Chinese dissidents said yesterday police had tried to silence them during Hillary Clinton's visit, as the US secretary of state defended her remarks about not pushing China's leaders on human rights.
Rights activists reported being placed under house arrest, harassed and intimidated in an effort to stop them speaking out during Clinton's trip to China, the final leg of her four-nation Asian tour.
"I am under house arrest because Hillary Clinton came," Zeng Jinyan, one of China's most prominent dissidents and wife of jailed activist Hu Jia, told AFP via an internet message.
The Chinese Human Rights Defenders group also said that a number of dissidents had been put under residential surveillance, questioned and followed by Beijing police during Clinton's 40-hour visit that began late Friday. Their comments came after Clinton said she would ensure the sensitive issue of human rights did not jeopardise her efforts to seek cooperation with China's communist leaders on major issues of global concern.
"Successive administrations and Chinese governments have been poised back and forth on these (rights) issues and we have to continue to press them," Clinton told reporters in Seoul just before leaving for Beijing.
"But our pressing on those issues can't interfere on the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis."
Clinton's comments triggered a fierce reaction from human rights groups around the world, with Amnesty International saying it was "shocked and extremely disappointed".
"The United States is one of the only countries that can meaningfully stand up to China on human rights issues," said T. Kumar, Asia advocacy director with Amnesty International US.
Clinton's visit comes at a particularly sensitive time for China's leadership, with a series of controversial anniversaries looming.
March 10 marks 50 years since a failed uprising in Tibet against Chinese rule that led to the Dalai Lama fleeing his homeland. The Tibetan government-in-exile says the Chinese army killed 87,000 people in the crackdown. And on June 4 it will be 20 years since the so-called Tiananmen Massacre when Chinese troops crushed democracy protests in Beijing, leaving hundreds, if not thousands, dead.