Alarming human rights report should make UK rethink its relationship with China, group says

The United Kingdom should rethink its "golden" relationship with China in the light of a critical human rights report launched Tuesday, June 28, a rights group said.

According to The Guardian, a critical report called "The Darkest Moment" set to be launched in Westminster by Conservative peer Lord Patten, reveals the deplorable situation of human rights in the communist state where human rights lawyers, activists, dissidents, bloggers, and journalists are abducted by Chinese authorities and extorted to confess.

"China is not what it was five years ago," said China expert Christopher Hancock in a statement, as quoted by The Guardian. "It has undergone a 180-degree turn in its political ethos."

Fiona Bruce, chairman of the Conservative party's human rights commission, revealed a widely-held belief that one of the most intense political crackdown in the country's history happened under the government of President Xi Jinping who rose to power in 2012.

Human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, still living under house arrest, managed to release outside China a memoir detailing of the abuses he suffered under the government.

Almost a year ago, the Chinese government rounded up more than 300 activists in its crackdown against human rights defenders. Most of these are still held up in detention and accused of subversion.

"Outsiders should not attempt - and will always fail - to change China's political and social behaviour," said Hancock. "However, British citizens can, and must, attempt to change their government's hitherto misguided response to it."

The Conservative party human rights commission also said in a statement that although they recognize the strategic and economic benefits gained from China, it believes the U.K. should not choose to remain silent "publicly, on human rights, in light of such a grave deterioration."

Analysts like Nick Bisley, professor of international relations and the executive director of La Trobe Asia, think that the so-called "golden relationship" between the two countries may have just been undermined by the recent Brexit outcome.

"Brexit condemns the golden thing to history, I think," said Bisley. "Britain's stock has declined and Britain will be less important to China in its view of the world."