March 23 – China protested a U.S. resolution prepared for a United Nations commission that criticizes the Chinese government for “backsliding” on human rights.
Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Shen Guofang summoned U.S. Ambassador Clark Randt to protest the censure, saying the U.S. had reneged on efforts to resolve human rights differences through talks, China’s Foreign Ministry said on its Web site.
The resolution prepared for the UN Commission on Human Rights cites arrests last year of democracy activists and Internet dissidents, repression of Tibetan Buddhists and the detention of people for their religious or political views, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday.
The U.S. resolution is its first against China since 2001. The U.S. government, which proposed resolutions against China throughout the 1990s, wasn’t on the Human Rights Commission in 2002 and didn’t file a complaint last year after saying it saw progress on Tibet’s status and increased releases of Chinese political prisoners.
China opposes any form of interference in its internal affairs, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said. Politicization of the human rights issue by the U.S. will face opposition from the international community, it said.
“We’re concerned about backsliding on key human rights issues” since 2002, Boucher said at a briefing in Washington. “Our goal in sponsoring this resolution is to encourage China to take positive, concrete steps to meet its international obligations to protect human rights,” he said.
The Bush administration said last month it intended to raise China’s human rights record at the commission’s six-week annual session in Geneva, which began March 15.
Series of Arrests
“We’re just seeing a continuing series of arrests and practices that we believe go against the idea that human rights are respected or enshrined in Chinese law,” Boucher said. “And we hope to see those practices change.”
The resolution will be circulated in Geneva soon, he said.
“We’ll be discussing the text with other governments in the coming days,” Boucher said. “That may produce co-sponsors” for the resolution, he said.
China has successfully blocked debate on previous U.S. resolutions at the commission, which consists of 53 nations elected to the body.
