State Urges Human Rights StudyResearchers were urged to increase studies on human rights to better promote China's human rights cause, academic society officials said at a meeting Monday in Beijing.Such studies should follow Marxist principles and China's real situation, Zhou Jue, newly-elected president of China Society for Human Rights Studies, stressed at the first session of the society's second national council. "Human rights studies should not be based on western principles or theoretical frames," he said. Li Peng, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), congratulated the group in a letter to the society. Since its establishment in 1993, the society has played an important role in developing human rights theoretical studies, introducing China's opinion in the field to other countries and promoting the development of China's human rights cause, Li said. He refuted some western countries' claims that human rights take precedence over sovereignty, branding it as an excuse for western powers to interfere with other countries. Li encouraged members of the society to stick to the principles "to promote human rights, to protect sovereignty and to oppose hegemony," and to develop socialist human rights theories. The society's theoretical studies, and its efforts to explain China's human rights ideas to the world, have helped the Chinese Government frustrate some western countries' drives to reproach China's human rights status in the United Nations' Human Rights Conference. China, together with many developing countries, has insisted that rights to subsistence and development are the core contents of human rights. While acknowledging the universal value of human rights, China has long argued that such rights should maintain their peculiarities according to historical and actual situations in different countries. Zhu Muzhi, honorary president of the society, asked society members, most of whom are nationwide scholars, to increase their international exchanges and co-operation. |
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