Mayor marches into trouble

China dealings invite criticism
By Kenneth Todd Ruiz, Staff Writer
Article Launched: 10/07/2007 11:27:36 PM PDT

PASADENA - As one of the architects of a plan to bring Beijing into the Rose Parade, Mayor Bill Bogaard has also invited criticism of his record and sometimes inconsistent positions on foreign affairs.

Despite his admonitions that City Hall has no role in international matters, Bogaard has leveraged his position and relationships to promote international matters, such as advocating to use the parade on January 1 as the kick-off China's 2008 Olympic celebrations, and most recently, on behalf of five Cuban nationals arrested nine years ago.

"He keeps saying the city of Pasadena only deals with local matters and doesn't engage in external issues," said John Li, president of Caltech's club for Falun Gong, a spiritual sect outlawed by China. "But the mayor has done a lot to promote China, and that hasn't stopped him from promoting China and its use of the Rose Parade for propaganda."

Li is among those who feel the parade's tradition is being co-opted by China's hunger for publicity and that Pasadena is being duped into validating that nation on the international stage despite verified abuses of human rights.

Bogaard said his actions with respect to China are consistent with the 55-year-old spirit

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of the sister city program, through which Pasadena joined with Xicheng in 1999, the same year he was elected mayor.
Time and again, when he's opposed taking a city, council or mayoral position on international matters, Bogaard has said they're not appropriate issues for city leadership.

That was his argument for opposing a resolution against the pending Iraq war in March 2003, and previous criticism of former Councilman Bill Paparian, who was serving as mayor when he traveled to Cuba in 1996 to deliver medical supplies such as much-needed antibiotics.

Paparian paid his own way and indicated at the time he was traveling as a private citizen; Bogaard said he subsequently traveled to Cuba in 2003 with a USC real estate professor under those same conditions.

Pasadena has a long tradition of taking principled stands, Paparian said Thursday, such as divesting from South African in 1987 in response to apartheid.

"There's a tradition here to showing that leadership, it's nothing new," he said.

Most recently, Bogaard has argued against using the connections he and the city enjoy with Beijing to urge China to improve its poor human rights record or lobby on behalf of imprisoned family of local residents.

Yet last month, Bogaard cited human rights concerns when he signed his name as mayor onto a letter asking Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez to grant entry to two Cuban women so they can visit their husbands, part of the so-called "Cuban Five."

"I considered it to be simply a humanitarian gesture and not of any great significance," he said in a recent interview. "Someone had initiated a letter expressing these concerns and it seemed simple enough for me to join in that effort."

Bogaard said he couldn't recall who asked for his support, and that neither he nor staff could locate the original request.

Li and others who have come before the council say they can't understand why the mayor would so readily lend his support to a cause with no local connection when he's been unreceptive to their requests as local residents.

"In retrospect, it was probably inconsistent with my intention with regards to limiting my action with any association with my office as mayor to noninternational matters that relate more directly to the city's affairs," Bogaard said Friday. "I'm human, and I reserve the right to be inconsistent."

Several San Gabriel Valley women first came to the council in June with stories of being imprisoned in China for practicing Falun Gong - one even saying she was held in a Xicheng detention center - and requests for aid in freeing family members still held captive for practicing Falun Gong, which China considers a "dangerous cult."

The council sent the matter to the Human Relations Commission. This past Tuesday, the commission released its recommendation calling for the council to review China's record and send a resolution to Beijing in support of human rights.

Asked how he would characterize China's human rights record, Bogaard refused to comment, saying he needed to first read the commission's 11-page report.

According to the U.S. State Department's latest human rights' report on China, state-sanctioned killing and torture contributed to deterioration of that country's already poor record.

"There were an increased number of high-profile cases involving the monitoring, harassment, detention, arrest, and imprisonment of journalists, writers, activists, and defense lawyers, many of whom were seeking to exercise their rights under law," according to the report. "Other serious human rights abuses included instances of extrajudicial killings; torture and coerced confessions of prisoners; and the use of forced labor, including prison labor."

Beijing's plan to use the Rose Parade to kick-off global celebrations for next summer's Olympics has been in development for several years.

On New Year's Day 2005, five government officials from Xicheng - which also contain's the communists' seat of power - sat as Bogaard's guests of honor to watch the parade.

The mayor and Tournament members had recently returned from trips to Xicheng.

"It is a tribute to the Tournament of Roses that Beijing sees participation in this parade as something that will surely benefit Beijing and the Olympics," Bogaard said at the time in December, 2004.

Tournament officials have said they included the float at the urging of the city. Bogaard and Councilman Steve Madison have both responded to criticism by saying the city has no say in what floats roll down Colorado Boulevard.

Before and after the Chinese float became controversial, Bogaard met with Chinese Consul General Zhang Yun and Sue Zhang, chair of the Roundtable of Southern California Chinese-American Organizations, to discuss its status.

The Beijing-sanctioned float is paid for by the Roundtable and Avery Dennison Corp.

Olympic-themed floats are nothing new to the parade, Bogaard said, which has included entries representing previous years' games.

With the parade less than three months away, the City Council has yet to even schedule a date to review the recommendation from the Human Relations Commission, which also raises alternatives such as inviting the Dalai Lama to serve as co-grand marshal.

The question of whether Pasadena should use its relationship with China to press for human rights has come up other times in recent years, with councilmen Chris Holden and Victor Gordo signaling their support.

"Given what we know of China's record as it relates to human rights violations, and given that we have a sister city relationship with a city in China, that `international issue' has become a local issue," Gordo said Friday. "I don't want anyone to believe that the city of Pasadena, through it's sister city relationship, endorses, approves of, or is accepting of human rights violations."

todd.ruiz@sgvn.com
(626) 578-6300, Ext. 4444
www.insidesocal.com/pasadenapolitics