China to Give Full Protection to Human Dignity Right

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, December 24, 2002

China to Give Full Protection to Human Dignity Right

China's top legislature began to deliberate Monday on a draft law of protecting the right to human dignity, which would be a milestone in the country's legal history.

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China's top legislature began to deliberate Monday on a draft law of protecting the right to human dignity, which would be a milestone in the country's legal history.

The law draft gets its own chapter in a landmark Civil Code draft tabled at the 31st meeting of the Standing Committee of the Ninth National People's Congress (NPC) Monday morning.

The draft states that the natural person and the legal person are entitled to the right to human dignity. For the natural person, the right to human dignity includes for a healthy life and protection of name, image, reputation, honor, credit and privacy, while for the legal person, the right includes protection of name, reputation, honor and credit.

"There is no other country in the world whose Civil Code includes a separate chapter on the protection of the right to human dignity," said Wang Shengming, director of the Civil Law Office of the Legislative Affairs Commission under the Ninth NPC Standing Committee.

"The draft will have a positive and important impact on China's democracy promotion and legal system building," he added.

China's renowned civil law expert Wang Liming said the draft confirms full protection of the right to human dignity and will give people "a powerful legal weapon to fight against any kind of illegal interference and violation of their personal rights".

Wang, also a law professor in the People's University of China, took part in drafting the law and referred to it as the third big leap in the protection of the right to human dignity since the founding of the New China.

China promulgated the General Rules of the Civil Law in 1986, which stated for the first time in China's legal history that citizens enjoy the right to human dignity.

"The General Rules of the Civil Law were regarded as 'a declaration of rights' at that time," Wang said. "Many Chinese people got to know for the first time that their images and names were kind of civil rights and they could appeal to the court and ask for compensation if these rights were violated."

The second milestone was the promulgation of a legal explanation on moral reparation by the Supreme People's Court in 2001, said Wang.

"It expanded the content of personal rights and provided good solutions for many problems that the General Rules of the Civil Law failed to cover," he said.

"The draft to be discussed is a summing up of China's experience in the protection of human dignity right," Wang said. "Its significance also lies in the new content it brings into protection, such as citizens' rights of privacy," he said.

The draft says individuals have the rights of private information, activity and space. It strictly forbids the use of any method to violate other people's privacy.

"Privacy protection is one of the key features of modern society," Wang said. "The public asks for a more transparent government in the modern age, and meanwhile they also ask for more protection of their privacy," he added.

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