The United States said Thursday that it raised human rights cases in talks with China but was mum on the results.
Officials from the Pacific powers met Tuesday and Wednesday in the southern Chinese city of Kunming for the annual bilateral human rights dialogue.
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said that the two countries discussed concerns including on freedoms of religion and expression.
“The human rights dialogue is an opportunity to reinforce the messages, including on specific cases, that we consistently deliver at the highest levels on these issues,” Harf told reporters.
She declined to elaborate other than to say: “Specific cases were discussed.”
The United States started the annual human rights talks with China in the wake of Beijing’s bloody 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square.
But China refused to participate between 2002 and 2008. Critics complain that the talks have yielded few known accomplishments and allowed Beijing to separate human rights from the rest of its broad relationship with Washington.
Representative Frank Wolf, a staunch critic of China over its treatment of Tibetans, underground Christians and other groups, accused President Barack Obama of “caution to the point of silence” on human rights.
“Silence in the face of China’s abysmal human rights record is indefensible,” Wolf, a member of the rival Republican Party, said in a statement.
US raises rights cases with China
