Human Rights Watch on Monday accused Western governments of a "near-universal cowardice" in dealing with China, arguing they preferred opaque talks to taking a vocal stand against enduring repression.
In its World Report 2011, the US group said while the United States, the European Union, Australia and others had dedicated forums to discuss human rights concerns, those meetings were proving far from fruitful.
"Although more than a dozen countries continue to pursue human rights dialogues with the Chinese government, few of these opaque discussions produced meaningful outcomes in 2010," HRW said.
"While most of these governments offered strong support for the Nobel Committee's choice of Liu Xiaobo as winner of the peace prize, many failed to seize other opportunities, such as conducting high-profile visits to China or meeting senior Chinese officials, to raise human rights concerns."
It cited the "near-universal cowardice in confronting China's deepening crackdown on basic liberties" as one of many examples of how governments "effectively close their eyes to repression".
During a state visit to Washington last week, Chinese President Hu Jintao said "a lot needs to be done in China in terms of human rights" — a comment that sparked intense interest and was praised by the White House.
Hu's true intentions however remained unclear, and he several times stated that China did not share western conceptions of human rights, saying "national" characteristics and different circumstances needed to be recognised.
Ahead of the visit, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said human rights problems were evidence of Beijing's "unrealised potential and unfulfilled promise".
Human Rights Watch gave a litany of lingering concerns about China, from the imprisonment of journalists and bloggers to "pervasive" repression of ethnic Uighurs in the Xinjiang region, which was rocked by violence in 2009.
It called the choice of Liu Xiaobo as the 2010 Nobel peace laureate a "defining moment for China's human rights movement" — one also that "focused global attention on the extent of human rights violations in China".
Liu, a 55-year-old writer, was sentenced to 11 years in prison in December 2009 on subversion charges after co-authoring "Charter 08", a bold petition calling for political reform in Communist-ruled China.
Beijing said the Oslo-based Nobel committee's decision was tantamount to encouraging crime. Liu's wife has been under house arrest since October, and his win triggered a major crackdown on rights activists and lawyers.
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