China touted its political and development model as it
hosted an inaugural global human rights forum on Thursday, even as
activists slammed the country's own abuses.
President Xi
Jinping has overseen a sweeping crackdown on civil society since taking
power in 2012, targeting everyone from human rights lawyers to celebrity
gossip bloggers.
Hundreds of activists have been detained in the past five years while internet censorship has intensified.
And
China became the first country since Nazi Germany to allow a Nobel
Peace Prize laureate to die in state custody when democracy activist Liu Xiaobo succumbed to liver cancer under heavy police guard in July.
But
some 300 participants gathered in Beijing's Great Hall of the People to
hear about the country's “human rights development path with Chinese
characteristics” at the South-South Human Rights Forum.
Some attendees came from countries with their own checkered human rights record.
“There's
no one size fits all approach in human rights practices,” said Chinese
Foreign Minister Wang Yi. “No one is in a position to lecture others on
human rights.”
He highlighted China's achievements in poverty reduction as an example of the country's efforts to improve rights.
Beijing says it has reduced its poverty rate to four per cent and seeks to eradicate poverty by 2020.
But
forum attendee Zhu Liyu, deputy director of the Centre for Human Rights
at Renmin University, pointed out that such calculations were based on
the country's official poverty line, much lower than that of other
nations.
“The standard for poverty here is very low. I think we should raise it,” he told AFP.
The overseas NGO Chinese Human Rights Defenders said Thursday that China's focus on economic development had taken a toll.
“In
the past few decades, this 'China model' has left behind countless
people in China, victimised by breakneck growth at the expense of basic
protection from discrimination, exploitation, and abuse of power,” it
said in a statement.
“The 'secret' of the 'China success'
hinges on squashed protests, silenced complaints, and swollen jails and
extrajudicial holding cells,” it added.
'China's answer'
The inaugural forum comes two months after Xi outlined his
vision of turning China into a major superpower by mid-century at a
Communist Party congress that confirmed his status as the most powerful
Chinese leader in decades.
In November, Donald Trump
repeatedly praised Xi during his state visit to Beijing during which the
US president did not publically address China's human rights record.
The
forum included diplomats, scholars and government officials from
developing countries, as well as representatives from the United
Nations, the World Bank, the World Health Organization.
“This
is China's answer to the question of where human society is heading,”
Wang said of the forum.
Representatives of countries such as Tajikistan and Afghanistan with
questionable human rights track records of their own took to the podium
to extoll the Chinese model.
Burundi's presidential
office spokesman Willy Nyamttwe said he was honoured to attend the forum
as his country sought “solutions that can counterbalance Western
diktats that through their propaganda instruments, the media and NGOs,
are tarnishing the image of developing countries.”
Last month, UN human rights investigators said they believed Burundi's top leaders had committed crimes against humanity.
Chinese Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo loses battle against cancer
China's Nobel peace prize laureate Liu Xiaobo died on
Thursday aged 61 after losing a battle with cancer, authorities said,
more than a month after he was transferred to a hospital from prison.
The legal bureau in the northeastern city of Shenyang, where he had been hospitalised, confirmed his death in a statement.
On
July 10, The First Hospital of China Medical University, where he was
being treated, had said that the Nobel laureate was in a critical
condition, raising fears about his life after Western doctors said there
was time to take him abroad.
Human rights activists
however, had termed the hospital statement as a delay tactic to prevent
Liu from getting his wish of going abroad, where they said he would be
free to speak out.
Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize for
championing reform and human rights in 2010. He was jailed for 11 years
by the Chinese government for subversion in 2009.
Announcing
his award, Norwegian Nobel Committee president Thorbjoern Jagland had
said that the writer and university professor was honoured “for his long
and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China”.
