A group of rights activists say they came under heightened surveillance, as human rights talks between the US and China resumed in Beijing this week.

The Sino-US talks were suspended six years ago after the US tabled a resolution at the UN condemning China’s human rights record.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice brokered an agreement to restart the talks, during her visit to China in February this year. The human rights dialogue between the two countries initially began in 1990 after the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Chinese activists targeted

Several human rights and democracy activists say they were put under heightened surveillance and their movements restricted before US representatives arrived for the talks. Alarmingly, activists reported the following:

  • Mo Shaoping, a lawyer who often defends activists, says police warned him not to accept a lunch invitation from US officials, yet he attended regardless.

  • Wan, Yanhai, an AIDS activist, wrote in an article published on a popular Chinese-language site that "I myself now have a police car parked in front of the door. Wherever I go, a police car follows".

US concerns

David Kramer, assistant US secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, says they are concerned to hear these reports and have asked Chinese authorities to investigate. "We take these reports seriously and we're going to look into them," he says.

He told reporters it was too early to judge if the talks, which ended on Monday, will have any concrete results. The US had pressed China about the number of people detained after a widespread Tibetan uprising in March and their locations, however China refused to disclose the details.

Chinese government actions

Human Rights In China’s executive director Sharon Hom says if China doesn’t want the world to see the dialogue with Washington as a mere public relations exercise ahead of the Olympics, "it must immediately end the restrictions on these individuals in accordance with Chinese and international human rights law".

Unsurprisingly, China's response to the talks – delivered by Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang – was that "there should be no double standard or any interference in each other's internal affairs by making use of the human rights issue".

China insists it has a different concept of human rights to the West, saying that the right to develop, including feed and shelter its 1.3 billion people, must come before individual rights.