A leading Chinese human rights expert yesterday lashed out at a
US report accusing China of widespread rights abuse, dismissing the
report as "completely groundless" and its authors as being imbued
with a Cold War mentality.
Human Rights Watch, a US-based group, yesterday released its
annual report which criticized a handful of countries including
China for poor rights records. However, the group's judgment of
China "has no basis in fact", said Dong Yunhu, secretary-general of
the China Society for Human Rights Studies.
"This group (Human Rights Watch) always turns a blind eye to
China's progress in human rights protection, no matter how
remarkable it is," Dong said, adding that the group is imbued with
Cold War mentality when it comes to China, leading to inevitable
bias in its reports.
The Washington-based group criticized China for rights abuse in
a wide range of fields, particularly focusing on the country's
tightened control over the Internet, press and aid groups.
"The report is politically motivated," Dong said. "In reality,
China has made huge progress in human rights protection in the past
year."
"Human rights protection" was included in the guidelines for the
11th Five-Year Plan (2006-10) and "the
development of individual political rights" sits atop of the
country's development goals for the next five years, Dong said.
He pointed out that China had scrapped millennia-old
agricultural taxes, promised to provide free nine-year education
and tightened control over the death penalty.
Dong further defended the government's supervision of the
Internet, calling the measure an attempt to facilitate citizens'
right of expression, not to suffocate freedom of speech.
"No matter how much China improves its human rights, Human
Rights Watch will always claim that rights abuses are getting more
serious," Dong said.
(Xinhua News Agency January 12, 2007)
