German President Presses China on Political Prisoners During Visit
By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW

BEIJING — Four days before President Joachim Gauck of Germany began his first state visit to China on Sunday, the exiled writer Liao Yiwu visited Schloss Bellevue, the presidential residence in Berlin.

Mr. Liao, a former political prisoner who fled China in 2011, had a list of six names and a request for Mr. Gauck: Raise the plight of political prisoners when you meet Chinese leaders.

And that is what he did during his five-day visit, which took him to Beijing, Shanghai and Xi’an and ends late on Thursday, according to his spokeswoman, Ferdos Forudastan.

“In his political discussions, he talked about several people who are in prison,” Ms. Forudastan said, adding that the only name she could disclose was that of the journalist Gao Yu, who wrote for the German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle and was imprisoned last year on charges of revealing state secrets, but then released on medical parole after an international outcry.

By raising the cases of political prisoners, Mr. Gauck, a former Lutheran pastor and civil society activist in East Germany who opposed the Communist state, stands out among foreign leaders who have tended to avoid human rights issues, chasing trade instead, said Tienchi Martin-Liao, the president of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, who is based in Germany.

“As a German citizen I’m very happy that they did it,” said Ms. Martin-Liao, who was born in China. “He’s doing what he’s supposed to do: to speak about values and moral questions.”

More a ceremonial head of state than a political figure in Germany, “he’s not a normal politician,” she said. “He’s not afraid of not being elected. He’s very brave on many things.”

She compared Mr. Gauck’s approach with those of leaders from Britain and France, who she said were far less forthright about China’s human rights record, which recently came under heavy criticism at the United Nations.

By contrast, Germany, with its history of fascism and Communism, “feels it has special responsibility not to separate morality from actions,” Ms. Martin-Liao said.

One of the six people on the list given to Mr. Gauck was Liu Xiaobo, the imprisoned Nobel Peace laureate, Ms. Martin-Liao said.

The others were Ms. Gao; the writer and photographer Liu Xia, who is under house arrest and is married to Mr. Liu; the imprisoned poet Li Bifeng; the imprisoned scholar Ilham Tohti; and Qin Yongmin, the founder of a pro-democracy party who has disappeared.

On Monday evening at the German Embassy, Mr. Gauck also met with some of China’s beleaguered human rights lawyers, including Mo Shaoping and Shang Baojun, who represent Ms. Gao. More than 200 rights lawyers or legal workers were swept up in detentions last summer, with about two dozen still in custody.

Ms. Gao has received a visa to travel to Germany for medical treatment but cannot leave China because the Public Security Ministry will not permit her exit, Ms. Martin-Liao said.

Perhaps most markedly, at Tongji University in Shanghai on Wednesday, Mr. Gauck delivered a blistering, if coded, speech, in which he criticized repressive political states and called for civil society to be allowed to flourish.

The German newspaper Die Welt reported that “in a clever speech, the president held up a mirror to Chinese politics.” By referring extensively to Germany’s experiences of Nazism and East German Communism, Mr. Gauck drew parallels with China today that resonated, the article said.

Mr. Gauck told an audience of students and teachers that he came from a country “that has faced some of the same problems that China has to confront.”

East Germany “silenced its own people, locked them up and humiliated those who refused to comply with the will of the leaders,” he said. “And the entire system lacked proper legitimacy. Free, equal and secret public elections were not held. The result was a lack of credibility, which went hand in hand with a culture of distrust between the rulers and those they ruled.”

He criticized some countries’ insistence that they were unique and therefore beyond others’ judgment, an idea that Chinese leaders frequently put forward.

“For a long time, Germany claimed special cultural status — a sort of exceptionalism — according to which what was right for everyone needn’t necessarily apply to Germany. Ultimately, it took the cataclysm of Nazism and its defeat in the Second World War to make the Federal Republic of Germany open itself up to the basic principles” of Enlightenment philosophy, Mr. Gauck said: “inalienable human rights and the rule of law, separation of powers, representative democracy and popular sovereignty.”

He added, in another apparent reference to China today: “That moment made it clear that the human yearning for freedom cannot be kept down. That’s why individual liberties cannot be replaced by material goods or social status in the long term.”

Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, played down Mr. Gauck’s speech.

“As long as the two countries strengthen dialogue while respecting and treating each other equally, China and Germany can boost mutual trust and cooperation,” Ms. Hua said at a regular news briefing.

And Xinhua, the state news agency, avoided addressing the remarks, noting that Mr. Gauck had expressed optimism over Chinese-German cooperation.

On Tuesday, the day after Mr. Gauck met with rights lawyers, Global Times, a nationalist newspaper, appeared to try to warn Mr. Gauck off the topic with an editorial headlined: “Human rights not priority for Gauck visit.”

“Unlike German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who needs to maintain a good economic relationship with China, Gauck is thought to have fewer concerns and could inflict more pressure on the Chinese government over human rights issues,” the newspaper wrote.

It added, “Gauck might have to say something about human rights, because it has become a required routine for Western politicians on their China visits. But it will only be a trivial matter on his agenda.”

Mr. Liao, the exiled writer, said that he did not know exactly what Mr. Gauck said to Chinese leaders but that he was confident the visit would help China’s struggling civil society and human rights advocates.

“It will per se have a deep and far-reaching influence on China’s dissident intellectual community and on the people,” he wrote in an email.

德總統在陸放砲 批東德共產專制

德國總統高克天在上海發表公開演講時，譴責東德共產主義統治缺乏合法性，並強調人權和自由的重要性。高克在大陸地盤批評共產黨，引起各界關注。

英國廣播公司（BBC）中文網報導，高克廿三日在上海同濟大學約百名師生面前，以自身在東德生活的經歷和德國歷史為鑑，譴責了專制政權。

高克說，在共產主義統治下的東德剝奪了人民的自主權，並羞辱和懲罰了反抗領導層意志的人。雖然「無產階級專政」國家應當以多數民眾的利益為依歸，但大多數人並未獲得幸福或解放。

高克還說，由於沒有自由、平等、秘密的公共選舉，以致政府缺乏公信力，與人民互不信任。他並談到德國「關切」中國近期傳出、涉及公民社會的一些新聞。不過，他未具體說明引起德國關切的是哪些事情。

他也表示，大學應當是沒有禁錮、可以公開坦誠討論的場所。報導說，七十六歲的高克以批判共產主義、推崇人權的立場而著稱。

大陸外交部發言人華春瑩昨天在例行記者會被詢及高克的言論時回應，尚未看到有關報導。但她表示，高克此訪是懷著增進對中國全面、客觀了解的態度。華春瑩說，高克和大陸國家主席習近平會談時表示，雖然德中社會制度不同，但能夠在相互尊重、相互信任基礎上推進雙方關係不斷向前發展。

中共黨媒環球時報先前一篇社評認為，即使高克訪問期間談論了人權，「也是應付西方媒體的虛事」，不管高克說了什麼，並不具任何真實意義。

高克是應習近平邀請，於本月廿日至廿四日對中國大陸進行國是訪問。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/25/world/asia/china-germany-joachim-gauck.html

紐約時報中文版翻譯：
http://cn.nytimes.com/china/20160325/c25chinagauck/zh-hant/

2016-03-25．聯合報．A14．兩岸．大陸新聞中心