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Human rights forum opens in China

BEIJING: United Nations rights chief Mary Robinson opened a regional forum on human rights in Beijing on Wednesday amid renewed criticism of China's own abuse of civil liberties.

Robinson was due to meet Chinese Vice Premier Qian Qichen on Thursday for talks on human rights designed to help clear the way for China to sign key international rights pacts.

Her visit comes just days after an annual U.S. State Department report said China's human rights record "deteriorated markedly" in 1999, citing suppression of religion, jailings of dissidents and political purges in Tibet.

Rights groups reported this week that Chinese authorities beat to death a member of the banned Falun Gong movement, refused to deliver medicine to a sick dissident in jail, and detained the parents of a Tibetan lama who escaped to India.

Robinson did not specifically refer to China's human rights record in a speech at the opening of the regional forum, but urged all participants to implement international rights pacts.

"We entered this century with an extensive array of international human rights norms and standards which governments have signed up to," Robinson said.

"The challenge is to implement them at a national level by embedding a culture of human rights based on knowledge, understanding and participation by those whose human rights are being secured."

China has signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees basic freedoms of religion, speech and assembly, as well as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

But it has yet to ratify either pact and must harmonise its legislation to meet the international norms they enshrine.

"China's ratification and application of the Covenants would extend their protection to a quarter of the world's population. There can be no more concrete reaffirmation of the universality of the human rights enshrined in the Covenants," Robinson said in a statement last week.

Robinson highlighted sexual, religious and racial discrimination as major problem areas in Asia.

"There is persistent, and in some cases, escalating discrimination against minorities, indigenous peoples and migrants," she said.

Rights groups have alleged that human rights abuses are extensive against natives of China's remote western regions of Xinjiang and Tibet, where ethnic minority groups are campaigning for independence.

Chinese officials strongly reject criticism of their human rights record, pointing instead to the rapid increase in standards of living across China over the past two decades.

"Countries have different national conditions, therefore, it is only natural that they have differences in their approach to the promotion and protection of human rights," Qian said at the forum's opening.-Reuters