By Stephanie Nebehay
GENEVA, April 8 – The United States on Thursday called on the U.N. Human Rights Commission to urge China to allow investigations of reports it is repressing freedom of religion and expression.
The call came in a draft U.S. resolution presented to the 53-nation Commission, holding its annual six-week session, citing reports of “arrests and…severe sentences for those seeking to exercise their fundamental rights.”
The Commission, which has never passed a resolution on rights in China even after the violent suppression of student protesters on Tiananmen Square in 1989, will decide next week whether the text will go to a vote.
The U.S. draft cited reports of violations — as well as of “legal processes that continue to fall short of international norms of due process and transparency” — in Tibet and mostly Muslim Xinjiang as well as in other parts of China.
Diplomats said there were no immediate co-sponsors of the resolution, which prominent Chinese exile dissident Harry Wu, in Geneva for the session, told Reuters was “weak”.
China enjoys strong support among developing countries at the forum. It looks set once again to quash debate on its record through a procedural manoeuvre calling for “no action” on the U.S. resolution, diplomats said.
Beijing suspended its human rights dialogue with the United States last month, saying it had no alternative after Washington announced it would propose a resolution on China’s “backsliding” on key issues.
It has also distributed a booklet at the Commission detailing what it calls rights violations in the United States.
Washington has said China made some improvements in 2002 but that last year its rights record deteriorated with extrajudicial killings, torture and the repression of religious and political groups opposed to the Communist government.
Last year, U.S. officials did not offer a resolution — a decision that drew the wrath of human rights groups. The United States was not a member in 2002 and its last bid to censure China, in 2001, failed.
Despite heavy lobbying this year, the U.S. delegation has failed to convince other countries to sign up, diplomats said.
But Western countries will stand together to try to defeat any attempt by China to avoid scrutiny, diplomats said.
“The EU will not be a co-sponsor, but will vote in favour of the U.S. resolution. It will also vote against China’s no-action motion and will lobby very hard against it,” an European Union diplomat in Geneva told Reuters.
