Despite difficulties, China’s human rights cause is making steady progress 　　 　　In the first half of this year, the newsroom at Beijing Youth Daily was bombarded with readers’ calls complaining about lavatory sanitation in big hospitals in Beijing. “These hospitals have the most cutting-edge medical equipment in Beijing or even in China. But the sanitation of their lavatories is unbearable,’’ said one complainant. It was not long before several journalists from the newspaper conducted a secret investigation into 20 big hospitals in Beijing and put together a front-page story on the deplorable lavatory conditions in most top hospitals in Beijing on August 24.
　　A copy of this page was on display at the first-ever exhibition on human rights in China held from November 17 to 26. The caption for this exhibit read, “This is a reflection of the public’s right to know even when it might harm the interests of some institutions and some powerful people.”
　　The recent exhibition was held to commemorate the 40th anniversary of two milestone international pacts on human rights, namely, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
　　Dong Yunhu is the deputy director of the China Society for Human Rights Studies, one of the sponsors of the exhibition. He said this was the first time an exhibition was held to showcase China’s progress in the human rights area. “For a long time, we refused to use the term ‘human rights’ and rarely reflected on China’s history from the perspective of human rights. This posed practical difficulties for the planning of this exhibition,” Dong said.
　　He said “human rights” used to be a taboo subject in the country, even as mid-19th century imperialism and feudalism had led to many violations of human rights for the Chinese for almost a century. For decades after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in October 1949, China refused to include human rights in the Constitution or laws and also regarded it as a taboo subject in academia. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), under the influence of ultra-leftist thinking, “human rights” came in for harsh criticism as a capitalist concept and in practice, were totally ignored and severely trampled upon.
　　RIGHT TOUCH: Disabled and orphaned children at a Datong Social Welfare Institute in Shanxi Province enjoy their reading in the inviting interiors of a newly opened library
　　The tide was reversed from the late 1980s. In 1989, state leaders announced that Chinese people’s human rights are reflected in the second chapter of the Constitution on citizens’ basic rights and duties. November 1, 1991 witnessed the release of a white paper on China’s human rights by the State Council’s Information Office, which became the Chinese Government’s first official document on human rights. The document said the right to subsistence and development, as the primary human rights, were the pillars of the theoretical system of China’s human rights. In September 1997, human rights were written into the report of the 15th National Congress of Communist Party of China (CPC), which was the first time the concept appeared in a report of the Party’s national congress. The Amendments to the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, which were adopted at the Second Session of the 10th National People’s Congress on March 14, 2004, clearly stipulate that the “State respects and guarantees human rights.” Besides photographs, the other items of daily life covering different periods displayed at the exhibition ranged from antique telephones, bicycles and sewing machines to color TV sets and cell phones, capturing the rapid changes in Chinese society in its recent past. There were also exhibits showing the abolishment of the 2,600-year-old agricultural tax at the beginning of 2006 and the shrinkage of the population mired in poverty at an annual rate of 10 million, in the past 20 years.
　　Dong said Chinese civilization, dating back thousands of years, has always ensured the protection of the rights of minority groups, women, children and the disabled. “This is a feature of Chinese human rights,” he said.
　　To prove this, he points to China’s ethnic regional autonomy system, which is stipulated as a basic political system in China’s Constitution. The system serves as a guarantee to the ethnic minorities of their special rights according to law and an equal access to the fruits of the country’s development and modernization.
　　China’s founding father, late Chairman Mao Zedong, famously said, “Women hold up half the sky.” Chinese women can work in any vocation as men and are not discriminated against for getting married or starting a family. It is clearly stated in China’s Constitution that women enjoy the same rights as men in political, economic, cultural, social and family life.
　　“China has set up a legal system of safeguarding women’s interests, with the Constitution as the basis and the Law on the Protection of Rights and Interests of Women as a main pillar along with other related laws and regulations,” said Zhang Xiaoling, Director of the Human Research Center of the Party School of the CPC Central Committee.
　　In 1995, the Chinese Government detailed its first active initiative on promoting gender equality, and followed it with another in 2001. In the same year, the amended Law on Marriage for the first time introduced provisions banning domestic violence and compensation for women after divorce. The Law on Rural Land Contracts passed in 2003 stressed the equal rights to land of married, divorced and widowed women. The amended Law on the Protection of Rights and Interests of Women stipulates that gender equality is China’s basic national policy, opposes gender discrimination in the labor market and domestic violence and, for the first time, defines sexual harassment.
　　Zhang points out that a new trend in the development of women’s rights in China is the increasingly important role being played by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). She said China now has more than 10,000 NGOs for women’s rights, among which the All-China Women’s Federation is the biggest. Last year, local branches of this federation in 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions began hotlines for women in distress and subject to domestic violence.
　　Since the founding of the China Disabled Persons’ Federation (CDPF) in 1988, the Central Government has developed five-year development plans for the cause of disabled people and has been continuously increasing the budgetary provisions for it. Special funds have been allocated since 2003 to support the rehabilitation, education and poverty alleviation of the disabled. In drafting policies, government departments in health care, education and labor have been taking into consideration the special needs of the disabled and giving them preferential treatment.
　　On December 10, 2003, CDPF Chairman Deng Pufang was granted the UN Human Rights Award, which is given out every five years. As the eldest son of the chief architect of China’s reform, Deng Xiaoping, he was tortured at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution for his family background and ended up with paralyzed legs.
　　“Human rights are mankind’s pure and noble pursuit. I have personally suffered from a loss of dignity and freedom, which has made me value dignity and freedom even more,” said the man who is confined to a wheelchair. He also said he was grateful that he could personally experience the difficulties of the disabled and work relentlessly to safeguard their rights and improve their situation.
　　In line with its commitment to international cooperation on human rights, the Chinese Government has endorsed 22 UN treaties on human rights, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966).
　　At the 16th National Congress of the CPC, the General Secretary of the CPC Hu Jintao and the new central leadership put forward their people-oriented concepts of development and the idea of building a harmonious socialist society, placing unprecedented importance on respecting and guaranteeing human rights. Such moves mark a milestone in the progress of China’s human rights theories and practices.
　　“China has achieved great progress and accumulated rich experience in protecting and developing human rights,” said Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Nina Karpachova, who was speaking at a three-day symposium in Beijing between November 22 and 24 on respecting and promoting human rights and constructing a harmonious world. She said people from many countries were prejudiced against China as they were unaware of the real situation in Chinese human rights. Since 1995, she said, she had paid several visits to different provinces in China and had witnessed first hand the huge changes in these places. She believes China’s substantial progress in protecting human rights is closely linked to its economic development. “China’s rich experience in protecting human rights could serve as a good reference for developing countries at the same development stage as China,” said Karpachova.
　　Yet many Chinese people realize that there are problems and conflicts in the progress of the cause of human rights in the country. Several experts at the symposium said public education, communication and discussion on human rights as well as a strong legal system were needed to guarantee the realization of citizens’ rights. They agreed that on the one hand legislative, judicial and administrative authorities must do their duty but on the other, a popular culture of respecting and guaranteeing human rights must be nurtured and rooted in people’s hearts.
　　

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