UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon yesterday emphasized the need for worldwide respect of human rights during a visit to China, after critics accused him of being too soft on Beijing on the issue.
Rights groups have lashed out at Ban for not challenging Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) on the case of jailed Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) when the pair met on Monday. A spokesman for the UN chief said on Tuesday that the secretary--general had “consistently” raised such issues with China when and where “appropriate.”
Ban — wrapping up a four-day trip to China that included stops in Shanghai and Nanjing — took the opportunity yesterday, in a speech at the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Party School.
“Clearly, China is on the rise. Its transformation has been profound. Its influence is increasingly global. Its power is real ... with this remarkable progress comes great expectations and great responsibilities,” Ban said.
“As we move forward, we recognize that achieving the shared goals of human rights around the world is more than an aspiration, it is a foundation of peace and harmony in our modern world,” he said.
“So, too, is respect for freedom of expression and the protection of its defenders,” added the UN chief, according to a copy of his remarks released by the world body.
Ban said he was confident that China’s current and future leaders would play a role in helping the UN confront “myriad challenges” by showing “full commitment to the common values that unite us,” including human rights.
“The values embedded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are timeless and shared yet unrealized in far too much of the globe,” he said. “We must continue to work together to make those rights real in people’s lives.”
Amnesty International became the latest rights group to criticize the UN leader. His silence was “a failure of the UN system, a failure to the Chinese people,” said Corinne-Barbara Francis, Amnesty’s senior researcher on China.
“People see one of the key missions of the UN to uphold human rights. What message is it sending if the top person at the UN cannot speak out and hold one of the most influential states to its commitments,” Francis said.
Human Rights Watch has called the lack of comment “shocking” and Human Rights in China said it was “extremely disappointing.”
Liu, 54, was jailed in December for 11 years on subversion charges after co-authoring Charter 08, a petition calling for democratic reforms in one-party China that has been circulated on the Internet and signed by thousands.
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