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China warns US against UN rights censure

BEIJING: China warned the United States on Monday against censuring Beijing at the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, just days after abruptly ending criminal proceedings against a U.S.-based librarian and setting him free.

Vice-Foreign Minister Wang Guangya said bilateral human rights dialogue would suffer a serious setback if the United States backed a resolution critical of China at the commission in Geneva in March, the official China Daily reported.

"A dialogue on human rights between China and the U.S. will not be possible if no concrete steps are taken by the U.S. to eliminate the adverse effects of the anti-China resolution," Wang said.

The dialogue was suspended last May after NATO bombed Beijing's embassy in Belgrade during the war over Kosovo. NATO and the United States said the bombing was a mistake.

On Saturday, China freed Song Yongyi, 50, a Chinese-born librarian at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, who had been held for more than five months on suspicion of stealing state secrets.

Wang said the plan to censure China's human rights record in Geneva was without justification and doomed to failure.

"China now has the best human rights situation in its history," the vice-minister said.

"The Chinese people have enjoyed ever better social, economic and cultural rights," he said, citing the signing of two U.N. rights covenants but which have yet to be ratified by parliament.

UNDERMINE CHINA'S STABILITY

Wang accused anti-China forces in the United States of using human rights as an excuse to undermine China's political stability and development.

"Confrontation will not solve any problems," Wang said. "No one should venture to be the teacher of others."

"Differences between developed and developing countries over human rights should not become an obstacle to the development of their relations, nor a means to interfere in others' internal affairs," he said.

Last week, U.S. State Department spokesman James Rubin said China's human rights performance had deteriorated and that Washington would sponsor a resolution critical of Beijing at the Geneva commission.

Rubin cited Beijing's harsh crackdown on the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement and restrictions on freedom of speech, dissent and religion.

Wang was adamant. To tolerate Falun Gong, branded by the government as an evil cult, would be to trample on the basic human rights of citizens, he said.

Beijing says about 1,400 practitioners of Falun Gong - a mishmash of Buddhism, Taoism, meditation and breathing exercises designed to harness energy in the body and to heal - have died after refusing medical attention when ill.

Washington pushed for a critical resolution at the Geneva commission last year, but it failed to attract European support and was quashed.

In 1998 the United States, citing improvements in China's rights record, did not support such a resolution, but it had done so in previous years.

Wang took a swipe at the United States, noting that Congress had yet to ratify the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and that it took years for Congress to approve the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

He accused Washington of practising double standards - using military force to suppress the Branch Davidian cult but criticising China's crackdown on Falun Gong.

Wang said the plan to censure China's human rights record showed that "some people in the United States cling obstinately to the Cold War mentality and are trying to put political pressure on China".-Reuters