Saturday 3 March 2001

Human rights is never far from the agenda in China's international relations, but over the past week the focus has perhaps been even more acute than usual.

It began with the visit by the International Olympic Committee's evaluation team to Beijing. Also in town was the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner, Mary Robinson.

Much of the focus of Mrs Robinson's visit was on the treatment by authorities of followers of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. It is an issue that bisects the other main issue she raised: the use of arbitrary detention in "re-education through labor" camps.

"Individual Falun Gong members have human rights that must be respected," she told journalists after challenging China's use of the camps as a method of dealing with adherents. Re-education through labor is used to deal with many minor criminal matters. Most of those in the camps are there as the result of an administrative rather than judicial decision, a clear violation of international norms.

The IOC's visit drew the inevitable questions about how the Olympic movement planned to reconcile China's rights record with its bid for the 2008 Games.

Not an issue, at least not for us, said team leader Hein Verbruggen. He ducked behind the cover of the commission's task of making a technical assessment of the city's bid potential.

But the IOC visit was only the opening round of what became a week of human rights jousting. Most of the vitriol on China's rights record this week was delivered at a safe distance, mainly across the Pacific as China and the US both scrambled for the high moral ground. The release of the annual US State Department human rights report on China provoked a rebuke from China, which retaliated with its own report on human rights abuses in the US.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/2001/03/03/FFX17XZQSJC.html