Albright Slams Human Rights Over Bu

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Albright slams human rights records of China, Myanmar

 .c Kyodo News Service    

TOKYO, April 28 (Kyodo) - U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said
Tuesday in Tokyo that the human rights records of China and Myanmar both fail
to pass muster and urged them to adhere to internationally recognized
standards of behavior. 

Albright told Sophia University students during a lecture that the United
States and Japan both ''wish to see a China where the authorities do not fear
freedom of expression, but rather see it as essential to the development of a
stable society.'' 

Speaking just ahead of a visit to Beijing beginning Wednesday, she said,
''While some Chinese dissidents have been released to exile in recent months,
the Chinese government's repression of dissent and religious freedom has not
ceased.'' 

Albright arrived in Japan earlier Tuesday and held talks with Foreign Minister
Keizo Obuchi and Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto. 

She added, however, that concern over human rights violations in China should
be accompanied by appreciation of ''ways in which China is changing'' for the
better, such as the fact that the Chinese government is now less involved in
the lives of its citizens than at any time in the last 50 years. 

''This year has seen hopeful stirrings of a dialogue among China's students,
scholars and officials about the need for political and economic change to go
together,'' she noted. 

With regard to Myanmar, otherwise known as Burma, Albright dismissed criticism
from that country's junta that the U.S. has been interfering in its internal
affairs by suspending aid and investment, assailing its human rights record
and speaking up for the pro-democracy movement led by Nobel Peace Prize
laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. 

''When we deny aid and investment to a government, such as Burma's, that
stifles democracy and brutally suppresses human rights, that is not
interference. That is recognizing and standing up for the clearly expressed
will of the Burmese people,'' she said. 

Albright said the keen interest that the U.S. and Japan have shown in seeing
peace restored in Cambodia similarly does not constitute a form of unwarranted
outside intervention. 

''The question we must ask is what do we mean by interference in this age of
interdependence,'' she said. 

''Clearly, when one country imposes its will on another, that is intervention.
But when Japan and the United States work together to help a nation overcome
civil war and find the path to true democracy, as we are trying to do in
Cambodia, we are not imposing -- we are helping a long-suffering people to
realize its hopes.'' 

She said that responding to the challenges of the current era ''will require
us to talk at times about matters that have historically been seen as the
internal affairs of other nations. Understandably, there is much sensitivity
about this.'' 

Japan and China are the first and second stops on a weeklong tour of Northeast
Asia that will also take Albright to South Korea and Mongolia.