Obama urged to raise rights in China

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Families and supporters of activists jailed in China are hoping that US President Barack Obama will fight for their freedom next week in Beijing, but many fear they will be disappointed.

Obama, who starts his maiden visit to China on Sunday, has uneasy relations with rights campaigners who are alarmed by his approach of building broader ties with the rising Asian power and speaking softly about purported abuses.

The wife of prominent human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, whose whereabouts have remained unknown since he was detained in February, appealed to Obama to ask Chinese leaders about her husband.

"I hope Mr. Obama can help me locate my husband. I would feel safer if I just knew that he was alive," Geng He told AFP.

Geng and the couple's two children staged a daring escape from China and have lived in the United States since March.

Gao is an outspoken defender of Chinese seeking redress from the government, including coal miners, underground Christians and the banned Falungong spiritual movement. He was also detained in 2007 when he said he was tortured.

Geng said their 16-year-old daughter has been suffering depression as she fears for her father and that their six-year-old son has also been distraught.

"He loves to draw rockets and everyday he asks me to show them to his dad. When I tell him I can't call him, he asks if we can send them to his dad," she said.

Besides Gao, members of Congress have asked Obama to press cases of other Chinese including:

-- Liu Xiaobo, a writer who was detained after co-authoring the bold Charter 08 petition for democratic reform;

-- Chen Guangcheng, a blind activist imprisoned after saying authorities in one city alone had forced thousands of women to be sterilized or have abortions as late as eight months into their pregnancy to enforce a one-child policy;

-- Huang Qi and Tan Zuoren, who are on trial after investigating whether shoddy construction led to children's deaths in last year's Sichuan earthquake.

Obama's top adviser on East Asia, Jeffrey Bader, said the president would raise human rights with Chinese President Hu Jintao.

But Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared to set the tone for the administration in February when she said human rights would not get in the way of other key US goals such as reviving the global economy and fighting climate change.

Obama in October became the first US president in 18 years not to meet with Tibet's exiled leader the Dalai Lama when he was in Washington, although the White House says Obama will meet him over Chinese objections later.

Representative Christopher Smith called on the Obama administration to speak more forcefully.

"I'm not saying that diplomacy doesn't have a very valid place, but when we whisper and put it on page four of a list of talking points, that demotion in terms of priority is felt by the receiver," said the New Jersey Republican.

"I've worked on human rights in the entirety in my 20 years in Congress and whenever they're downgraded, whenever we speak with very soft tones, little or nothing happens," Smith said.

China has often freed dissidents as goodwill gestures ahead or after visits by top US leaders.

China, which plans to welcome Obama with a lavish dinner, has freed no dissidents so far this time and on Monday announced it executed nine people over violence in July involving the Uighur minority in the western Xinjiang region.

Exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer -- herself freed from a Chinese prison in advance of then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice's visit in 2005 -- said the executions were the result of the softer US approach.

"If the United States and the rest of the international community had stood strong on their principles, China would have been more careful," she said.

China accuses the Washington-based dissident of instigating the violence, charges she strongly denies.

Jiang Tianyong, a Beijing-based human rights lawyer who visited Washington ahead of Obama's trip, said that even in China, human rights were coming into mainstream conversation.

"Obviously 'human rights' carries a different connotation than in the international sense," he said. "But if China can talk about it, then why can't the president of the United States?"