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March 8, 2014 |
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Multiple sources, including the United States Department of State|U.S. State Department's annual People's Republic of China human rights reports, as well as studies from other groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have noted the PRC's well-documented abuses of human rights in violation of internationally recognized norms, stemming both from the authorities' intolerance of dissent and the inadequacy of legal safeguards for basic freedoms. Abuses reported have included arbitrary and lengthy incommunicado detention, including use of laogai (prison labor) and reeducation through labor (involuntary labor without trial), forced confessions, torture, and mistreatment of prisoners as well as severe restrictions on freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, religion, privacy, and worker rights. At the same time, mainland China's economic growth and reform since 1978 has improved dramatically the lives of over a billion Chinese, increased social mobility and expanded the scope of personal freedom. This has meant substantially greater freedom of travel, employment opportunity, educational and cultural pursuits, job and housing choices, and access to information. In all, this suggests a substantial rise in the quality of life/standard of living of the Chinese people, forming a certain contrast to China's reputation abroad. In recent years, the PRC has also passed new criminal and civil laws that provide additional safeguards to citizens. Village elections have been ostensibly carried out in approximately 80% of China's one million villages. The PRC government argues that the notion of human rights should include economic standards of living and measures of health and economic prosperity. In analyzing the situation of human rights in its own nation or abroad, China often takes into account social trends such as crime and poverty. In other words, when critiquing its internal situation, it sees the rise in the standard of living of the Chinese people as an indicator of improvement of the human rights situtation, and when looking at the situation abroad, often notes the high rate of crime and/or poverty in places reputedly having a high standard of human rights. Thus it must be noted that a significant difference of viewpoints may exist as to what constitutes human rights, making it difficult for direct comparison between analyses from the two sides. The PRC government argues that the PRC does have significant human rights problems include impartial access to the courts, the use of torture, lack of due process. However, the government argues that these issues can be and should be addressed within the current one-party political system, and that to push for fundamental change is foolish as it risks the tremendous economic gains that the PRC has accomplished over the last generation. In 2003, the United States declared that despite some positive momentum in that year, and greater signs that the People's Republic of China was willing to engage with the U.S. and others on this topic, there was still serious backsliding. The PRC government has acknowledged in principle the importance of protection of human rights and has purported to take steps to bring its human rights practices into conformity with international norms. Among these steps are signature of the International Convention on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights in October 1997 (ratified in March 2001) and signing of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights in October 1998 (not yet ratified). In 2002, the PRC released a significant number of political and religious prisoners, and agreed to interact with United Nations experts on torture, arbitrary detention and religion. However, international human rights groups assert that there has been virtually no movement on these promises, and that the PRC still has a long way to go in instituting the kind of fundamental systemic change that will protect the rights and liberties of all its citizens. China's capital, Beijing, has been chosen to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, but some groups consider the honor inappropriate in light of these alleged violations of human rights. Indeed, modernization, construction, and urban planning in Beijing, and specifically the process of preparing the city for visits and study by the International Olympic Committee is reported to have involved authoritarian measures possibly in violation of civil rights of some residents. See also: Media in China
Category:Mainland China Category:Human rights by country|China zh:中国人权状况 This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Human rights in China".
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