China: Citizens’ Rights in Congress Spotlight | WPN World People News

China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) should exercise its constitutional powers and reject policies and legislative measures that contravene domestic and international human rights protections, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to Congress Chairman Zhang Dejiang.

The National People’s Congress (NPC), which meets annually and is attended by more than 2,900 delegates, opens in Beijing on March 2, 2015.

“China’s leadership has professed a renewed commitment to strengthen the rule of law and respect for the Constitution,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. “Whether the NPC chooses to exercise its powers under the Constitution will test the strength of this commitment.”

Under China’s Constitution, the National People’s Congress is the “supreme organ of state power” and “supervises the enforcement of the Constitution” (art. 62).

In its letter, Human Rights Watch highlights developments contravening or threaten the fundamental constitutional rights, including guarantees that “the State respects and protects human rights” (art. 33), that citizens “enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration” (art. 35), and that the courts “exercise judicial power independently,” without being “subject to interference by any administrative organ, public organization or individual” (art. 126).

Key areas of concern include:
•The use of extrajudicial measures of investigation and punishment in the anti-corruption campaign, including deprivation of freedom under the Communist Party’s shuanggui system.
•A proposed law on counterterrorism that would legitimate ongoing human rights violations and facilitate future abuses.
•The continued delay in the ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, signed by China in 1998.
•The August 31, 2014 Decision on Hong Kong by the NPC Standing Committee, which precludes the possibility of introducing genuine universal suffrage for the 2017 elections of the Chief-Executive.

The NPC is often described as a “rubber stamp parliament” that has no authority over the real power-holding institution, the Communist Party of China (CPC). It is composed of delegates who come from a tightly restricted pool of candidates vetted by the Communist Party, and elected by representatives of provincial-level people’s congresses whose members have been selected in the same way. Yet NPC members have on occasion at least forced revisions to proposed legislation on complex issues such as property and food safety.

In its 2015 World Report, Human Rights Watch said that in 2014 the Chinese government unleashed the harshest campaign of politically motivated investigations, detentions, and sentencing in the past decade, marking a sharp turn toward intolerance of criticism.

“In the past the NPC has surprised observers by challenging problematic legislation,” said Richardson. “There are many such opportunities in the upcoming session—will the NPC act on them?”

Source: Human Rights Watch