Hold the Cheers for China’s Human Rights Action Plan

Kelsey McGalliard
April 25, 2009
9:20 am

Project 6521
When the Chinese communist regime appears to take a step forward in honoring human rights, congratulations have been offered by many around the world for the regime’s National Human Rights Action Plan. Perhaps these observers have forgotten that the regime has already guaranteed its citizens’ human rights in China’s Constitution. A look at how that document is honored gives a clue as to the meaning of the Action Plan. Forced labor camps are a simple example of how the regime violates the constitution. In these camps prisoners of conscience can be deprived of freedom for up to 4 years without any trial. Yet, Article 37 of China’s Constitution states that “No citizen may be arrested except with the approval or by the decision of a people’s procuratorate or of a people’s court.” The forced labor camp was established by Mao Zedong in 1957 for political purposes, to detain the “rightists”—in practice anyone whom the Party considered disloyal. The labor camps are still filled with those the Party wishes to suppress. According to a United Nations report, more than 100,000 peaceful Falun Gong adherents are detained and tortured in the labor camps. Other detainees include dissidents, independent writers, underground Catholics and house church Christians. Each year, when the National People’s Congress has its regular meeting, abolishment of forced labor camps is never put on the floor for discussion—even though the Chinese people have pressed hard on this issue.
When reading the rest of the article it really made me think why China is trying to prove to everyone that it is changing its human rights but I have a feeling that nothing is going to change. Looking at the situations with labor camps and how they are still practiced and in China’s constitution it clearly states that they cannot be arrested or punished unless they go through the people’s court. Project 6521 to me seems like it will go nowhere it is just created to make it look like they want to change the way they treat people even though this will never stop.

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/15804/