World Tibet Network News Thursday, March 12, 1998

BEIJING, March 12, 1998 (AP) China plans to sign a major U.N. treaty that guarantees basic civil and political rights to its people, including free speech and assembly, the foreign minister said Thursday.

The government said earlier it was considering signing the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but also indicated it believed the accord could conflict with domestic laws.

The treaty, which foreign governments have urged China to sign, is intended to provide broad, basic guarantees of civil liberties and legally support the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It guarantees free speech, assembly and association. Countries that uphold it may restrict these rights by law only to protect national security.

In Washington, White House press secretary Mike McCurry called the Chinese decision "a positive and constructive step forward.''

"This decision by China ... represents a formal commitment to the principles that are espoused in the covenant. It creates an international standard by which future Chinese actions can be evaluated,'' McCurry said.

Just before Foreign Minister Qian Qichen spoke to reporters inside the Great Hall of the People, police guarding the building hustled away a man who apparently was trying to present a petition. Three uniformed officers quickly put him in a police car and drove off.

The foreign minister's annual news conference takes place during the legislative session, which lasts about two weeks each March. Citizens often try to petition the legislature, and several people have been arrested this year attempting to approach the heavily guarded building on Tiananmen Square.

China's constitution guarantees freedom of speech, assembly and religion and other civil liberties, but in reality those rights are severely curtailed by laws and regulations, some of them unpublished.

The ruling communists have argued the right of China's 1.2 billion people to economic security supersedes other liberties. China also argues that every nation defines human rights differently.

Under Chinese law, police may detain suspects for lengthy periods without charge and send detainees to labor camps for up to three years without trial. The punishment has been increasingly applied in recent years to political dissidents, who are often relentlessly harassed by police once released.

China still prohibits Roman Catholics from recognizing the Vatican's authority and government campaigns are underway to tighten control over Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and Islamic study groups. Beijing maintains both groups inspire anti-Chinese separatists in Tibet and the Muslim region of Xinjiang.