New York Times: Beijing, Turning Tables, Defends Its Repression of [group]

February 28, 2001

BEIJING, Feb. 27 The Chinese government lashed out today in frustration against critics of its harsh crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual movement, making strenuous new efforts to paint the group as [Chinese government's slanderous words], and accusing the United States and other critics of harboring "ulterior motives."

The government also responded angrily to the State Department report on Monday that condemned China's rights record in 2000, and issued its own counterreport, "U.S. Human Rights Record in 2000." It detailed, for example, the large number of deaths by gunfire, the role of big money in election campaigns and the growth in the American prison population.

China is trying to polish its human rights image in part to aid its bid to play host to the 2008 Olympics.

Today the United Nations commissioner for human rights, Mary Robinson, who is visiting Beijing, said officials had indicated that China might ratify the United Nations Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as early as Wednesday. But it was not clear, she said, whether China would fully accept the most sensitive clause, on free labor unions.

In a meeting with Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan, Ms. Robinson made a special plea on grounds of compassion for the release of a prominent democracy advocate, Xu Wenli, who was sentenced in 1998 to 13 years in prison and is said to be ill with hepatitis. She said Mr. Tang had promised to "look into it."

At a news conference specially called today by the State Council, China's cabinet, the head of a new anticult office likened the outlawed Falun Gong to [Chinese government's slanderous words]. ...

Falun Gong, started in 1992 by Li Hongzhi, a former low-level official now living in the United States, attracted millions of Chinese with its blend of traditional meditative techniques and promises of spiritual salvation and physical well-being. It was outlawed in July 1999 after the group staged an audacious demonstration outside the leadership compound in Beijing to demand official recognition.

The widely reported harassment, arrests and beatings of Falun Gong followers have attracted growing international censure, a source of great frustration to Chinese officials, who say that other countries have also taken decisive, even violent actions to control "[Chinese government's slanderous word]" and that the critics apply a double standard.

In meetings with senior officials here over the last two days and in a briefing for reporters, Ms. Robinson described her deep concern over the manner in which the crackdown on Falun Gong has been conducted.

"I emphasized that it's important to bear in mind at all times that individual Falun Gong members have human rights that must be respected," she said.

"It is very clear that the rights of individual members are being violated," she told reporters after an international meeting on China's system of "re-education through labor." That system, under which police authorities can send people accused of minor crimes to labor camps for up to three years with no judicial oversight, has reportedly been used to detain thousands of Falun Gong believers.

Ms. Robinson said she told China's justice minister that if China is to comply with internationally accepted standards of civil rights, as it says it intends to, then the labor re-education system must be abolished.

"There is no due process," she said at the briefing. "The system is inherently arbitrary."

She said the minister, Zhang Fusen, defended the system which is often used to jail drug users, prostitutes and petty criminals as well as political and religious dissidents ?as an important tool for rehabilitating people. But he did say it was open to improvement, Ms. Robinson said. Parliament is currently discussing how to revise the law governing labor re-education.

Mr. Liu, the head of the anticult office, would neither confirm nor deny estimates by rights monitors that 5,000 or more Falun Gong adherents had been taken to labor re- education camps. But he painted a radically different picture of those prison farms than is usually given by former inmates.

"The legitimate rights of people receiving re-education through labor are fully guaranteed by law," he said. The camps are governed by principles of "education, persuasion and redemption," he added, and inmates are treated "like teachers treat students, like doctors treat patients, like parents treat their children."

Mr. Liu also would not comment directly on reports that more than 100 Falun Gong members have died in police custody, instead changing the subject to what he called the [Chinese government's slanderous words]. ... Falun Gong leaders insist that the founder and spiritual master, Mr. Li, has never called on practitioners to commit suicide, that in fact he forbids it, and that he has not demanded that followers forgo medical treatment.

Of followers known to have died of illness, the government has not tried to determine how many were attracted to the spiritual movement as a last desperate measure after they had already been diagnosed with terminal cancers or other diseases.

Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company