in Hong Kong after visiting Beijing for three days over the weekend that while maintaining strong business ties with China, the EU would also keep pressing on human rights and religious freedom issues.

"The EU is now coming around with the view that actually you cannot export democracy, but you can encourage it, you can assist the process," he said.
"The European Commission is going to present a new democracy and human rights instrument (at the European Parliament)."

McMillan-Scott said he met with diplomats and British Embassy officials during his Beijing visit, as well as nongovernmental organizations and individuals including Falun Gong followers constantly persecuted by the government, and learned that rights and freedoms have never improved in China despite its economic advancement.

The Falun Gong spiritual movement was banned in China in 1999 after adherents surrounded the Chinese leadership's heavily guarded compound in Beijing. [Editor's note: During the "April 25" appeal in 1999, practitioners actually were in an orderly line waiting to speak on behalf of Falun Gong at the State Council Appeals Office, which was adjacent to the Zhongnanhai government complex.]

Regarding reports that China is systematically killing Falun Gong practitioners to harvest their organs for nationwide transplant surgeries, McMillan-Scott said that while he could not personally confirm the reports, he believes the practitioners face persecution and abusive treatment.

McMillan-Scott said the program, running on a budget of 142 million euros ($160 million), will find new ways to help some societies in countries where democracy does not exist, by working with local community groups.

"One of the elements of my visit to China, Hong Kong and Taiwan is to try to establish whether there are ways that have not yet been tried of finding people within China, in particular, who have the capacity to act.

"We have an opportunity in the next couple of years to keep pushing. My presence here, I hope, will begin to give my thoughts and insights into what really goes on and sensitively to work out ways in which people in China can begin to have some hope that things will change," he said.

But McMillan-Scott noted that the EU is not in favor of recommending a sanction or blacklist against China, saying it is better to empower the people.

McMillan-Scott is leaving Hong Kong on Thursday for Taiwan and will return here on Saturday for a democracy forum.