Thursday
March 2 6:32 AM ET
Reuters:
U.N. Human Rights Chief Says China Getting Worse
By Jeremy
Page
BEIJING (Reuters) - U.N. rights chief Mary Robinson bluntly criticized Beijing Thursday over what she called a deterioration in China's human rights record.
Robinson
said she had failed in her mission to sign a pact that would speed China's
ratification of key international human rights charters by helping Beijing
adjust its own laws.
She said she
raised her concerns with Vice Premier Qian Qichen and senior officials during a
two-day visit to Beijing.
"I am
concerned about three areas that I have expressed my worries about -- the areas
of freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and freedom of association,"
she said.
"My
major concern is that there does seem to have been a deterioration," she
told a news conference.
But Foreign
Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao said Robinson, a former president of Ireland, had
no right to comment.
"Only
Chinese people have the right to judge whether human rights conditions in China
have turned better or worse," Zhu told a regular news briefing.
He said
Beijing guaranteed all people freedom of speech, association and religious
belief.
"Chinese
people are satisfied with the rights they enjoy. This is a fact widely
recognized by the international community."
No Deal On Covenants
Robinson's
visit came just days after a State Department report said China's human rights
record "deteriorated markedly" in 1999, citing suppression of
religion, jailings of dissidents and political purges in Tibet.
Rights
groups reported this week that Chinese authorities had beaten a member of the
banned Falun Gong movement to death, refused to deliver medicine to a sick
dissident in jail and detained the parents of the Tibetan Karmapa Lama who fled
to India.
China has
signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which
guarantees basic freedoms of religion, speech and assembly, as well as the
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
But it has
yet to ratify either pact and must harmonize its legislation to meet their
requirements.
Robinson
said Beijing had made progress on ratifying the covenant on economic and social
rights by sending it for approval to the National People's Congress, which opens
its annual session Sunday.
But Beijing
was dragging its heels on the covenant on civil and political rights, she said.
"I
would be concerned that there is some degree of slippage, that there is a need
to reinvigorate the commitment to enter into a serious process of technical
steps that would be necessary for ratification," she said.
Robinson
Raises Falun Gong
Robinson
said Chinese officials had pointed out that the United States had not yet
ratified the covenant on economic, social and cultural rights. She said she
aimed to sign the pact on technical cooperation projects with Beijing by the end
of the year.
The projects
aimed to reduce police powers of detention, phase out a widespread system of
reform through labor -- under which political dissidents are held for years
without trial -- and improve China's legal and judicial system.
"The
next move that will be necessary is to ensure that the law is compatible with
international human rights standards," she said.
"Bad
law is tyranny."
Robinson
said she had raised the issue of Falun Gong and individual human rights cases,
including the jailing of Xu Wenli, one of the founders of the outlawed China
Democracy Party.
"There
has been a notable clampdown on religious expression," she said.
She declined
to comment on a U.S. proposal to back a resolution criticizing China at the
annual meeting in Geneva of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights this month.