United Nations Official Says China Has Slipped on Human Rights

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.