Brussels, 01/06/2012 (Agence Europe) - There is misunderstanding: exaggerated individual cases are taken as the general human rights reality for people in China, said Li Jinjun, International Department Vice-Minister for the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, on 31 May, following the 3rd EU-China High Level Political Parties and Groups Forum, adding that “there are individual cases, just like everywhere else, just as there are in the EU”. He said that progress had been made in many areas over the last 30 years. “Access to food and housing is a human rights development process in China”, he went on to say. For MEP Graham Watson (ALDE, UK), the right to food and housing should not exclude the other rights. Véronique De Keyser (S&D, Belgium) stated that the EU and China had different views of human rights. “It's one vision against another vision”, she said.
Human Rights Dialogue. On 29 May, the EU and China also held the 31st round of their Human Rights Dialogue, which focused on criminal punishment and deprivation of liberty. The EU took the opportunity to repeat its concerns over the rights of minorities in China, the treatment of refuges from North Korea the rule of law and the legal profession, freedom of expression and the treatment of civil society. The EU handed over a list of individual cases of concern and raised a number of other cases during the dialogue itself. The Chinese side handed over a reply to 25 cases on the list provided by the EU in June 2011.
China set out its concerns over xenophobia and racial discrimination internationally and in the EU, and the EU explained its policies in these areas.
The EU reiterated its wish to continue holding the dialogue twice each year, and stated its disappointment that China had not agreed to a second session of the dialogue in 2010 or 2011. (CG/transl.rt)