The US announced it will resume dialogue with China on human rights next month after a two-year hiatus, promising to raise concerns about Internet and religious freedoms.
The May 13 to May 14 talks would be the first under US President Barack Obama, who has faced harsh criticism from some activists who see him as downplaying human rights in his quest for broader ties with China.
The two nations had initially planned to hold talks earlier this year but no date was set amid China’s anger over US arms sales to Taiwan and President Barack Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama.
State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said on Thursday he expected the two countries to have a “candid discussion” on issues including religious freedom, Internet freedom and the rule of law.
He said the two sides would likely discuss “the broader topic of Internet freedom and the availability of information to Chinese citizens.”
“We disagree with China as to what that represents,” he said.
China rigorously filters the Internet to block access to sensitive topics such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on democracy protesters and the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement.
Google said in January that it would stop cooperating with China’s censorship of the Internet after reporting cyber attacks against the accounts of the company and activists.
Crowley said the US would also raise recent cases in which Chinese lawyers defending unpopular causes have reported being disbarred or harassed by the authorities.
“The rule of law means just that, and the Chinese government should not be intimidating the legal profession or denying the right of counsel to any of its citizens,” Crowley said.
On Thursday, two Chinese human rights lawyers — Tang Jitian and Liu Wei — went to court battling the revocation of their licenses after they represented a practitioner of Falun Gong.
China and the US started the human rights dialogue in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square clampdown, in which authorities killed hundreds if not thousands of protesters.
China suspended the dialogue in 2002 in anger over US criticism at the UN of its rights record. It only agreed to one other round of talks, which were held in Beijing in May 2008.
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