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Saturday, February 26, 2000
 
UN rights chief to visit ahead of key vote

JOSEPHINE MA
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, will visit China next week, less than three weeks before a controversial debate pushed by the US in Geneva to censure China's human rights violations.

After a stopover in Hong Kong on Tuesday, Mrs Robinson will fly to Beijing for a workshop on Regional Co-operation for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in the Asia-Pacific region.

During her stay in Beijing, she is expected to meet officials from the Chinese Foreign Ministry and other departments to finalise details of technical co-operation between the UN and China, according to her spokesman, Jose Luis Diaz.

The discussions follow a Memorandum of Intent signed two years ago when Mrs Robinson last visited Beijing.

Mr Diaz said Mrs Robinson hoped to sign a Memorandum of Understanding during her visit, to kick start the co-operation programmes.

The programmes are designed to help China amend its legislation and reform its judiciary so that they can be compatible with two international human rights conventions it has signed.

Beijing signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1998 - a year after it signed a sister treaty on social and cultural rights.

But neither convention has been ratified by the National People's Congress.

Mr Diaz declined to comment on whether Mrs Robinson would raise issues such as the crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual movement and Tibet during her meetings with Chinese officials.

Sophie Woodman, a Hong Kong spokeswoman for Human Rights in China, said the chance that the rights resolution would be passed this year in Geneva hinged on "how hard the US is going to lobby other members".

She described the past year as a bad year for China's human rights situation and said people should not assume the resolution would fail when the rights commission begins its hearings on March 20.

  • Fang Jue, an advocate of political reform convicted of making illegal business deals, has complained to the Ministry of Justice that he is being treated unfairly in prison because he insists he is innocent, a rights group said yesterday.
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