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China's top legislature, the National People's Congress (NPC),
kicked start a landmark Constitutional amendment which is expected
to enshrine human rights protection for the first time in Beijing
Monday afternoon.
The State respects and protects human rights," says the new
expression to be added to Article 33 of Chapter two of the existing
Constitution, which has undergone three overhauls since its
promulgation in 1982.
"It's a consistent principle adopted by the Party and the State
to respect and protect human rights. To write this principle into
the Constitution will further provide a legal guarantee for its
implementation," said Wang Zhaoguo, vice chairman of the NPC
Standing Committee, while explaining the draft amendment to a full
meeting of the lawmakers.
The approval of the Constitutional amendments requires a
two-third overwhelming majority of the nearly 3,000 deputies to the
NPC, currently in the middle of a 10-day annual full session in
Beijing.?????
The inclusion of human rights protection in the Constitution is
also "conducive to the development of China's socialist human
rights undertakings, as well as exchanges and cooperation with the
international community in the human rights field," said Wang in
his explanation.
Actually, the 15th and 16th National Congresses of the Communist
Party of China (CPC), convened in 1997 and 2002 respectively, have
explicitly stated the Party's commitment to respecting and
safeguarding human rights, Wang noted.
The current Constitutional amendments were proposed by the CPC
Central Committee last October and adopted by the NPC Standing
Committee in December.
"The proposal to write human rights protection into the
Constitution itself is an unusual event which marks a significant
progress for China," commented Zhu Guanglei, a law professor with
the Tianjin-based Nankai University.
"Just 20 years ago, human rights was still regarded as a
so-called 'capitalist notion' in China, but now it's going to have
a place in the country's fundamental law. This development shows
what a great leap forward China has achieved in human rights
protection over the past two decades," said Zhu.
However, as a developing country which has to feed more than one
fifth of the global population with only 7 percent of the world's
farmland, China has its own understanding of human rights which
differs from that of western developed countries.
For the Chinese people in the current development stage, rights
to subsistence and development are the fundamental and therefore
most important human rights to pursue, the Chinese government has
repeatedly said.
At a press conference held on the sidelines of the ongoing NPC
session Saturday afternoon, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing
cited the sharp increase in the Chinese people's life expectancy to
71 years in 2003 from a mere 35 years in 1949 as indisputable
evidence for the country's human rights progress.
"The conception that China is weak in terms of human rights is a
big mistake," said the minister.
In the 12 years between 1990 and 2001, the United States had for
10 times instigated or tabled draft resolutions in the United
Nations Commission on Human Rights in an attempt to censure China
on its human rights records, but had ended in failure every
time.
(Xinhua News Agency March 8, 2004)
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