The Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) issued today its 2016 annual report, which raised serious concerns about the human rights situation in China. In an OpEd published in the Wall Street Journal the Co-Chairs of the CECC, Representative Chris Smith and Senator Marco Rubio stated that “ Human-rights and rule-of-law conditions deteriorated again last year”.
Regarding the US government policy on Tibet the CECC stated that the United States “Administration and Congress should work together to press for unrestricted access to ethnic minority regions and to facilitate implementation of the Tibetan Policy Act of 2002, including establishing a diplomatic office in Lhasa, encouraging development projects that comply with the Tibet Project Principles, and urging renewed dialogue between Chinese government officials and the Dalai Lama’s representatives.”
In its annual report for 2016 that was released on October 6, 2016 CECC also said, “Congress should continue to allocate funding for democratic leadership training for Tibetans, and Members of Congress and their staff should seek inter-parliamentary dialogues with Tibetan legislators to raise the profile, professionalism, and capacity of the Tibetan government-in-exile.”
CECC has been established by the U.S.-China Relations Act of 2000 and is mandated to monitor human rights and rule of law developments in China. Since October 2002, it has issued an Annual Report , providing a summary of key developments over a range of issues, identifying new trends, and highlighting cases of political prisoners and rights advocates.
The full text of the 2016 CECC report can be found here with the section on Tibet beginning at page 298.