World Tibet Network News Sunday, February 01, 1998

BEIJING, Feb 1 (AFP) - A US State Department report on human rights in China "distorts facts" and interfered in its internal affairs, a Chinese government spokesman said Sunday.

"The report distorts facts while pointing a finger at the Chinese government," the official Xinhua news agency said quoting foreign ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao.

"The US government should respect facts and stop using human rights as an excuse to interfere in China's internal affairs," Zhu said.

"China has always abided by the UN human rights charter," he added. "The US government, passing itself as the 'guard of human rights,' made irresponsible comments and fabricated unwarranted charges upon China's human rights conditions while not uttering a single word about cases of seriously violating human rights in its own country.

"This is a typical example of applying dual standards on human rights issue," Zhu said.

"The real motive of the US side is to interfere in China's internal affairs on the pretext of caring about China's human rights," he said.

The US report released Friday said the Chinese government "continued to commit widespread and well-documented human rights abuses ... (including) torture and mistreatment of prisoners, forced confessions, and arbitrary arrest and lengthy incommunicado detention," besides repression in Tibet.

But it added: "The government's response to dissent was somewhat more tolerant than in recent years."

Earlier Sunday a Hong Kong-based human rights group reported that police had arrested four liberal poets and confiscated their work as they were preparing to launch an unofficial review to boost literary freedoms.

The four -- Ma Zhe, 38, Wu Ruohai, 35, Xiong Jinren, 32, and Ma Qiang, 28 -- were held on Monday in Guiyang, the capital of the southwest Guizhou province, the Information Centre of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China said.

According to an associate of the poets, quoted by the Information Centre, the four were known in literary circles for their liberal views and their bid to find ways to allow "their work to flourish outside the control of the official ideology."

Meanwhile, Chinese dissident Xu Wenli Sunday called on the government to ratify a key United Nations human rights charter which it signed last year.

In an open letter to the National People's Congress (NPC, parliament) Xu said Beijing's decision to sign the UN Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in October, just before President Jiang Zemin visited the US, was a "very good thing," but now it should be ratified.

The convention, which includes a clause on the right to form trade unions, will not come into force until it is formally ratified by the NPC, which normally holds its annual meeting in March.