16. Oct 2009
CECC releases annual report
(CECC) The Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) released its 2009 Annual Report, which provides an account of human rights and rule-of-law developments in Tibet and throughout the People's Republic of China (PRC). The report is the second since the protests of March 2008 across Tibet. The report states: "As of September 2009, the Commission had not seen public reports suggesting that Chinese authorities had lessened repressive security measures in Tibetan communities". The section on Tibet documents Beijing's increasingly aggressive stance towards the Dalai Lama and the leaders and institutions of the international community who publicly met with him over the preceding year. Two major issues covered were the eighth round of dialogue between representatives of the Dalai Lama and senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials held in November 2008; and the release in May 2009 of a report by a group of Chinese scholars at the Open Constitution Initiative (OCI) (Chin: Gongmeng), which broadly contradicted official pronouncements about the causes of the protests across Tibet starting in March 2008.