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China: Poverty before rights
30/08/2005 13:14 - (SA)
Beijing - China on Tuesday insisted it should be allowed to handle human rights issues in its own way, as the United Nations pressed it and other Asia-Pacific nations to ratify relevant international agreements.
China is regularly rapped by rights groups for its deprivation of civil liberties and UN high commissioner for human rights Louise Arbour is in Beijing to urge it to accept the UN Convention on Civil and Political Rights.
But Tang Jiaxuan, a state councillor and former foreign minister, said at the Asia-Pacific human rights symposium being held here that every country should be allowed to deal with the matter in its own way.
"On the one hand, we should uphold the purposes and principles enshrined in the UN charter and international human rights instruments, and unswervingly promote and protect human rights to meet the fundamental interests of the people," he said.
Protect
"On the other hand, every country should choose its own way to promote and protect human rights in line with its national conditions.
"There is no uniform standard with regard to national human rights action plans, national human rights institutions or human rights education."
Tang linked human rights abuses to poverty and said this had to be addressed first since economic development would stem rights abuses.
"For the people of many countries in our region, poverty and backwardness remain the biggest hurdle to surmount before they can enjoy human rights fully," he told the symposium.
"Under such circumstances, we have no other choice but to make the realisation of the right to development and the promotion of economic, social and cultural rights our most pressing task.
"We should focus on development, using it as a way to promote human rights and address relevant difficulties and problems in this process so that our people will be able to enjoy fundamental human rights at a higher level."
Arbour, who is in China on a five-day mission centred around China's compliance with UN recommendations on improving its rights record, urged it and other nations quickly to ratify relevant human rights agreements.
Ratified
"Only three of the 52 (countries in the Asia-Pacific region) have ratified all seven core human rights treaties, with 12 more having ratified six," she said.
"Implementation of rights requires that those rights be entrenched in law. The process begins with the ratification of human rights treaties.
"May I take this opportunity, therefore, to urge all member states present who have not yet done so to ratify these core instruments."
In China activists highlight a lack of religious and media freedoms, the forced repatriation of North Korean refugees and the bloody suppression of protests over rising social problems as key issues of concern.
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