Long way to go before fully enjoying human rights: China tells her people/ENG

http://www.phayul.com/news/article.aspx?id=31571&article=Long+way+to+go+before+fully+enjoying+human+rights%3a+China+tells+her+people

DHARAMSHALA, June 12: In a national human rights “protection” plan aimed for the next three years, China has sent a clear message to its 1.3 billion citizens that they have a “long way to go” before “fully enjoying” their basic human rights.

The People’s Republic of China in its second National Human Rights Action Plan (2012-2015) released Monday, listed “natural, historical, cultural, economic, and social factors” as challenges in the “development of its human rights cause,” while choosing to leave out its authoritative one party rule and lack of political democracy as hindrances.

China’s renewed pledge to take steps to protect rights of defendants in death penalty cases, ensure religious freedoms, make government more transparent, and work for the happiness and dignity of its people, however was received with scepticism and well-placed doubts by international observers.

Madeline Earp, a senior researcher at the Committee to Protect Journalist’s Asia Program, expressed concerns over the plan serving as a “blueprint for continuing restrictions.”

“There is no section dedicated to press freedom,” Earp complained. “The plan also allows Xinhua to state that "China has made considerable progress in human rights protection" while remaining silent on data which contradicts that claim, like the 27 journalists CPJ documented behind bars in China in 2011.”

The Dharamshala based rights group, Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, in a release today said that early expectations from the four-year plan might be “naively optimistic.”

“It is difficult to say whether this new plan will bring any real improvement in the human rights situation in Tibet and China,” TCHRD said. “Given the dismal performance during the first plan period, any early expectations might end up being premature and naively optimistic.”

This current plan was preceded by the NHRAP (2009-2010), China’s first formal document supposedly guaranteeing human rights to Chinese citizens.

Although the first national plan generated some enthusiasm, raising hopes amongst Chinese citizens as well as international observers that the document’s provisions would be implemented, by the end of its period, everyone realised that it was not to be.

Human Rights Watch in its ‘World Report 2012’ noted that China, despite of its human rights plan, continues to be an “authoritarian one-party state that imposes sharp curbs on freedom of expression, religion; openly rejects judicial independence and press freedom; and arbitrarily restricts and suppresses human rights defenders and organisations, often through extra-judicial measures.”

“On June 12, 2011, despite the steady deterioration in China’s human rights environment, the Chinese government declared it had fulfilled “all tasks and targets” of its National Human Rights Action Plans (2009-2010),” HRW noted in its report.