The New York Times

Friday, March 3, 2000

High U.N. Official Sees Loss of Rights in China

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, of expression, freedom of religion and freedom of association," Mary Robinson, high commissioner for human rights, said at a news conference after meeting senior Chinese officials.

She gave her assessment less than three weeks before the annual session of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, starting on March 20 in Geneva, where the United States plans to offer a resolution to censure 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, diplomats said, because China can muster a majority of countries to oppose it as unwarranted meddling in its internal affairs.

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. Those included the arrests and lengthy prison sentences given to democracy advocates, what Ms. Robinson termed "a notable clampdown on religious expression," and the repression of labor organizers and the Falun Gong spiritual movement.

She gave the government a written report detailing violations of international rights standards and listing numerous individuals who had been imprisoned without fair legal procedures.

At 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 were worsening or improving.

"The Chinese people are satisfied" with the freedoms they enjoy, said a spokesman for the ministry, Zhu Bangzhao, who called on Ms. Robinson 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 the 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 expected to sign on to the program this year.

Ms. Robinson said she was encouraged that the Chinese Parliament had begun discussing the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which China signed in 1997. But she said no such progress was evident in the case of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, signed in 1998, and warned that China would have to make wide-ranging changes to bring its legal practices in line with international standards.

Among other changes, Ms. Robinson said, the 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 trials or basic legal protections, would have to be phased out. As of 1997, according to government figures, 230,000 people were held in such labor camps, and the government has given no sign that 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 legitimacy. "Bad law can be a tyranny," she said.

Ms. Robinson was here for a United Nations workshop on human rights in Asia. The Chinese press today featured the workshop as a sign of progress and carried President Jiang Zemin's congratulatory message 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 had in its annual report on rights castigated China for regressing, China issued its own report on human rights violations in the United States like racism and prisoner mistreatment. China's newspapers have prominently covered the trial of four New York City police officers who fatally shot Amadou Diallo, a West African immigrant, and were acquitted of all charges.