China angrily suspended dialogue on human rights with the United States on Tuesday, one day after Washington said it would seek to criticize the mainland's rights record at a U.N. conference. The rights dispute "has already seriously damaged the foundation of the dialogue and exchange on human rights between the two countries," Assistant Foreign Minister Shen Guofang was quoted as saying on the Foreign Ministry's Web site. "China has to immediately suspend the dialogue and exchanges."
| "They keep picking on us!" |
China rejects criticism of its human rights record, but has carried on dialogues on the issue with the United States, the European Union and other governments since the mid-1990s. In past sessions of the high-level discussions, China has agreed to release some political detainees and to allow unconditional visits by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture and the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. In a separate statement, Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan expressed "strong dissatisfaction and opposition" to Washington's plans, announced Monday, to seek a resolution criticizing China's human rights record at the U.N. Human Rights Conference under way in Geneva. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States is disappointed by Beijing's failure to keep promises made during a U.S.-China human rights dialogue in 2002. He said China also failed to follow through on its stated intention to expand cooperation on human rights in 2003. "We are concerned about backsliding on key human rights issues that has occurred in a variety of areas since that time," Boucher said. At its annual legislative session this month, China's lawmakers added the first-ever mention of human rights to the constitution, though it was ambiguous and made no reference to political freedom.
| "It means what we intend it to mean, nothing more and nothing less." |
Even so, Shen said it was a sign of "apparent progress. Human rights in China are definitely not deteriorating and backsliding like the United States says." Such a resolution has been introduced almost every year at the convention since Beijing's 1989 violent crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square, when hundreds, if not thousands, died. The United States decided not to seek a resolution against China at last year's conference because it said Beijing had made limited but significant progress on human rights. But in its annual report on human rights released in February, the State Department criticized the mainland for "backsliding" on the issue since then. Arrests of democracy activists and others who defied authorities have dashed hopes for a continuation of the "unprecedented" progress achieved the year before, the report said. Harsh repression of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement and a crackdown on Internet dissent continued, the report said. The government also used the war on terror to justify a continuing crackdown on Muslim Uighurs in the country's far west, it said.
| I kinda-sorta almost agree with the Chinese on this point. They did recently add a provision to their constitution protecting property rights. If they take it seriously, that's a good-sized dent in the armor of despotism. |
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