Chinese Release Prominent Dissident | U.S. Won't Seek Rights Resolution

Chinese Release Prominent Dissident
U.S. Won't Seek Rights Resolution
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By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, March 18, 2005; Page A13
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BEIJING, March 17 -- The Chinese government released a well-known political prisoner Thursday, and hours later the Bush administration announced it would not seek a resolution criticizing China's human rights record at a U.N. meeting in Geneva.

Human rights activists celebrated the release on medical parole of Rebiya Kadeer, a prominent businesswoman arrested in 1999 while on her way to meet U.S. congressional staff members in the western province of Xinjiang. But they expressed dismay at the administration's sudden decision to drop the U.N. resolution, rejecting its claim that China had taken measures to increase human rights in the past year.

Kadeer, 58, was released from a prison in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, and put on a flight for Northern Virginia, where her husband and five of her 11 children live, said the Dui Hua Foundation, a U.S.-based human rights group. She was scheduled to arrive at Reagan National Airport on Thursday night.

China often frees political prisoners and sends them into exile as gestures of goodwill before visits by senior U.S. officials. Kadeer's release came just days before a visit to Beijing by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. It appeared to be part of a deal in which the United States agreed not to sponsor a motion criticizing China at this year's meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Commission, which opened Monday.

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