In October 1999 President Jiang Zernin visited the UK. There were a number of demonstrations about human rights in China and China's treatment of Tibet. Do you think these protests were justified?

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  • In October 1999 President Jiang Zernin visited the UK. There were a number of demonstrations about human rights in China and China’s treatment of Tibet. Do you think these protests were justified?

To answer this question I will have to take into account both sides of the argument, my perspective and the Chinese’s, otherwise it would be unfair and prejudice for me to only discuss one side of it.

        On October 19th 1999 president Jiang Zernin visited the UK, although it did not go as well as he may have hoped due to demonstrators staging a noisy protest outside his hotel. Their motive for this disrespectful behavior was their anger over China’s abuse of human rights and its occupation of Tibet. The public were so outraged that a member even labeled him ‘the butcher of Tibet’.  

        Although the Chinese government claimed they provide the public with religious freedoms to believe in or worship whatever religion they want I am able to prove that this is not the case. A religious sect called ‘Falun Gong’ which is a mixture of Buddhism and Taoism, whose practices involve breathing and meditation, are one of the victims of the religious discrimination that took place in China. On July 22nd 1999 hundreds of thousands of books and leaflets, made by the Falun Gong were thrown into bonfires and burnt whilst a type of witch-hunt was in progress. The government blamed this outrageous conduct on the fact that they thought the sect’s leader was planning to suppress the communist party. In my point of view I think this accusation is ridiculous as the members of the Falun gong are all middle class, law abiding, upstanding members of the public who have probably never been on the wrong side of the law. If I were to put this argument into the perspective of the Chinese government then I think that in their point of view they see the leader of the sect deceiving people into worshiping him like a God. I feel that the treatment of political opponents in China is unacceptable.

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The law in China is very unfair and no one is ever allowed to claim defense. It is tradition to hold public executions and an example of this is the tragic death of Wang Jianye who was accused of taking bribes. This has been the case for many government officials and senior employees as well. He was horrifically shot once in the back of his head three days after Christmas in font of a crowd of 5,000. Neither Wang nor his lawyer had the chance to present arguments in his defense.  I think the reason for public executions is that ...

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