United
Nations Official Says China Has Slipped on Human Rights
By ERIK ECKHOLM
BEIJING, March 2 -- The United Nations' top human rights
official expressed deep concern here today over what she called a
"deterioration" in China's human rights practices.
"I am concerned about three areas: freedom of
expression, freedom of religion and freedom of association," said Mary
Robinson, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, at a news conference this
afternoon following meetings with senior Chinese officials.
Her critical assessment comes less than three weeks before
the annual United Nations meeting on human rights, at which the United States is
offering a resolution censuring China's rights record.
Ms. Robinson declined to comment on the resolution. Her
remarks here may bolster the American case, but the resolution has little chance
of passing at the meeting in Geneva, diplomats say, because China can muster a
majority of countries to oppose it as unwarranted meddling.
In meetings today with Deputy Prime Minister Qian Qichen
and other officials, Ms. Robinson presented her concerns about developments over
the last year and a half including long prison sentences for democracy
advocates; what she termed "a notable clampdown on religious
expression," and the repression of labor organizers and the Falun Gong
spiritual movement.
She gave the Chinese Government a written report detailing
violations of international rights standards and listing numerous individuals
who have been imprisoned without fair legal procedures.
At about the same time that Ms. Robinson spoke, the Foreign
Ministry said in a regular press briefing that only the people of China had the
right to judge whether their rights are worsening or improving. "The
Chinese people are satisfied" with the freedoms they enjoy, said a
spokesman, Zhu Bangzhao, calling on the High Commissioner to cooperate with
China "on the basis of mutual respect."
Ms. Robinson, a former president of Ireland, was clearly
mindful of China's prickliness and offered praise for what she called the
country's continued progress in "economic and social rights" and
efforts to improve criminal procedures. But she was frank in her critique of
China's record in the core freedoms and legal safeguards enshrined in
international declarations.
Ms. Robinson had hoped for agreement this week on a
long-discussed program of technical cooperation with China, to study how its
laws and criminal practices can be brought into compliance with the two
international rights covenants that China has signed but not ratified.
No such agreement was announced today, but Ms. Robinson
said she had been assured that the Chinese expect to sign on later this year.
Ms. Robinson said she was encouraged that China's
parliament had begun discussions about the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights, signed in 1997.
But she said no such progress was evident in the case of
the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights and warned that China
would have to make wide-ranging changes to bring its legal practices in line
with international standards.
Among other needed changes, Ms. Robinson said, China's
notorious system of "reform through labor," in which accused criminals
and opponents of the state are sent to labor camps for up to three years without
a trial or basic legal protections, would have to end.
As of 1997, according the Government's own figures, some
230,000 people were held in such labor camps and the Government has given no
public sign it would seriously consider abolishing the system.
Ms. Robinson said she had been alarmed to hear of proposals
for a new law to govern the reform-through-labor system, as though that would
raise its international legitimacy.
"Bad law can be a tyranny," she said.
Ms. Robinson was in Beijing attending a United Nations
workshop on human rights in Asia.
The Chinese press today featured the meeting as a sign of
progress and carried President Jiang Zemin's message of congratulations to the
forum in which he praised the global development of human rights -- in keeping
with the cultural traditions and needs of each country.
"China has made tremendous efforts on the human rights
front, and it has achieved successes that have astonished the world," he
said.
Last week, after the State Department in its annual rights
report castigated China for regressing last year, China issued its own report on
human rights violations in the United States such as racism and the mistreatment
of prisoners.
China's papers have prominently covered the controversial
trial in New York of police officers who shot to death Amadou Diallo, a West
African vendor, and were acquitted of all charges.