Chinese gov releases 2 year human rights campaign

[Juche]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090413/ap_on_re_as/as_china_human_rights

BEIJING – China released its first human rights action plan Monday, pledging to improve the treatment of minorities and do more to prevent the torture of detainees but said that raising living standards would remain a central goal................The two-year plan promises the communist government will do more to prevent illegal detention and torture, and to boost the overall living standard of minorities, women, the unemployed and the disabled.

But it says a central tenet of its policy remains ensuring Chinese people have the right to make money.
China drew up the plan as part of preparations for its first examination before the U.N. Human Rights Council earlier this year.

Joshua Rosenzweig, research manager for the Dui Hua Foundation, a U.S.-based human rights group, said the plan was notable because it seemed to have more input from academics, activists and other elements of civil society than the government's previous human rights reports.

He also said issuing a plan with benchmarks, instead of a report summing up past progress, was also an "important step."

On preventing prisoner abuse, the plan promises that detainees, their families and the community will be informed of detainees' rights as well as law-enforcement standards and procedures.

It calls for a physical barrier between detainees and interrogators and mandatory physical examinations for detainees before and after they are questioned to prevent abuse.

Prisoners should be allowed to meet with a dedicated prison staffer to complain if they have suffered abuse, it said.

A recent string of inmate deaths in China that have sparked public concern. Since Feb. 8, at least five prisoners have reportedly died while in detention awaiting trial, the youngest just 18 years old, state media reported earlier.

Such accusations are widespread, with rights groups and Chinese media frequently reporting cases of prisoners being beaten or tortured. Authorities have prosecuted some of the worst offenders, but the charges persist..............Rosenzweig criticized the government for setting modest goals and not including more specifics.

"They have set some pretty soft targets for themselves," he said.






In all seriousness, if they intend to follow up on this then this is good news. China has 1/5 of the world's population. My understanding is the human rights/environmental movement has accelerated in the last 10 years, and hopefully it will get better in the future.

[Juche]

1. Really? Nobody?

This is a good move if they intend to follow through.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123964453347914161.html

The 22,000-word, two-year plan outlines the government's aim for broader access to social security, health care and education. The death penalty will be "strictly controlled and prudently applied," it states, adding that defendants will be guaranteed fair trials. Forced confessions by torture and the mistreatment of detainees will be prohibited. These rights are to be "promoted and protected" within two years, the document said.

The plan also reiterates the longstanding, and much-criticized, position of Beijing that economic rights are paramount. "In the light of the basic situation of China, we should put the people's rights to subsistence and development at the top priority of human rights' protection," the document states.

The government aims by 2010 to create 18 million new jobs and transfer 18 million farmers out of rural areas, keeping unemployment rates in cities within 5%. Farmers' income is to jump by 6% each year, from the 4,761 yuan ($700) achieved in 2008.

Amnesty International criticized the plan's focus on economic, social and cultural rights at "the expense of political rights." But the group said if the promised improvements are made, it would represent "important steps forward for human rights."

[Occam Bandage]

2. This is interesting. The fact that the Chinese are even releasing such a plan,

even if they do not follow through fully, is a testament to the effectiveness of sustained international engagement as opposed to the pariah politics America generally prefers to play with nations like Cuba, Iran, Myanmar, and North Korea.

[Juche]

3. China is now kicking our ass on some domestic issues

The Chinese are starting to take environmentalism and global warming more seriously than we do, and now they are considering banning torture while in the US we are largely still in denial that we even engage in it. China is putting 180 billion USD into renewables between 2006-2020, and I have heard due to the environmental disaster over there that they are starting to take clean, renewable energy more seriously than we do.

We really need to get our act together if a developing economy and dictatorship can best us in things like that.

[Occam Bandage]

4. We've already banned torture.

I'm not certain why you'd believe that American authorities are more likely to disobey ethical guidelines than Chinese authorities are. China has a millennia-long history of systematic falsification of reports, after all--and even then, Beijing making noises about cutting back on the state-sponsored torture and execution of political dissidents is not even remotely comparable on the "human rights success" board even to Bush at his absolute worst.

When photographs of the Dalai Lama remain contraband, when the military is still used to suppress protests (after journalists are removed from the area, of course); when Falun Gong members are still regularly disappeared; when backyard factories can operate for years without so much as a first inspection for safety or emission standards; when you can feel the grit of the Beijing air in your nose and mouth and tongue; when emissions standards are treated as optional guidelines followed only by the most visible factories in neo-Potemkin villages; when teenaged full-body-industrial-burn victims languish in miserable, ignored solitude on the streets, begging for what the state will not provide; when the grand facades of downtown Shanghai and Guangzhou are covering hundreds of miles of uninterrupted squalor and poverty I find it hard to accept that China is "now kicking our ass" in any regard.

They are making astounding progress, and their government is reacting quickly and intelligently to the current economic crisis. China may well overtake us in most if not all regards by the time this century is half over, and perhaps even one quarter over. Still, I think it's a bit premature to equate "China is beginning to talk about maybe making some progress in field X" with "China is beating us in field X."

[Juche]

5. No we haven't

We've ratified the UN convention against torture, but there is ample evidence that we have wiggled around it and as a nation are now largely in denial that we are a country that tortures people.

Our human rights record is much better than Chinas though, and you are right I overshot with my last post. BUt I never said US authorities are more likely to disobey ethical guidelines. I don't know where you are getting that, and you are grossly exaggering what I was trying to say. I never meant to say China had a better human rights record than we do, but that it is embarassing that they are starting to take environmentalism more seriously than us and that they are willing to release a human rights statement banning torture while here in the US our politicians are busy trying to figure out how to cover our own torture up. It used to be that politicians would say 'we won't act on global warming until China does' but China is starting to take the issue more seriously than we do. The fact that they would release a human rights agenda both admitting to and banning torture while our own government tries to cover torture up just adds insult to injury.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcz_NHAFGS0