A Sovereign State --- As Taiwan, How To Reunite At This Time …

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Nov. 22, 2000 ---
The United Nations’ top human rights official and a senior mainland Chinese leader differed Tuesday over civil liberties, a day after signing an agreement to cooperate on improving Beijing’s rights protections.

The exchange between Mary Robinson, U.N. high commissioner for human rights, and Communist Party Politburo member Li Tieying at a conference on economic rights underscored the difficulties both sides face in living up to the agreement --- which immediately drew criticism from rights groups as ineffective.

Opening the conference, Li insisted that human rights were relative, an argument the Communist Party leadership has long used to give priority to economic development over political rights.

“Each country and each ethnicity has the right to determine its own system for protecting human rights based on its own special conditions,” said Li.

When her turn came to speak, Robinson called on Beijing to accept “the universality of human rights” --- a concept underpinning two U.N. rights treaties that Beijing has signed but not ratified.

Moving Beijing toward implementing the two treaties – one on economic, social and cultural rights, the other on civil and political rights --- was a key goal of the agreement reached Monday.

Under the memorandum signed by Robinson and Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Guangya, mainland China agreed to U.N.-sponsored seminars on reforming its police, court and labor camp systems. The first meeting, set for February, will touch on police powers to send suspects to forced labor camps for up to three years without trial.

Robinson hailed the agreement as nudging mainland China closer to standards set out in the two rights pacts. But rights groups faulted the agreement for doing no more than calling for workshops and not committing China to change.

“China could use this pretense of cooperation to muzzle U.N. monitoring procedures and public criticism of its human rights situation,” New York-based Human Rights in China said in a statement.

“The Chinese government should take concrete steps to improve the human rights situation on the ground by addressing widespread torture, executions and repression,” London-based Amnesty International said.

In a sign of continued obstacles, Robinson said she inconclusively pressed mainland Chinese leaders during her two-day visit to allow unfettered access of a U.N. special monitor on torture. His planned visit last year was scotched after China put limits on his activities.

Although Beijing is trying to make its police force more law-abiding, reports of torture and other abuses persist. A rights group reported Tuesday that two more members of the banned Falun Gong sect died in custody, raising the death toll among followers in the 16-month-old crackdown to at least 70.