China dropped from US list of top human rights violators
Prone to exploitation: Labourers work at a construction site of the Beijing-Tianjin high-speed passenger rail line in Tianjin municipality on Sunday. China's army of migrant construction workers face routine exploitation and need better protection, benefits and the right to strike, Human Rights Watch said yesterday.Picture: Reuters
Thursday, March 13, 2008
THE United States dropped China from its list of the world's worst human rights violators, but added Syria, Uzbekistan and Sudan to the category in an annual report released on Tuesday.
The State Department's 2007 Human Rights Report said however that China, which has raised hopes internationally that it would improve human rights by hosting the 2008 Olympics, still had a poor human rights records overall.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the report was aimed at highlighting the struggle for human rights around the world.
"In the long run, we are confident that citizens who sacrifice for their dignity and their rights will prevail, just as the Havels and the Mandelas did before them," Rice told reporters.
"Change may, indeed, change will take time, but change will come."
The State Department said in the report that "countries in which power was concentrated in the hands of unaccountable rulers remained the world's most systematic human rights violators".
It then listed 10 in that category: North Korea, Myanmar, Iran, Syria, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Eritrea and Sudan.
A State Department spokesman though, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters "there is no statutory significance to this list", meaning it does not legally affect the status of relations with Washington.
China had been fingered as one of the worst violators in the 2006 and 2005 reports.
This year China was classified among authoritarian countries that are undergoing economic reform and rapid social change, but which "have not undertaken democratic political reform", the report said.
But China's "overall human rights record remained poor" in 2007, it added, citing tightened controls on religious freedom in Tibetan areas and in northwestern Xinjiang.
"The government also continued to monitor, harass, detain, arrest, and imprison activists, writers, journalists, and defence lawyers and their families, many of whom were seeking to exercise their rights under the law."
Although there had been some progress in the legal system, "efforts to reform or abolish the re-education-through-labour system remained stalled," it said.
In seeking to explain China's change of status, another State Department official told AFP: "This year the decision was made that we should make the point that although China has undergone all this economic progress, we haven't seen any progress on political reform."
But the official, who asked not to be named, insisted: "We're not pulling punches with China" and denied any link with the Olympic Games.
Human rights groups though criticised the report.
"For our purposes it's not particularly helpful one way or the other to say this year China was seventh and this year it's 11th. It's a question of whether the full range of abuses has gotten properly addressed," said Sophie Richardson, from Human Rights Watch.
"We're of the view that the human rights situation in China is actually certainly not improving and particularly that there are abuses that are now taking place specifically because China is hosting the Olympics, " she added.
On the State Department's second list of authoritarian countries undergoing change, Venezuela, Nigeria, Thailand, Kenya and Egypt were listed along with China.
AFP
The State Department's 2007 Human Rights Report said however that China, which has raised hopes internationally that it would improve human rights by hosting the 2008 Olympics, still had a poor human rights records overall.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the report was aimed at highlighting the struggle for human rights around the world.
"In the long run, we are confident that citizens who sacrifice for their dignity and their rights will prevail, just as the Havels and the Mandelas did before them," Rice told reporters.
"Change may, indeed, change will take time, but change will come."
The State Department said in the report that "countries in which power was concentrated in the hands of unaccountable rulers remained the world's most systematic human rights violators".
It then listed 10 in that category: North Korea, Myanmar, Iran, Syria, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Eritrea and Sudan.
A State Department spokesman though, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters "there is no statutory significance to this list", meaning it does not legally affect the status of relations with Washington.
China had been fingered as one of the worst violators in the 2006 and 2005 reports.
This year China was classified among authoritarian countries that are undergoing economic reform and rapid social change, but which "have not undertaken democratic political reform", the report said.
But China's "overall human rights record remained poor" in 2007, it added, citing tightened controls on religious freedom in Tibetan areas and in northwestern Xinjiang.
"The government also continued to monitor, harass, detain, arrest, and imprison activists, writers, journalists, and defence lawyers and their families, many of whom were seeking to exercise their rights under the law."
Although there had been some progress in the legal system, "efforts to reform or abolish the re-education-through-labour system remained stalled," it said.
In seeking to explain China's change of status, another State Department official told AFP: "This year the decision was made that we should make the point that although China has undergone all this economic progress, we haven't seen any progress on political reform."
But the official, who asked not to be named, insisted: "We're not pulling punches with China" and denied any link with the Olympic Games.
Human rights groups though criticised the report.
"For our purposes it's not particularly helpful one way or the other to say this year China was seventh and this year it's 11th. It's a question of whether the full range of abuses has gotten properly addressed," said Sophie Richardson, from Human Rights Watch.
"We're of the view that the human rights situation in China is actually certainly not improving and particularly that there are abuses that are now taking place specifically because China is hosting the Olympics, " she added.
On the State Department's second list of authoritarian countries undergoing change, Venezuela, Nigeria, Thailand, Kenya and Egypt were listed along with China.
AFP
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