China's human rights record has again come up in Geneva this year, with the US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, criticising Beijing on Thursday for "widespread denials of political, cultural, labour and religious freedom". But since 1990 China has always thwarted censure motions in the 53-member UN Human Rights Commission by getting enough support for a "no action" motion. Will this year be any different?
It could be. The UN Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, the US government and Amnesty International have all accused China of a worsening human rights record, despite three years of EU-sponsored dialogue rather than confrontation.
As part of this dialogue Ireland has sent judges to tour China and Chinese judges have visited the Republic at Irish taxpayers' expense. Embracing dialogue has meant putting trust in China's sincerity in claiming to move towards a law-based society.
At the core of the draft US censure motion being circulated in Geneva is the sense that this trust has been betrayed, and that abuses result from state policy rather than insubordination by government organs or individual officials.
Amnesty International this week cited the case of Ms Chen Zixiu (60), a Falun Gong practitioner who was allegedly beaten to death at a detention house in Weifang City of Shandong province around February 20th, as an example of how China denies legal protection to individuals.
THE death was witnessed by another Falun Gong member called Lingxia, who described, in an account circulated by Falun Gong, the torture to which practitioners in the centre were subjected to make them recant.
"A fat person, officer Liu . . . stepped on my feet and asked me whether I would continue to practise Falun Gong or not. I said that I would. Then, he started to give shocks to my head using an electric baton.
"My head then felt like being cut by tens of thousands of knives. I could not stand that pain and started to scream. Four of them tortured me together. Some beat me up using leather batons, some kicked me and punched me. I lay on the ground shaking because of the electric shocks and beatings. I started to lose consciousness. A woman named Deng Ping dragged me from the ground and beat me up."
She told how Ms Chen Zixiu was brought to the detention centre on February 18th and over two days beaten and given the electric shock treatment.
"She was in such a great pain that she screamed `mother' for the whole night," said Lingxia. "Her voice was so heartbreaking." The next day Ms Chen vomited whatever she ate. "Officer Liu asked me to carry her to another room. [My husband] and I had slept in that room for eight days and the quilts were frozen up because of our own breathing. The room was too cold for Chen Zixiu, who I realised was dying, and I carried her on my back to another room." Ms Chen disgorged tablets given by officer Liu and lapsed into a coma. "When I took off her trousers, I saw all her buttocks were black, which was very frightening. Her head was injured, too.
They got a doctor. Officer Liu said: "No problem, her heart, blood pressure are all normal, no need to worry'. "Afterwards, they ordered me [and two others] to move Ms Chen to our room and take care of her. She was unconscious all the time, and vomiting a kind of black coffee-coloured mucus. The next day officer Liu felt Ms Chen's pulse and he became worried. He swung Chen's arm and said: `All over! She is dead'. Later I heard that the legal medical expert identified her as having died of a heart attack.
"They moved to the third floor and hid away the electric batons and rubber batons. The police who came to investigate asked irrelevant questions and did not mention beatings." This account was corroborated by information given to the Hong Kong Information Centre of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China, which said Ms Chen was arrested on suspicion of planning to go to Beijing to present petitions, and beaten because her family could not pay a 1,000 yuan (£80) fine.
Relatives found the body black and blue all over, with teeth broken and bloodstains in external auditory canals and at the corners of her mouth, the centre said. Public security police prevented photographs being taken. As in all such cases legal redress was denied the family. Relatives contacted lawyers to take proceedings against the public security officers. They declined, saying they would not get approval from the judicial bureau to take a Falun Gong-related case.
Since last July police in China have been under orders from the top to crush Falun Gong, whose followers combine breathing exercises and elements of Buddhism and Taoism, under spiritual guidance from exiled guru Li Hongzhi.
It was banned as an evil cult after 15,000 members staged a large peaceful demonstration for recognition in Beijing. China claims the movement has caused hundreds of deaths by discouraging practitioners from seeking medical treatment. "Tens of thousands of people have been arbitrarily detained, some of them repeatedly for short periods of time, hundreds have been sent without trial to forced labour camps or sentenced to prison terms after unfair trials, and many followers have been tortured," Amnesty said. "Some have been detained in psychiatric hospitals and forced to take drugs and at least 10 people have died in police custody in suspicious circumstances." Far from moving towards the rule of law, the trials of leaders have been "grossly unfair", Amnesty says. Laws were used retroactively. Defence lawyers were prevented from pleading not guilty.
Amnesty cited other victims of what it called a massive two-year "anti-superstition campaign" which mostly hit ordinary people. Ms Cheng Fengrong (42) was punched, kicked, and handcuffed to a tree by Shunyi police, beaten with a broom which broke in two, forced to stand barefoot in the snow and had two basins of freezing water poured on to the back of her neck.
Ms Hong Jirong (62), a professor at Sichuan University, was sentenced to three years of "reeducation through labour" for simply writing a letter of appeal to the UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan.
China is confident of seeing off any challenge. Its ambassador in Geneva, Mr Qiao Zonghuai, said any country which presented a resolution on China in support of the "evil cult" which "practises sect-leader worship, spreads fallacies, exercises mind control, collects money and resources illegally, organises secret associations and endangers society" would be humiliatingly defeated. The censure motion could just succeed with European support. If it looks as if it will fail because China rallies enough friends to pass a "no action" motion, Ireland and other EU countries are expected simply to register a vote against the "no-action" motion, and "review" the dialogue, with the aim of achieving "a more focused and result-oriented approach".
The strategy appears to be to avoid an open split on the issue, and not to invoke Chinese retaliation and then find that the US draft resolution is not put to a vote.