Sun Media: The cost of moral clout PM does a balancing act to avoid ruffling Chinese feathers

February 11, 2001 VANCOUVER -- Prime Minister Jean Chretien has shrugged off pan-Canadian calls for a harsh vocal stance against China's human-rights violations on the Team Canada mission, preferring to soft-pedal the issue. Senior government officials say Chretien will broach the issue without ruffling Chinese feathers, a tactic that has worked just fine in the past, even if it hasn't stopped the massive arrests, torture and imprisonment of Chinese citizens. Activists have urged Canada's top business leaders, premiers and the prime minister to make a concerted effort to help improve the human-rights situation in China during the mission. Officials promised that Chretien would answer those concerns this week by raising the issue during two speeches on Canadian values, and possibly at luncheons -- but he won't be pushy. Team Canada landed in Beijing yesterday for the 10-day trade mission, which will take business and provincial leaders to Shanghai and Hong Kong. They will also join Chretien in a tour of a hydroponic-lettuce greenhouse and the Terracotta Warriors Museum in between signing business agreements. Chretien's top priority during this 10-day mission is to secure billions in new trade deals for Canadian businesses. And with 600 business leaders accompanying Chretien, and every provincial premier but Alberta's Ralph Klein in tow, he should be able to boast record contracts. Nowhere in the loaded schedule is there private time scheduled with Chinese leaders when he can discreetly broach the human rights issue. "The problem is it is their decision to implement the policies. We raise the problem and we engage in dialogue, but we're not running China," Chretien said this week. And he's shot down activists' demands that he threaten to link foreign aid and trade to human-rights records. Chretien made his position clear when he refused to meet with activists and MPs -- some Liberal -- pushing for a stronger Canadian stance against a year of increased repression in China, which saw massive imprisonment of Falun Gong practitioners. The past year of arrests has been compared to the crackdown after the 1989 bloody takedown of university students protesting communism in Tiananmen Square. Ken Georgetti, Canadian Labour Congress president, said he was disappointed by the PM's refusal to meet with human rights activists. "The question is, when will our prime minister recognize his responsibility to represent more than the narrow interests of the business elite?" he asked, condemning Chretien's unwillingness to strongly speak out against Chinese sweat shops. Liberal MP Irwin Cotler urged Chretien to use Canada's moral and political clout, and speak out while in China. "Trade and human rights are inextricably bound up together ... and a country that will respect human rights will also be a country that will respect the integrity of international commerce," he said. Cotler, a human-rights lawyer, is representing the Montreal wife of ShenLi Lin, a practitioner of Falun Gong who has spent the past 13 months in a Chinese labour camp. He was arrested and jailed while undergoing immigration procedures to join his wife in Canada. Falun Gong supporters around the globe have succeeded in bringing Chinese oppression to the forefront, taking their silent protests to international meetings such as those of the UN and G8. This week practitioners accused Chinese diplomats in Canada of threatening and assaulting members here. Officials at the Chinese embassy have denied the claim and called them slanderous. NDP MP Svend Robinson promised to have Parliament's foreign-affairs committee conduct a "full and comprehensive review." "The human-rights situation in China has deteriorated dramatically over recent years," Robinson said. "Jean Chretien, as prime minister, must speak out clearly and publicly on behalf of Canadians, voicing our deep concern about the deterioration of human rights." [...]