Beijing, Dec 7 (AFP) China touted its political anddevelopment model as it hosted an inaugural global humanrights forum today, even as activists slammed the country'sown abuses.
President Xi Jinping has overseen a sweeping crackdown oncivil society since taking power in 2012, targeting everyonefrom human rights lawyers to celebrity gossip bloggers.
Hundreds of activists have been detained in the past fiveyears while internet censorship has intensified.
And China became the first country since Nazi Germany toallow a Nobel Peace Prize laureate to die in state custodywhen democracy activist Liu Xiaobo succumbed to liver cancerunder heavy police guard in July.
But some 300 participants gathered in Beijing's GreatHall of the People to hear about the country's "human rightsdevelopment path with Chinese characteristics" at the South-South Human Rights Forum.
Some attendees came from countries with their owncheckered human rights record.
"There's no one size fits all approach in human rightspractices," said Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. "No one isin a position to lecture others on human rights."He highlighted China's achievements in poverty reductionas an example of the country's efforts to improve rights.
Beijing says it has reduced its poverty rate to fourpercent and seeks to eradicate poverty by 2020.
But forum attendee Zhu Liyu, deputy director of theCentre for Human Rights at Renmin University, pointed out thatsuch calculations were based on the country's official povertyline, much lower than that of other nations.
"The standard for poverty here is very low. I think weshould raise it," he told AFP.
The overseas NGO Chinese Human Rights Defenders saidThursday that China's focus on economic development had takena toll.
"In the past few decades, this 'China model' has leftbehind countless people in China, victimised by breakneckgrowth 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 squashedprotests, silenced complaints, and swollen jails andextrajudicial holding cells," it added.
The inaugural forum comes two months after Xi outlinedhis vision of turning China into a major superpower by mid-century at a Communist Party congress that confirmed hisstatus as the most powerful Chinese leader in decades.
In November, Donald Trump repeatedly praised Xi duringhis state visit to Beijing during which the US president didnot publically address China's human rights record.
The forum included diplomats, scholars and governmentofficials from developing countries, as well asrepresentatives from the United Nations, the World Bank, theWorld Health Organization.
"This is China's answer to the question of where humansociety is heading," Wang said of the forum.
Representatives of countries such as Tajikistan andAfghanistan with questionable human rights track records oftheir own took to the podium to extoll the Chinese model.
Burundi's presidential office spokesman Willy Nyamttwesaid he was honoured to attend the forum as his country sought"solutions that can counterbalance Western diktats thatthrough their propaganda instruments, the media and NGOs, aretarnishing the image of developing countries."Last month, UN human rights investigators said theybelieved Burundi's top leaders had committed crimes againsthumanity. (AFP)CPS.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.