Defending Human Rights in China? A Way Forard Part II

The Way Forward 2.jpg

The world is waking up to the nature of a crony capitalist enterprise operating as a government in charge of 1.3 billion Chinese people. But it has been an uphill challenge for defenders of human rights. The Chinese Communist Party has been successful in co-opting many of the political and business elite in the free world. The West has been preoccupied by the economic opportunities in China, with massive human rights abuses often swept to the side.

Building on the global impact and success of our event on how the free world could respond to the crisis in Hong Kong, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, European Values, Hong Kong Watch, Optimum Publishing and the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China will convene an online conference to tackle the broader range of human rights abuses perpetrated by the regime in Beijing.

Some of the world's top thinkers on human rights and international affairs will join us to discuss:

  1. The nature of human rights abuses from the Xinjiang detention camps, the throttling of democracy in Hong Kong, and China’s long history of abuses and intimidation from Tibet to Mongolia.

  2. How governments in the free world, and the United Nations and its various agencies, have been complacent and, in some cases, complicit in allowing these practices to go unchecked.

  3. Proposals for a co-ordinated global response.

Speakers will include:

  • Dean Baxendale, Co-Chair, A Way Forward series of events President of Optimum Publishing International and Chair of the CEO, China Democracy Foundation

  • Teng Biao, (Chinese: 滕彪) is a human rights activist and lawyer in China. Teng is a lecturer at the University of Politics and Law in Beijing.

  • Charles Burton, MLI Senior Fellow, Co-chair, A Way Forward series of events (moderator)

  • Carolyn Bartholomew, Vice-Chair, US-China Economic and Security Review Commission

  • Miles Yu, China Policy Advisor to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, United States Department of State

  • Stephen Kinnock, MP, Shadow Minister for Asia in the UK Parliament

  • Reinhard Bütikofer, MEP, Chair of the Delegation for Relations with the People’s Republic of China in the European Parliament

  • Rahima Mahmut, President, World Uyghur Conference (UK), and Advisor to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China

  • Dr. Mareike Ohlberg, Senior Fellow in the Asia Program, German Marshall Fund

  • Benedict Rogers, co-founder and Chair of Hong Kong Watch, Co-Chair, A Way Forward series of events

Dean Baxendale