Trump urged to raise Tibet and human rights issues with China's Xi
April 05, 2017  21:07
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A bipartisan group of lawmakers have urged US President Donald Trump to raise the issue of human rights violations in China in particular those related to Tibet when he meets his Chinese counterpart this week.

Simultaneously, influential US lawmakers have introduced legislations in both House of Representative and the Senate to promote access by Americans to Tibetan areas, which is routinely denied by Chinese authorities.

Trump will host his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida from April 6 to 7.

"The crackdown on civil society and deterioration of rule of law in China in the past few years appears to signal a systematic effort by Chinese Communist Party leadership to tighten its controls on free expression and undermine the will of its own people," Senator Ben Cardin and Rubio wrote in a joint letter to the Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

They said the US should not simply stand idly by as these universal rights are abrogated and the Chinese people suffer the consequences. A failure of US leadership on these issues is not a good message for the United States to send to China, its allies in the region, and the world, they said.
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