China has promised its citizens stronger legal protection, improved incomes and expanded channels to complain as part of its first “human rights action plan,” which casts the Chinese Communist Party government as guardian of their rights.
The plan, issued by state media yesterday, marks another step in the ruling party’s efforts to seize the initiative against critics at home and abroad who accuse it of stifling free speech and jailing dissidents, especially in the sensitive 20th year since troops crushed pro-democracy protests in Beijing.
Chinese officials reject those criticisms and say their idea of human rights focuses on lifting living standards of hundreds of millions of people, many still stuck in poverty.
“China still confronts many challenges and has a long road ahead in its efforts to improve its human rights situation,” the plan released by the Xinhua news agency says.
China “gives priority to the protection of the people’s rights to subsistence and development,” it said.
The plan and Beijing’s other vows to improve human rights will make little difference as long as courts and media remain under party domination and citizens’ rights to assemble and speak out remain strictly curtailed, said Teng Biao (滕彪), a Beijing human rights lawyer who has been detained for his activities.
“This is a symbolic act. It’s substantive impact will be very little,” Teng said. “If the judiciary and government system don’t undergo fundamental change, human rights problems won’t undergo fundamental change either.”
But the document, released by the information arm of the Cabinet, spells out goals for this year and next year that Teng said may raise restive citizens’ expectations of faster improvements in rights and welfare despite the economic downturn.
The plan says the government will seek “equality in right to basic health services,” a big challenge in a country with a chasm between urban rich and rural poor.
The poor, elderly and disabled are promised improved welfare. Despite the economic slowdown that has left 23 million or more rural migrants jobless, the document says 18 million of them will find urban jobs in the next two years, and urban and rural incomes will keep rising.
The country’s courts, which come under party control, will ensure “impartial and fair trials,” the plan says.
Many Chinese people bring complaints to special government petitions offices, but they often face harassment and detention by officials and their complaints often fester.
The plan says the government will seek to ease this backlog of rancor by opening up more telephone, e-mail and online channels to hear and solve such complaints.
But the plan shows no sign that the party is ready to contemplate major political liberalization. Yesterday, the People’s Daily — the party’s official paper — said Communist leadership must remain a bedrock of the nation’s political order.
Also See: 標題
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
RSS