April 02, 1999	atimes.com

China Beijing confident of evading a UN scolding By Antoaneta Bezlova BEIJING - News that Washington will resurrect efforts to get a United Nations resolution condemning China's human rights record angered Beijing, but has done little to dampen its confidence that it will come out a winner from the annual battle over human rights. On a landmark visit to China last year, U.S. President Bill Clinton praised Chinese President Jiang Zemin as a politician with vision. But now the temper of times has changed. Clinton has bowed to pressure from both houses of Congress, which voted unanimously to ask him to pursue a resolution against China's rights record at the ongoing meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva. The announcement, made by the White House on the weekend, enraged Beijing. Last year, China averted the pursuit of a critical resolution at the commission meeting by engaging in a human rights dialogue with a number of the European Union countries. A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in the United States described Washington's move as a ''step backward." ''They did this seven times. Seven times they failed. If they are trying again, they will certainly fail again,'' Yu Shuning was quoted as saying. ''We request the U.S. government to change this wrong decision." Whatever Washington does, Beijing is confident it will escape formal censure at this year's Geneva meeting, by gathering the necessary support as it did those seven times from 1990 until 1997. China has already got the backing of the European Union, which has rejected calls to support a motion. Foreign ministers from the 15-member bloc opted for the continuation of a human rights dialogue with Beijing, which a number of EU governments including Britain and France believe has begun to yield some progress. The EU decision was hailed by Jiang, who is touring Europe while the UN Human Rights Commission is meeting in Geneva. Speaking on different occasions in Italy, Switzerland and Austria, Jiang stressed the importance of the Chinese-EU partnership. He attributed to historical and cultural reasons the divergence of views on human rights between Western countries and China. ''Divergence of views should be handled through dialogue and should not hurt bilateral friendly cooperation,'' Jiang told Austrian President Thomas Klestil in Vienna. Yet he contradicted himself while in Bern, Switzerland, where human rights protesters disrupted a welcoming ceremony for him. Outraged that the government had not taken measures to keep protesters away, Jiang scoffed at the ceremony and remarked that Switzerland ''has lost a good friend''. The U.S. decision to revive its tradition of criticizing China at Geneva meetings comes as a consequence of Beijing's renewed crackdown on dissent. Since last year China has rounded up all leading members of the outlawed opposition Democracy Party, cracked down on the use of the Internet and other media as political tools and treated harshly its Christian minority. Said Xiao Qiang, executive director of Human Rights in China, an independent human rights watchdog based in New York: ''We are witnessing the harshest crackdown in China since 1989'' - the year of Tiananmen massacre of pro-democracy protesters. The watchdog criticized the EU's decision not to sponsor an anti-China resolution in Geneva. It said the EU mistakes token gestures, like sending dissidents from prison into exile, for genuine efforts to improve China's human rights situation. An Asian diplomat in Beijing agrees: ''They prefer talking to acting. They signed the two UN treaties on rights and got applause worldwide. But it might be years before the parliament ratifies them,'' and even then the authorities will implement them in ways they consider ''suitable'' for China. China has added its name to the signatories of the two major international treaties on human rights. It signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights last fall after joining the treaty on economic, social and cultural rights in 1997. At the annual press conference on the closing of the parliament's session this month, Premier Zhu Rongji defended China's human rights record. He admitted that the record was not perfect but blamed the shortcomings on the country's previous long history as a ''feudal society and dictatorship,'' a history that the 50-year-old Communist China inherited. ''How could we possibly resolve all the problems accumulated through several thousand years of feudal rule within such a short period of 50 years?'' he asked. After encouraging ''foreign friends to criticize our work'', Zhu warned them ''not to support these so-called pro-democracy activists." ''If these people were to return to China, then there would be no legal system, no democracy, no rule of law in China,'' he said. ''There would not be such a situation as you would imagine,'' added Zhu, whose trip to the United States next week is expected again to touch on human rights issues. (Inter Press Service)

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