The United States is likely to call for international criticism of China’s human rights record at the upcoming meeting of the United Nations’ top human rights body, a senior U.S. official said.
The Bush administration is moving toward introducing a resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Commission condemning China because last year “it was radio silence from Beijing” in addressing human rights concerns, the official said Wednesday on condition of anonymity.
At the 2003 session, the United States decided not to introduce a China resolution because Beijing took some significant steps on human rights in 2002: It invited the Dalai Lama’s representative to visit for the first time in 20 years, it talked to the U.S. special representative on Tibet, and it released more political prisoners than in any year in the 1990s, the official said.
China routinely rejects scrutiny of its human rights record as interference in its affairs. But the communist government has begun in recent years to acknowledge a need for change, albeit on Chinese terms.
Washington is concerned that more and more Chinese are being arrested, that in several cases lawyers trying to defend clients are ending up in jail, and that only two prominent prisoners were released in 2003, the official said.
China’s human rights record was the subject of a lengthy discussion at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on January 29. According to a transcript, Lorne Craner, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, raised the possibility of introducing a resolution criticizing China.
“As a result of our concern about backsliding across a range of key human rights issue, the U.S. is seriously considering sponsoring a resolution on human rights in China at this spring’s U.N. commission, a decision that will be made at the highest levels of our government,” Craner said.
In the past, China has blocked U.S. attempts to get the 53-member U.N. Human Rights Commission to pass critical resolutions.
