Nov 9, 2009, 20:30 GMT
New York - US President Barack Obama should defend human rights when he visits China, which is ruled by a repressive communist regime, Human Rights Watch said Monday.
The New York-based human rights group said Obama has shown strong support for human rights when he visited countries that do not have the best human rights records like Turkey or Egypt. Obama will make his first visit to China next week as president.
'The test now is whether he will do so in a country where the government remains profoundly hostile to these concepts,' said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, in an open letter.
The group called on Obama to raise key issues like free access to the internet, a part of freedom of expression, and imprisonment of critics of the Beijing government. Other issues included freedom of religions in Tibet and human rights issues in Muslim-dominated Xinjiang province.
'The Chinese government is now betting that President Obama won't raise human rights, while Chinese civil society activists, lawyers, and peaceful critics - the kind of people with whom the president typically aligns himself - are fervently hoping he will,' Human Rights Watch said.
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